Cerberus: A Wolf in the Fold (The Four Lords of the Diamond, Vol. 2)

omewhere, from among the four human settled worlds of the Warden Diamond, hostile aliens were spying on Earth. But no agent could be sent to investigate and report back. All trips to the Warden worlds were one-way. There a microscopic symbiont called the warden bug invaded all life forms, after which life became impossible outside the Warden system. Sitting on a freighter in the "safe" zone of the solar system, the Confederacy's best agent receives reports tightbeamed from former criminals imprinted with his mind. The Federation's put their greatest mind, who happen to be male, into the female body of operative Qwin Zhang. Objective - Find the Lord of the planet who is working with the enemy aliens and try to take control. Cereberu's symbiont threw in a little twist. It makes common the mind exchange of the person you sleep near. Lordship and immortality may make duty to the federation difficult. Grand Scam Robots were infiltrating the Federation. Someone was kidnapping people and substituting indetectable, synthetic imitations. Somewhere, aliens were studying the Federation, using techniques beyond human developments. The trail led back to Cerberus and the Lord who ruled that planet. Cerberus, however, was one of the Warden Worlds - and those Worlds were the untouchables of space. There a strange microscopic life-form invaded all matter, and anyone so infected died on leaving those Worlds. Men could go there, but never return. But the Federation had its own techniques. They took a criminal named Qwin Zhang and stripped her mind of all memory and personality. Then they poured into that empty receptacle the full mind of the Federation's best operative. They exiled her to the prison world of Cerberus. The mission: Find the Lord who ruled, kill him, and take over. Too bad there were things about Cerberus they couldn't know!