Buck was sitting on the edge of Ardala’s bed, not by his own choice but because there was nowhere else to sit in the room. At that moment Buck felt sorry for the princess. Though young and beautiful, the awful power to which she was heiress made her a sad, lonely figure in this drama of interstellar politics and intrigue.
Ardala came and knelt in the exotic animal-fur rug beside the bed, placing her hands on his uniformed legs. She looked up into his face, emotion filling her features. “Buck Rogers,” she whispered passionately, “you are the kind of man who could unseat my father. You could place yourself on the throne of Draconia, with me at your side as Empress of the Realm.”
“You may not believe this,” Buck said, “but your father’s seat is the farthest thing from my mind at this moment, Ardala.”
“I brought you here for a reason,” the princess breathed.
“I was counting on it,” Buck countered.
“I want you at my side, Buck Rogers!”
Buck said nothing, stunned for a moment by her brazen declaration of intent.
“Consider it,” Ardala said seriously. “You don’t know what it’s like to be the daughter of Draco the Conqueror—with twenty-nine sisters nipping at your heels. With weaseling courtiers like that pig Kane clawing at you for power.
“But with a real man like you, Buck Rogers, I could sweep aside Kane and the others. I could defy my father, lead my own life. And think of our children! What a magnificent dynasty we would found!”
“Children? Dynasty? Aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves?” Buck asked.
“There isn’t much time,” Ardala said.
Buck’s brow wrinkled with concentration at that. Ardala, clearly, was on the verge of making an important revelation of some sort. He prompted her to continue.
Ardala removed one of her hands from Buck’s shoulders and reached for a glass of Vinol. Perhaps she felt the need of a drink, perhaps it was some new pose, perhaps the gesture was just a play for time while she planned out her next move and her next sentence. Whatever the case, her move gave Buck the opportunity he’d awaited.
Buck held a glass toward the princess, carefully ascertaining that it was the one containing the Vinol he had doctored with the tablets from the little bottle in his tunic.
“We have to be very careful,” Ardala said.
“We do?” Buck echoed. “Why? Careful of what?”
Ardala sipped carefully from her glass. “Our timing is not what I would have preferred.”
Buck grinned wryly. “Like I said, nothing ever changes.”
Ardala leaned forward, pressing her lips warmly onto Buck’s. “Why couldn’t I have met you sooner?” she asked passionately.
Buck shook his head. “We have plenty of time left—don’t we?”
She pressed forward, kissed him again, more fervently than before. She struggled to her feet, drained her glass at a single breath and threw it across the room against the wall where it shattered with a crash and fell to the floor in a pile of tinkling fragments.
She whirled and stumbled back to the bed. She tumbled onto the massed furs there, sprawling face-down amidst the deep-piled luxurious pelts. “What—what am I doing?” she asked drunkenly.
“Never mind that,” Buck soothed her. “You’re doing everything just fine. Believe me, I’d tell you if you weren’t.”
She lifted her head, turned to face Buck. He watched her with calm detachment. Her movements were slower, less perfectly coordinated, as she tried to encircle him in her arms.
“I barely know you,” Ardala crooned, “how could I have become so desperate? So—”
Buck interrupted her, leaning over and pushing her gently but firmly back down onto the bed.
Ardala looked blearily at Buck. Her eyes were glazed, her breath coming in short gasps. She struggled to speak. “Buck, I feel so—I don’t know. It’s pleasant too, but—but—”
“That’s funny,” Buck said. “I feel bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.”
“You’re not used to this bed,” Ardala said.
“It’s a very nice bed,” Buck returned. “But not so unusual that I can see.”
“No, you don’t understand,” Ardala went on. “It’s computerized. It has an electronic mattress. It has sensors that attune its firmness to every contour of the body.”
“Back in the old days, machines knew their places,” Buck commented sardonically.
“No, our way is more efficient,” Ardala quarreled.
“Such things require a human touch,” Buck insisted.
