"Elaine!" he called. "Elaine, where are you?" There was a stir and somebody came into his limited view; his cousin, Nikkolay Trask. "Nikkolay; Andray Dunnan," he said. "What happened to Elaine?" Nikkolay winced, as though something he had expected to hurt had hurt worse than he had expected. "Lucas." He swallowed. "Elaine ... Elaine is dead." Elaine is dead. That didn't make sense. "She was killed instantly, Lucas. Hit six times; I don't think she even felt the first one. She didn't suffer at all." Somebody moaned, and then he realized that it had been himself. "You were hit twice," Nikkolay was telling him. "One in the leg; smashed the femur. And one in the chest. That one missed your heart by an inch." "Pity it did." He was beginning to remember clearly, now. "I threw her down, and tried to cover her. I must have thrown her straight into the burst and only caught the last of it myself." There was something else; oh, yes. "Dunnan. Did they get him?" Nikkolay shook his head. "He got away. Stole the _Enterprise_ and took her off-planet." "I want to get him myself." He started to rise again; Nikkolay nodded to someone out of sight. A cool hand touched his chin, and he smelled a woman's perfume, nothing at all like Elaine's. Something like a small insect bit him on the neck. The room grew dark. Elaine was dead. There was no more Elaine, nowhere at all. Why, that must mean there was no more world. So that was why it had gotten so dark. He woke again, fitfully, and it would be daylight and he could see the yellow sky through an open window or it would be night and the wall-lights would be on. There would always be somebody with him. Nikkolay's wife, Dame Cecelia; Rovard Grauffis; Lady Lavina Karvall--he must have slept a long time, for she was so much older than he remembered--and her brother, Burt Sandrasan. And a woman with dark hair, in a white smock with a gold caduceus on her breast. Once, Duchess Flavia, and once Duke Angus himself. He asked where he was, not much caring. They told him, at the Ducal Palace. He wished they'd all go away, and let him go wherever Elaine was. Then it would be dark, and he would be trying to find her, because there was something he wanted desperately to show her. Stars in the sky at night, that was it. But there were no stars, there was no Elaine, there was no anything, and he wished that there was no Lucas Trask, either. But there was an Andray Dunnan. He could see him standing black-cloaked on the terrace, the diamonds in his beret-jewel glittering evilly; he could see the mad face peering at him over the rising barrel of the submachine gun. And then he would hunt for him without finding him, through the cold darkness of space. The waking periods grew longer, and during them his mind was clear. They relieved him of his crown of electronic thorns. The feeding tubes came out, and they gave him cups of broth and fruit juice. He wanted to know why he had been brought to the Palace.