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ingful as long as there was time left. Desreth was our wild card.
With the Corithian ability to mimic certain inanimate objects, and their
relative immunity to Talents, Desreth maneuvered to
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Marathon%201%20-%20The%20Demons%20at%20Ra.txt see if any of the known agents
could lead us to the hypno. Since she was at food service, though, it never
happened. Finally, Desreth staked out the position that you saw, where the
entire area could be kept in sight."
"Is Desreth all right? It would have been right next to that first big
explosion. . . . And what about the others?"
"Explosions of that sort aren't much bother to a Corithian. Ro-
bakuk has some bums but they are not serious. A Thion can really make speed
when it has to. Kalia had some serious bums on her backside and sprained a
wrist but is up and around. You got the worst, and, I fear, it was mostly from
Kalia in her hypno trance.
Two broken ribs, a punctured lung, internal bleeding, and a slight leg
fracture only the last was caused by the explosion."
"I consider myself blessed to have escaped with that," he admitted, not just
for show, either.
244 fack L Chalker
"Do not denigrate yourself so," the Hive Master scolded him.
"That breeds defeat and eventual failure. You did what you were sent in to do.
Find the spies and then prevent them from doing harm. You were up against the
best, and you broke the case by using your brain, not your powers. You were
chosen because the computers said you had such a mind; your Talent, rather
than being the crutch it is with most Talents, you used only to protect your
mind so that you could use it property."
"But did we prevent anything?" he asked the Hive Master.
"They weren't the only ones."
"No, but if there was any fatal flaw in their plan it was in using humans at
all. The fact that we were convinced that Lord
Qabar's own ego and racial pride would make that inevitable made the rest
possible. If he had chosen other races, unrelated to himself and unassociated
with his highest nobles, as he did do with the Quarg, we would never have
found them until too late. As it was, feverish work through the night was able
to undo most of their nasty work, and we were able to compensate for anything
we did not catch. But for the burnt-out pavilion, no one at all would know.
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No, we are quite pleased all around. And this opinion is shared in even higher
places. Have you given thought to what you would like to do once you are out
of here?"
Although still not as impressed with himself as the others were, he knew
better than to not accept accolades, or possible rewards. "I shall go wherever
my Baron and our Lord com-
mands me, and carry out my commission to the best of my abilities as always,"
he responded.
"A suggestion has been made for a higher calling. If you wish it, a full
commission in Imperial Security is yours."
No empath was needed to read his excitement at that. Imperial level! "I I
would be most honored, master."
"Master no more, once you accept the commission. I began the same way. You
would get some training, some additional schooling, then be assigned command
of a patrol boat, probably out on the frontier. That's where they put the
green ones usually,
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routine duty. It is an education, and a challenge. Much of it is quite boring,
I assure you, but if you find the opportunity to accomplish a major task, it
will be noted. As always, Destiny and you will decide where you go from
there."
"I shall do my best, sir." And someday I'll come back here and take your job.
Hive Master. Or maybe even your boss's job.
THE DEMONS AT RAINBOW BRIDGE
245
The training and schooling the Hive Master spoke of was def-
initely not boring; it was one of the hardest things Josef had ever undergone.
Even in his lowliest days as a pupil in the hypno training colony, which, up
until now, he'd thought was the worst possible experience, he'd never been
through anything so low and degrading. The physical demands were brutal; the
punish-
ment, abuse, and degradation meted out by the security robots who ran the
program (and who were immune from any Talent)
was almost beyond belief. There were no letups and no breaks.
Thirty candidates began the training. Like Josef, they were all there because
they'd already proven themselves very tough and very good in major and often
dirty field-assignments.
By the end of the training, seven of them had committed sui-
cide; five more had died at the hands of the instructors, and three had died
as a result of training mistakes. Of the fifteen that remained, only seven,
including Josef, received full field commissions as ensigns. The other eight
were assigned to Hive
Security a promotion, yes, and a good job, but not Imperial level.
The training did not end with his commission. He and the six other ensigns
were now technical specialists and introduced to an incredible variety of
weapons, espionage techniques, equip-
ment and then the survival suits. The ultimate test would be to drop him, as
if crash-landed, on a horrible, screaming hell of a planet about which he had
received no briefing whatever, and with only his rust-red survival suit and
the equipment that would normally be a part of it. With no maps, no nothing,
he would have to find a monitoring beacon that was hundreds of kilome-
ters away and call in a pickup from there. The world, he was assured, was
uninhabited, but the atmosphere was poisonous and, the temperatures ranged
from freezing to near the boiling point.
The seven finalists would be dropped all at the same time, although at
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different points. The first six to make it, if there were six who made it,
would graduate finally. The last one in, if they all made it, would be forced
to go back and take every-
thing over again, from the very beginning.
Before being dropped, he was given his one and only chance to resign, to
accept an administrative post rather than a field commission. By then he'd
gone through too much to call a halt;
he would make it, or die. If he did not make it, he did not mind
246 fack L. Chalker
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Marathon%201%20-%20The%20Demons%20at%20Ra.txt death at all in this honorable
quest nor, in fact, would he wish to live knowing that others like the old
Hive Master had passed just this sort of test.
More than once, when it looked hopeless, he knew that the old Josef, even the
one looking for spies at the celebration, would have given up, would have
simply declared the situation hope-
less. But one of the things indoctrination in this program did was to beat any
sense of defeatism out of you. The training was harder than almost anything he
might be likely to encounter later, yet you could get through it by using your
brain and new-
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