Ardala tried to push herself upright, slipped back. “Oh, Buck, I’m so drowsy. Won’t you turn off the lights so I can rest.”
Buck reached for a control switch and darkened the stateroom. He reached for Ardala and she responded in a half-awake, half-asleep languor. “Buck, Buck,” she breathed.
“What is it?”
“If you’re a spy, Buck, you know I’ll have to have you killed. I’d hate to do that. You’re so nice, Buck. But I will have you killed if you’re a spy.”
“Now that,” commented Buck as he rolled over in the great fur-covered bed, “is some of the nicest pillowtalk I’ve ever heard, Ardala.”
He reached for her once more and in the darkness he could feel her going limp and slack. The doctored Vinol had taken its toll. Princess Ardala lay sound asleep across the great fur-covered mattress. Even though she was far beyond awakening by a mere sound, Buck instinctively moved with a minimum of noise or disturbance as he climbed quickly from the bed.
And in another section of the Draconia Kane sat in the command seat gazing down at the Inner City of earth. The Draconia was in a synchronous orbit above the shimmering dome, revolving freely over the earth, falling freely in a sense, yet moving so that its twenty-four-hour revolution about the earth matched the planet’s twenty-four-hour period of rotation. The effect was as if the ship were anchored in space directly above the Inner City.
“Look at them down there. Sleeping! The fools will never know what hit them.”
The Inner City itself, beneath its shimmering protective dome, resembled a sea of diamonds laid out on a jeweler’s cloth of blackest velvet.
In the starship, a technician addressed himself to Kane. “Stand by to receive classified transmission from the armada,” the technician stated. “Carrier wave is activated and preliminary image pattern is forming, sir.”
Kane jumped from the command seat as if it had suddenly grown white hot. In the seat he had vacated, the gross form of the Emperor Draco, resplendent in the decorated uniform of the Supreme Commander of Draconian Realm Armed Forces, shimmered into being.
“And not a moment too soon, Kane,” Draco started speaking without preliminary. “If you’d stayed in my chair two seconds longer I’d have flattened you right now the same way I’m going to flatten the Inner City by dawn tomorrow.” The gross emperor burst forth with peals of wild, disgusting laughter. The sound echoed wildly through the spartan command bridge of the Draconia freezing the blood of every crewman and guard-trooper on duty.
Kane was the first to recover his composure. Draco may have been an effective ruler, but he did not gain the submission of his subjects by charming them to his side. Not by any means.
With an obsequious bow to the image of the Emperor Draco, Kane managed his customary well-oiled delivery of words. “We are honored by your majesty. Your decision to grant us the great pleasure of your presence flatters us beyond words.”
“Sure it does, you scum!” Again the gross emperor burst into peals of rolling laughter, holding his flabby sides as if the sheer energy of his mirth would burst them open. “Now, what is the battle plan that you’ve worked out? And where is my sweet little pigeon of a darling, the Princess Ardala?”
“Her highness, the Princess Ardala, has retired for the night, your Majesty.”
“Really, now has she?” Draco’s expression grew wary. “Kane, I find that rather strange.”
“Strange, your Majesty?”
/> “Indeed.” The gross image in the command chair leaned forward. “For one thing, Kane, I should think that Ardala would be most eager to observe the preparations for what must be the greatest planetary conquest in the history of space. To observe and to supervise, I should say.”
“I have been delegated to oversee the preparations, your Majesty. The Princess Ardala resides her fullest confidence in my ability to command the preparations.”
“Does she, now?” the emperor queried suspiciously.
“Why, yes, your Majesty,” Kane said in his oiliest manner, bowing and scraping before the gross image in the command seat.
“The other reason for my discomfiture,” the emperor continued, ignoring Kane’s explanations as if they had never been spoken, “has to do with your own ambitions, Kane.”
“My only ambition, your majesty, is to serve the Draconian realm to the best of my humble ability.” Again, the swarthy-complexioned Kane bowed low before the immaterial image.
