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Page 131
reflects that he has not found the Earth document his father had asked him to locate but decides to leave as Jonti suggests. In a personal-beam transmission from the planet Lingane, Jonti learns that the Rancher of Widemos has indeed been executed. Jonti says that Biron is expendable. A bit later he learns from Rizzett, his agent, that the document both he and Biron had been seeking has been missing for twenty years.
Meanwhile, Biron has had his stateroom changed and his luggage moved on board the spaceship to Rhodia. He learns that papers revealing his identity have been removed. When he arrives on Rhodia he is hauled before Simok Aratap, the Tyranni in charge of the Rhodian sector. Biron, however, denies that he is Farrill and the Rancher's son and is allowed to go to the court of the Director, although Aratap recognizes that Biron is lying and, as is revealed in the next chapter, Biron realizes that Aratap knows it.
The Director of Rhodia is selected from its own family members by the ruling house, the Hinriads. Able rulers have been selected; even adoptions are encouraged. But Tyrannian conquest brought in different ideas. The conquerors helped to select Hinrik, who is a terrorized fool. Hinrik tries to persuade his daughter Artemesia (Arta) to agree to marry an aged nobleman of the Tyrannian court, but she refuses. When Biron is brought to Hinrik, and says he has information that Hinrik's life is in danger, Hinrik leaves Biron with Arta. Hinrik's cousin Gillbret also talks to Biron and later that evening invites Biron to his laboratory, where Gillbret reveals that his foolish chatter is just a pose. He works with spy beams and has invented a new musical and visual instrument that works on the nerve endings. He calls it a "visisonor." (In The Foundation Trilogy the Mule plays a visisonor there spelled Visi-Sonor an instrument, resurrected from a museum, that no one else knows how to play properly.) Gillbret wants Biron to take Arta and him away from Rhodia in a visiting spaceship. Spaceship piloting is a forbidden art in Tyranni-controlled areas, but Biron has learned it at the University of Earth. Before Biron can act, however, palace guards invade the laboratory to arrest him. With the aid of Gillbret's visisonor, Biron breaks free and gets to Arta's room before the search catches up. Arta conceals him, and they and Gillbret escape, with Biron in the uniform of a Rhodian palace guard.
Aratap has arrived, however, in a Tyrannian spaceship to answer Hinrik's call, and the spaceport is lighted. Biron and the Hinriads escape in Aratap's Tyrannian ship. This turns out to be a mistake, for Tyrannian ships can be traced. They have other secret abilities as well, such as being able to program a series of Jumps through hyperspace. Gillbret

 
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