WORLDS of the IMPERIUM By KEITH LAUMER ACE BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y. Copyright, 1962, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved Printed in U.S.A. [Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] DOUBLE TROUBLE FOR A DUPLICATE DICTATOR For Brion Bayard, the discovery of an alternate world to Earth where history took a different turn in the road was not a pleasant experience. His kidnapping brought him some startling revelations. Here was a world in which appeared identical doubles of famous personages--including a dangerous and hated dictator named Brion Bayard! His assignment seemed simple enough. Dressed as his double, Brion was to enter the enemy stronghold, kill the dictator, and take his place until law and order could be maintained. But once having seen his mirror-image brother, Brion had as little inclination to murder him as some other people had to let him live. CAST OF CHARACTERS Brion Bayard: How much of his double was himself? Chief Inspector Bale: In alternate worlds, he still meant double trouble. Hermann Goering: The same name, the same body, yet not the same man. Barbro Lundane: A Swedish lass with a sweetish air. Gaston: In a second world, he still had but one life to give for the cause. Brion Bayard (2): His arch-enemy was his only friend. Chapter 1 I stopped in front of a shop with a small wooden sign which hung from a wrought-iron spear projecting from the weathered stone wall. On it the word Antikvariat was lettered in spidery gold against dull black. The sign creaked as it swung in the night wind. Below it a metal grating covered a dusty window with a display of yellowed etchings, woodcuts, and lithographs, and a faded mezzotint. Some of the buildings in the pictures looked familiar, but here they stood in open fields, or perched on hills overlooking a harbor crowded with sails. The ladies in the pictures wore great bell-like skirts and bonnets with ribbons, and carried tiny parasols, while dainty-footed horses pranced before carriages in the background. It wasn't the prints that interested me though, or even the heavy gilt frame embracing a tarnished mirror at one side; it was the man whose reflection I studied in the yellowed glass, a dark man wearing a tightly-belted grey trench coat that was six inches too long. He stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets and stared into a darkened window fifty feet from me. He had been following me all day.