“Kane,” Draco said with an impatient wave of one fat hand, “the only thing that befits you worse than your arrogant manner is your humble one. At least the first is sincere, obnoxious though it is. But when you try to act modest, you turn my imperial guts inside out.”
“My greatest pleasure, your majesty,” Kane bowed again.
“Oh, ho ho ho ho ho,” Draco roared, “oh, ho ho ho!!! That’s more like it. That’s the boy, Kane. Now you listen to me.” Once more he leaned forward, pointing an admonitory finger at the courtier.
“I know you’ve got your eye on the Princess Ardala, and I don’t blame you. Even a father can spot a piece of choice woman flesh when he lays eyes on it, even if it is his own daughter. But you’ve got to prove yourself a worthy son-in-law for me, and a worthy consort for the future Empress of Draconia. You know, Kane, I have twenty-nine other daughters and twenty-nine sons-in-law, and never a worse conglomeration of weaklings, social-climbers and fops have ever disgraced a royal family tree.
“Ardala is my last, best hope for a posterity worthy of the name. That’s why I’ve had my eye on you, sonny-boy!” He leaned back in the chair, scanning Kane appraisingly.
“I can handle the princess, my emperor, trust me for that,” Kane said grimly.
“I doubt it, Kane. I could never do anything with her, and I’m her own father!” Draco gave another peal of laughter. “Well, let’s see if your other efforts warrant keeping you alive, sonny-boy.”
Kane swallowed visibly and beads of sweat appeared on his brow. “I—I think my efforts will speak for themselves, your Majesty. We are well within the earth’s defense shield—the Draconia is at this very minute closer to the surface of Earth than any other ship of the realm has ever succeeded in getting, and that with the acquiescence of the earthers themselves.”
“But what about your warcraft?” Draco demanded. “The flagship is useless without her armament—just a giant ocean-liner of the spacelanes unless her weapons are operational.”
Kane smiled broadly. He knew, now, that he was on stronger ground than he had been in discussing the situation with regard to the Princess Ardala. He preened and approached the realistic image of the emperor. “All the warcraft are on board, your Majesty. All are in combat-ready condition, armed and prepared to strike in”—he checked the time by the command bridge’s ship’s chronometer—“exactly four hours. That will be at dawn, local time, below in the Inner City.”
“Ahhhh!” Draco’s exclamation was a long, drawn-out expression of pleasure, surprise and satisfaction. “That’s very good, Kane, that’s the kind of intelligence I like to receive. Well, I think you’ll stay alive and out of the stoker gang for a while longer at least. I may even grant my daughter an interview and make note of some of your more attractive features in our discussion.
“Er—that reminds me—you do have some attractive features, Kane, do you not?”
The courtier smirked. “Your Majesty would know, of course. I would not deign to promote my own virtue in such a manner, it would hardly be seemly or modest, now would it, your majesty?”
“Hardly, Kane, hardly. But tell me something.” The emperor had plucked a thread from his regal robe and was twiddling it, spinning it into a corkscrew one way, then the other, back and forth, over and over again.
“Anything your majesty wishes,” Kane cooed.
“How is it that you tell me that our attack forces are aboard the Draconia, combat ready and all prepared to strike at the Inner City at dawn,” Draco said.
“Yes, your majesty.”
“While my intelligence sources within the Earth Directorate tell me that the Inner City Intercept Squadron boarded your starship only a few watches ago.”
“Why, they did, your Majesty.”
“They boarded you? How did that come about?”
“It was an obvious ruse, Draco. I let them think they had tricked us into letting them board, so they could surreptitiously check for armaments. They went away convinced that we carried none.”
“You were hiding an attack fleet in your pockets, I suppose.”
“We misled them successfully, Majesty. If I may respectfully suggest something to the emperor, full operational reports will be forthcoming in due course. Rather than dwell on what is already done, should we not direct our attention to what remains before us? In less than four hours we shall be attacking the Inner City and initiating the complete and final conquest of Earth!”
