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Page 133
toward Rizzett to stop him, she thinks, from shooting Biron from the exertion and from failure to breathe properly because of the absence of carbon dioxide). He confesses to her that he had feigned coldness in order to set up the Autarch. Arta forgives him. But as Biron is addressing the Autarch's crew members in order to obtain their allegiance, Aratap and his soldiers surround them and take them prisoner. They also had heard the conversation between Biron and the Autarch.
Aratap tries to persuade the prisoners, one at a time, to betray the location of the rebellion world, but they remain silent except for the Autarch, who is willing to provide the coordinates of the fifth Nebular star if Aratap will kill Biron. Rizzett is furious in spite of Biron's attempts to calm him and when the Autarch reveals the coordinates Rizzett grabs a blaster and kills him. Biron says that this is what Aratap wanted to have happen.
In the confusion, however, Gillbret escapes. He is found in the engine room. Later, his mind and body failing, he reveals to Biron that he has shorted the hyperatomics so that the ship will blow up when it tries to make a Jump. Biron, unable to convince the guard of his improvised prison cell about the sabotage, escapes and finally is brought to Aratap, who has the Jump delayed until the short is found. Gillbret dies.
The ship reaches the fifth sun, and Aratap discovers that the star went nova less than a million years before. Aratap says that he now believes, as Biron has insisted, that there is no rebellion world. Aratap releases the four captives (including Hinrik, who accompanied him from Rhodia) and sends them back to Rhodia. Since there is no rebellion world, he says, it is politically expedient to keep the situation as it is and not reveal in a public trial the rumors of a rebellion world that might trouble Tyrannian rule for a century.
On their own ship, Biron reveals that Gillbret must have been taken to Rhodia in the Tyrannian ship's final Jump. That was his original destination, and the possibility of a random Jump arriving near a star when space is so large and stars so comparatively few is so unlikely as to be unbelievable. The rebellion world, then, is within the Rhodia system. Arta exclaims that this would mean her father is in terrible danger, but Biron reveals that Hinrik has known about it for twenty years, indeed, has been the head of it and has been playing the part of a fool so that he can organize rebellion without interference. It was the valuable life of Hinrik that Biron was trying to save from Gillbret's shorting of the hyperatomics.
Hinrik confesses his deception, marries Arta and Biron, and reveals that he knows what Earth document the Rancher had asked Biron to

 
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