Senesin opened the door. There was a queer look--half jubilant, half worried--on his face as he said: "Come in, my lord, come in. Care for a drink?" "Don't mind if I do, Jon. Brandy, if you have it." Young Senesin poured the brandy, speaking rapidly as he did. "I've made an appointment to get those tapes, my lord. I want you to go with me. If we can get them, we can break this whole fraud wide open. Wide open." He handed the colonel a crystal goblet half filled with the clear, red-brown liquid. "Sorry I left so hurriedly this morning, but if that Heywood character had said another word I'd have broken his nose for him." The colonel took the goblet and looked into its depths. "Jon, what do you expect these tapes to prove?" The young man's face darkened. He walked across the spacious room, brandy goblet in hand, and sat down on the wall couch before he spoke. "Just what I told you, my lord. I expect to prove that my father's mind has been tampered with--that he is not responsible for the decisions that have been made in his name--that he is going to lose his position and his reputation and his career for something that he would never have done in his right mind--that he has been the duped pawn of someone else." The colonel walked over toward the couch and stood over the young man. "Someone? You keep referring to 'someone.' Ever since you asked me to help you, you've been mysterious about this someone. Whom do you suspect?" Senesin looked up at the colonel for a long moment before he answered. Then: "I suspect the Emperor himself," he said, half defiantly. The colonel raised his finely-drawn brows just a fraction of an inch, as though he hadn't known what the answer would be. "The Emperor? Hannikar IV? Isn't that a little far-fetched?" Senesin shook his head vehemently. "Don't you see? Legally, the Emperor is powerless; the Throne hasn't had any say-so in the Government for over a century--except to sign state papers and such. But suppose an Emperor came along who wanted power--power such as the old Emperors used to have. How would he go about getting it? By controlling the Government! He could slowly force them to give him back the powers that the people of the Empire have taken so many centuries to obtain." The colonel shook his head. "Impossible. Not even the Emperor could control the votes of the whole File for that purpose. It simply couldn't be done." "Not that way; of course not," the young man said irritably. "But there _is_ a way. It's been used before. Are you up on your history?" "Reasonably well," the colonel said dryly. "How did Julius Caesar get dictatorial powers? And, after him, Augustus? Rome was threatened by war, and then actually engaged in it, and the patricians were glad to give power to a strong man." "That was in a state ruled by the few patricians," the colonel pointed out, "not in a democracy."