was besieged by hostiles, it was pointless to request help. All he got was form
refusals from some clerk on Alpha, telling him that the present economic
problems made it impossible to fulfill his demands. He doubted anyone in charge
even saw the reports he was at such pains to generate.
He was surrounded with incompetents! He had agents-true, not many, and not the
best that the Security Services had to offer-and he had sent them out to make
just the sort of trouble that should have brought him the power he wanted. They
had failed him, for the riots he had managed to get started had ceased almost as
quickly as they were begun, and Regis Dark had never applied to him for help.
He had used his own Guards, and kept order in a way that won him Belfontaine's
grudging respect, or would
