We can only wish we had more evidence covering these yeais. Except for some notes of the Baron and some fragments of letters Hawat sent to his old school friend Rouse, little else has been unearthed. In one of his notes, the Baron boasts mat he had succeeded in aiming Hawat's attention and vengeance against the emperor by convincing him that the emperor was the cause of the House Atreides' destruction. Hawat still hated the Baron with a "casual" hate, but "he thinks he uses me," the Baron wrote, "to wreak his revenge upon the emperor.... He does not think beyond his revenge Hawat's a man who must serve others, and doesn't even know this about himself." Hawat's letters to Rouse, however, seem to contradict the Baron's view. One letter declared that Hawat "loathed" the Baron; another called him "a gross and dangerous pig" and avowed that "destroying him [the Baron] will be a service to mankind." How Hawat planned to destroy the Baron is not clear. That it invohed Arrakis seems certain, for in one of his last services for the Baron, Hawat directed the Baron's attention to the desert planet. Hawat revealed to the Baron that the emperor had turned against Duke Leto primarily because Leto had trained a fighting force to rival the Sardaukar; he then told the Baron that the emperor suspected Harkonnen emulation of the Duke's feat with the Fremen. When the Baron doubted, especially because of the Fremen lack of numbers, Hawat convinced him that the Fremen population could easily be in excess of ten million. Hawat also suggested that-if it could be done without alerting the emperor-the Fremen could indeed be trained into an awesome force. What he did not tell the Baron was that Gurney Halleck had survived the treacherous Harkonnen attack on House Atreides and that he received reports from Halleck on Fremen battle tactics. Thus, the scheming most likely pivoted on Hawat's desire to lure the Baron to Dune-where Gurney had many hands to help him earn his revenge. Fate, however, stepped in to lure more than the Baron to Arrakis. Ihe Guild, alarmed by the changes they had observed on the planet-especially the increased tempo in troop activity brought about by Paul Muad' Dib-not only relayed this information to the throne, but also reduced troop transport fares to a minimum. Thus, in a short time the skies above Arrakis held the seven-ship fleet of the Harkonnens in company with the emperor's five legions of Sardaukar. As soon as the Guild gave the Harkonnen troops permission to land, the Baron sent Hawat to a smuggler base with orders to infiltrate the camp of the infamous Fremen Muad'Dib. Hawat was well away from Arrakeen then when the mysterious Muad'Dib defeated the Sardaukar and captured the emperor with ail of his retainers. When he returned to Arrakeen more than five days later, weak and already moving toward death from lack of die antidote, Hawat discovered not only that the Baron was dead, but thai the invincible Muad'Dib sitting in state in the Residency was none other than his young Duke Paul.