Anyway, Endow originally got his post through an act of nepotism, but is now propped up by Hisst and controlled through blackmail photos of his liaisons and pictures of scary executions. He also has a nurse follow him around to wipe the drool from his jowls. A footnote from last chapter assures us that this character's name has been changed, and also denies that an Apparatus ever existed under the Exterior Division.
Our crew of villain protagonists sets off for Voltar's capital city, Palace City, known for its gilded architecture and "circular buildings, its circular parks, its circular walls, everything seven times as big as life." Tip for tourists - try to avoid using its inconveniently oversized, circular restrooms. Gris mentions that the settlement was built on the ruins of the capital city of the race that previously ruled this planet, before the Voltarians invaded, a rare bit of background information that will play no role in the story.
But that's not all there is to say about Palace City.
Undoubtedly it was a wise and clever thing, but early Voltar engineers moved a very small, nuclear black hole into the mountain behind Palace City as a power source and defense mechanism. This is fine: it gives Palace City an unlimited supply of thermonuclear power to run its vast complex of machines and devices.
I'll say this in Hubbard's favor - he gets you into science. You read a book of his and come across something like this, say "that can't possibly be right," and go off to Wikipedia and Google to do research.
I can't find any mention of "nuclear" black holes, but given Hubbard's chronic misunderstanding of all things radioactive this shouldn't come as a surprise. Now, black holes are infamous for not emitting anything - quite the opposite in fact - but there's something called Hawking Radiation that might be emitted from the little varmints, though it's much to weak to be used as a power source.
On the other hand, the accretion disc that forms around a black hole as matter is pulled towards its event horizon and superheated by the gravitational and rotational forces, that's a bit more energetic. But from what I read the energy emitted, though the most efficient form of matter-to-energy conversion, comes out as x-rays, which are not to my knowledge terribly useful as a power source. I think Hubbard's under the impression that the radiation emitted in nuclear reactors is what powers them, rather than the heat from the reaction.
In any case, black holes aren't "free" energy because you'd still have to pump stuff into that accretion disc to be converted to energy - maybe he's thinking of theoretical "white holes?" Also, if your society is advanced enough to move a black hole to where you want it, you obviously aren't having trouble generating enough power.
But wait, there's more!
For defense, the usefulness cannot be overstated: space-time distortion takes the whole of Palace City thirteen minutes into the future and any invader would find no target, nothing whatever to shoot at.
That's not how event horizons work. An outside observer watching a clock approach one would see it tick slower and slower, turn a shade of red, and gradually dim and fade away as it passed the point of no return. A black hole doesn't just shift you forward or backward x minutes just by being near it. As for such a timeshift's practicality as a defensive measure, that's stupid too - so what, if I shot a nuke towards the capital, the nuke wouldn't be shifted forward thirteen minutes to detonate, it just gets sucked into limbo? There's no "past" capital that exists for me to interact with? Since it always exists in the "future," there's just a bare patch of earth where the city should be?
Also note that despite this timeshift, people are able to travel to and from the city just fine. Well okay, not "just fine," Gris mentions that near the "time barrier" surrounding the capital "accidents had happened with outgoing traffic, suddenly shifted down in time, hitting head-on with incoming flight traffic moving up in time at the entrances." But anyway, black hole = two-way time portal. I bet Voltar doesn't have a stock market or lottery any more.
And there's more.
All this may make things very defense-safe but even a small black hole, when it finally expands, can blow up with a violence that levels mountains. They say it takes them a billion years or more before they finally go "bang" and that the one at Palace City is perfectly safe and has a long time to run yet. But how do they know how old it already was when they installed it? And if it's so safe, why did they build Palace City so far away from centers of population? I don't know how the Emperor stands it, frankly.
Black holes don't explode. That's their key characteristic, they're so dense that nothing gets out. They've collapsed under their own mind-crushing gravity. The closest thing they come to exploding is the aforementioned Hawking Radiation, which might cause them - in a timespan beyond the projected life of the universe, if what I've read is right - to slowly, eventually evaporate. Not detonate.
At least the rest of the chapter is straightforward. Gris and Hisst and Endow and everyone make it through the disorienting time barrier insanity, and land in a circular landing pad and climb spiral staircases to reach the circular Great Hall where there's a big-ass circular conference table. Endow takes his seat with his nurse and Hisst sitting behind him, and Gris lurks next to the clerks. He notices how shabby the Apparatus personnel looks next to all the gilded and diamond-studded crap in the room, and expect this observation to be repeated ad nauseam throughout the book. Apparently Hubbard was a big fan of looking sharp.
There's a fanfare and the council members get down to business, and despite Gris being sick with worry the first issue on the agenda is a tax revolt on the planet Kyle. Yes, Kyle. Then the Propaganda, Diplomacy, and Army Divisions get in a squabble over who's to blame for protracted invasion of planet Cliteus, and next there's rumors of a revolt in the Calabar system being fostered by Prince Mortiiy, which the Domestic Police Division blames on the Division of Education's poor choice of teachers.
And here we get a hint that the Apparatus might actually do something other than blackmail, as Gris notes how the Police have assured the Council that the negligent teachers in question have been executed, but not how they intend on dealing with this rogue prince. Apparently there's quite a rivalry between the Apparatus criminals and the "bluebottles," and the not-CIA gets some secret missions to pick up the police's slack. So they're a redundant government agency because nobody's competent enough to reform Voltar's Police Division.
And then Hisst nudges Endow in the back in a "this is it" manner as the Viceregal Chairman of the Crown rises to speak. Sounds like a good place for a chapter cliffhanger.
Back to Chapter Five
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