The guards raised their spears in salute. They were unarmed otherwise, and the vortex guns on the castle walls were corroding away. No need for weapons in the heart of an empire second only to Sol’s dominions. Skorrogan stood waiting in the courtyard. Fifty years had not bent his back much or taken the fierce golden luster from his eyes. It seemed to Thordin today, though, that the old being wore an air of taut and inwardly blazing eagerness: he seemed somehow to be looking toward the end of a journey.

Skorrogan gave conventional greeting and invited him in. “Not now, thanks,” said Thordin. “I really am very busy. I’d like to start the trip at once.”

The duke murmured the usual formula of polite regret, but it was plain that he could hardly wait, that he could ill have stood an hour’s dawdling indoors. “Then please come,” he said. “My cruiser is all set to go.”

It was cradled behind the looming building, a sleek little roboship with the bewildering outline of all tetrahedral craft. They entered and took their seats at the center, which, of course, looked directly out beyond the hull.

“Now,” said Thordin, “perhaps you’ll tell me why you want to go to Cundaloa today?”

Skorrogan gave him a sudden look in which an old pain stirred.

“Today,” he said slowly, “it is exactly fifty years since I came back from Sol.”

“Yes—?” Thordin was puzzled and vaguely uncomfortable. It wasn’t like the taciturn old fellow to rake up that forgotten score.

“You probably don’t remember,” said Skorrogan, “but if you want to vargan it from your subconscious, you’ll perceive that I said to them, then, that they could come back in fifty years and beg my pardon.”

“So now you want to vindicate yourself.” Thordin felt no surprise—it was typically Skontaran psychology—but he still wondered what there was to apologize for.

“I do. At that time I couldn’t explain. Nobody would have listened, and in any case I was not perfectly sure myself that I had done right.” Skorrogan smiled, and his thin hands set the controls. “Now I am. Time has justified me. And I will redeem what honor I lost then by showing you, today, that I didn’t really fail.

“Instead, I succeeded. You see, I alienated the Solarians on purpose.”

He pressed the main-drive stud, and the ship flashed through half a light-year of space. The great blue shield of Cundaloa rolled majestically before them, shining softly against a background of a million blazing stars.

Thordin sat quietly, letting the simple and tremendous statement filter through all the levels of his mind. His first emotional reaction was a vaguely surprised realization that, subconsciously, he had been expecting something like this. He hadn’t ever really believed, deep down inside himself, that Skorrogan could be an incompetent.

Instead—no, not a traitor. But—what, then? What had he meant? Had he been mad, all these years, or—

“You haven’t been to Cundaloa much since the war, have you?” asked Skorrogan.