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The officer he addressed was not happy with his present assignment. In the first place, his uniform had been stripped of all rank and unit markings. It made him feel naked. In the second place, he could not understand why a battle-ready cruiser and its full crew were pursuing a single tiny tramp freighter.

The officer gulped. “I only mean to say, sir, that the device our agent planted seems to have gone off prematurely. It was supposed to explode, on your orders, just before atmospheric entry at their next port of call.”

“So you have failed twice! You idiot, they’re en route to the Oseon—there will be no atmospheric entry! I have had enough of this!”

The sorcerer made a gesture with his gloved fist. The officer groaned, sweat sprang out on his forehead, and he sank to his knees.

“You see how much more effective it is than mere pain, don’t you? Everyone has memories, little items from their past best left buried: humiliations, embarrassments, mistakes … sometimes fatal ones. All the ways we have failed those we have loved, the ways they have failed us!”

Gepta made another gesture.

“No, you can think of nothing else! The ignobility races round and round your mind, amplified, feeding on itself!”

The officer’s face went gray, he swayed on his knees, his back bowed, his clenched fists began dripping blood where the fingernails cut into the palms. A little froth appeared at one corner of his mouth, followed by more blood as he gnashed at his lips and tongue. Finally, he lost all control, collapsed in a heap and lay there, twitching, moaning.

Gepta released him.

A pair of orderlies appeared, dragged the broken man from the bridge. Oddly enough, he was far from destroyed. Gepta had noticed, in the past, a certain increase in efficiency, perhaps even slightly enhanced intelligence after one of these crises. So why not make a good tool better? The tool was not in any position to complain of the stresses involved. Did it hurt a knife to grind it to razor sharpness? Who cared?

Slightly invigorated himself, the sorcerer turned, strode back to the control chair he usually occupied on the bridge. He was not captain on the Wennis, but he liked to stay on top of things.

He sat. Beside the chair was a pair of cages, each perhaps half a meter cubed. In the first, he kept his pet.

It was scarcely visible in its bed of gray-green muck, simply three stalky black legs thrusting upward crookedly, curving inward with a certain hungry, greedy energy perhaps only Gepta could see and sympathize with. The legs were sparsely hairy.

In the second cage, Gepta kept another type of creature. There were half a dozen of the things; soon he’d need a new supply. They were about the size of mice, very like mice, in fact, but with curly golden pelts and impossibly large blue eyes. Each creature was sleek and clean, seemed to radiate warmth. Each had a bushy tail, rather like that of a miniature squirrel.

Suppressing a shudder, Gepta reached into the cage of the furry creatures. Using a large pair of plastic tongs, he seized one—it squeaked with surprise and pain—and transferred it from its cage. He opened the top of the other cage, dropped it into the center of the upraised hairy legs.

There was a squelch!, another terrified squeak, which was cut off sharply, then a crunch! Gepta let the lid drop, a warm glow inside him as his pet preened itself, one dark, many-jointed leg grooming another until all three were clean of the blood and fur of its meal.

It did him good to imagine that the small, furry, helpless creature he had just destroyed was Lando Calrissian. It did him a great deal of good. Others had attempted to interfere with Gepta’s plans before. Only one had managed to survive. Why, of all people, this insignificant vagabond, this itinerant gambler and charlatan should so frequently come between the sorcerer and his plans was a mystery. Yet it had happened.

Very few individuals understood how much—and how little—the Sorcerers of Tund believed in magic. Even fewer were those who lived to pass the knowledge on to others. Calling up the Wennis