“You’re right, Kane. Score one for the Killer, eh? All right, let me have the details of your plan. You’re presently in orbit above the Inner City. In a few hours the sun will rise. Then—?”
“Then, my emperor . . .” Kane moved away from the throne and its three-dimensional PersonImage. He picked up a pointer and began a formal briefing. The war-map he used was itself a projection, in three dimensions and full color, of the sector of space enclosed in a globular configuration centered upon the Earth and extending as far as the moon. The flagship Draconia showed in the map as a brilliant point of glowing white light.
The pointer which Kane held contained in its handle an array of microminiaturized control circuitry and a closed-beam transmitter controlled by Kane himself. Simply by manipulating the handle of the pointer he could alter the scale of the map, drawing back to present greater vistas or moving inward to magnify some section or feature of the map for closer examination. He could also change the center of the map, so that its focus radiated from the Draconia, the domed Inner City of earth, or any other point of his selection.
“At the first light of dawn, we launch our ships to attack all of earth’s principal defenses, with particular attention, of course, directed to the Inner City. Our primary target will be the power source of the defense shield itself.”
As Kane spoke he manipulated the controls in the pointer-handle, using the long silvery rod to direct Draco’s attention—and that of everyone else on the command bridge of the Draconia—to particular features of the map.
Before Kane’s pointer and Draco’s approving eyes, the planned attack was simulated in miniature on the map. The focus became that of the Draconia as she hovered in orbit directly above the Inner City. The Earth below was bathed in darkness, save for the diamondlike, glittering lights of the Inner City.
The earth turned as always, but its rotation was imperceptible from the Draconia—even the simulated Draconia of the star-map—because of the flagship’s synchronous orbit.
Gradually a faint suggestion of rose coloration suffused the eastern horizon of the simulated earth. Simultaneously there appeared in the star-map a swarm of tiny lights, each as brilliant as that representing the Draconia but infinitely smaller. They hovered nearby for a brief interval. Then the map was bathed in a pure yellowish light as the corona and then the first arc of the photosphere of the sun appeared over the simulated horizon. The rays of the map-sun glittered on the dome of the Inner City, turning it into a dazzling vision of modernity, grace, and streamlined, efficient design.
Simultaneously the
swarm of tiny lights dived earthward. Their formation was that of a delta-winged fighter, needle nose foremost. The delta-shaped formation swooped toward the domed Inner City. A simulation of earth’s Starfighters swarmed upward to meet them, each craft of Colonel Deering’s famous Intercept Squadron represented by a gleaming point of vermillion.
As the two fleets approached each other it became obvious that the diamondlike attackers vastly outnumbered the vermillion defenders. The Starfighters roared into their familiar fire-and-evade maneuvers but the diamond attackers matched them to the last degree, firing their own laser weapons until the vermillion defenders blossomed into orange and black puffs of smoke, then disappeared from the map.
When all of the Starfighters had been eliminated the diamond attackers turned their fire upon the Inner City itself, pouring laser flares into the shimmering dome until it literally melted away, leaving the Inner City a helpless hulk. Now the Draconia itself swung lower until, escorted by the glittering diamond attack-craft, it settled its massive bulk onto the main landing pad of the Inner City’s central spaceport.
The Inner City was defeated.
Earth was conquered.
The Draconian Empire had added not merely another vassal-world to its holdings, but a wide-open gateway to the galaxies beyond. Vistas opened before Kane and Draco of new conquests, an infinite and unending string of conquests, stretching as far into the future as the imagination could foresee.
The crewmen, technicians, and guardsmen posted around the control bridge of the Draconia burst into spontaneous applause as Kane manipulated the handle of his pointer and the star-map with its projected war simulation faded back to a neutral gray.
Grinning ingratiatingly Kane bowed before the PersonImage of Draco seated on the throne. “Very pretty, Kane,” the emperor said. “I hope that the actuality is as pleasant to participate in as your simulation was to observe.”
Kane bowed before the image. “Such is my intention, your majesty. It has been calculated to the ninth decimal position. We cannot fail.”
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