The two men had apparently reached some level of understanding, as Buck’s words at the moment were, “All right. I’ll do it, Professor.
“But”—he went on—“no more cozy mating room. And especially no more public performances!”
“Why—what do you mean?” Von Norbert asked innocently.
“This!” Buck snapped. He pried away a ventilator grating to reveal a sleek video monitor lead.
Von Norbert said, “Oh.”
“Well?” Buck persisted.
“That wasn’t for public performance. It’s a routine security monitor. They’re all over Villus Beta. I’ve found ’em in my own quarters. Nobody’s quite sure who controls them. Probably Kane.”
“Well, I want my room cleaned of the things. No bugs—or no Buck! If you understand what I’m saying.”
“All right,” Von Norbert agreed, “I’ll have your room completely debugged. You can check it yourself as soon as the squad leaves.”
“Then it’s okay,” Buck said, “I suppose.”
“All right. While the security troops are clearing out their equipment, let’s stroll over to the great hall and meet some of your, ah, counterparts in the experiment.” The professor led the way from Buck’s quarters.
In the great hall Buck was introduced to Grenda, Blorim, and Orell. They all cooed hellos at Buck. He offered to shake hands politely with each, discovered that they were willing to do far more than shake hands with him.
“Well,” Buck commented, “this is a pleasure.” Orell snuggled up to Buck on one side; Blorim, on the other; Grenda stood against his chest, looked up and stroked his cheek. “This is more than a pleasure, in fact,” Buck conceded.
“Uh,” he stammered, “ah, Grenda. Uh, Grenda. Uh, what kind of name is that?”
“Draconian, silly,” the voluptuous young woman replied.
“Oh,” Buck commented intelligently. He turned to one side. “And, uh, Blorim. Blorim. That’s Draconian too?”
“Of course,” the second young woman answered. “Of course.”
The third young woman, Orell, asked, “What kind of name is Buck?”
“American, silly,” the earthman told her.
“What’s that? American, I mean.”
“Oh,” Buck explained, “it’s a country. Or—it used to be.”
“Bet you can’t guess how old we are, Buck,” Blorim teased.
The professor interjected a stern word.
“Whoops! Sorry,” the young woman responded.
“No. I hadn’t thought to ask. How old are you?” Buck asked.
Blorim shot an inquiring glance at the professor. In reply he merely shook his head.
“I hear that you’re five hundred years old,” Grenda said to Buck.
“Well, 537 to be exact,” Buck told her.
“You sure don’t look it,” Grenda and Orell giggled.
A curtain fluttered at the rear edge of a balcony overlooking the great hall. Behind the curtain, whose flimsy material did little to block their view of the interview taking place below, Kane and the Princess Ardala exchanged words. Ardala had been observing the meeting between Buck, Von Norbert, and the three Draconian beauties, all alone. Now, unannounced, Kane stood beside her, his heavy presence obvious.
“Good afternoon, Princess,” he greeted Ardala.
“You snuck up on me, Kane. Your standard mode of operation, of course.”
“Not at all,” Kane smiled his oiliest smile. “You were just too busy mooning over your pretty earth-boy to notice my arrival.”
“Be careful how you address your princess, Kane,” Ardala snapped angrily. “Or I’ll have your head!”
“Of course, Your Highness,” Kane bowed, exposing the back of his muscular, bull-like neck for a moment, as if yielding to the request of a royal headsman. “I trust,” Kane went on as he straightened, “that you and your imperial father have had a little talk. And you understand now that I am running things around here.”
“Kane, I understand more than you can imagine!”
“Ah, Ardala, my princess. I do still want to be friends with you. You know I’ve always been very . . . fond . . . of my princess. I’m still willing to be your husband, in fact.”
“The day the boiling sea of the Gregorian desert freezes over,” Ardala returned.
“Well,” Kane replied coolly, “till that day, then.” He gave another sneering peek at the scene beneath their balcony, then strolled away, leaving Ardala to seethe.
While events moved at their accelerating pace on Villus Beta, the Inner City defense squadron continued to streak through warped space, Colonel Wilma Deering in the commander’s position, Major Dylan in the executive officer’s. There was a bleep from Wilma’s commo telescreen and she flicked a toggle to activate her two-way audio-video circuit with Earth.
The wizened features of Dr. Huer appeared on her telescreen. “We’ve run your information to the computer council and they’ve confirmed your hunch,” Dr. Huer said.
“I’m not surprised,” Wilma told him.
“There’s no truth to the claim that the Draconian race is dying out,” Huer continued. “However, there is an area of the universe that the Draconians have been unable to conquer, probably because they have no immunity to the viruses of the sector. That part of space is called Gregoria. The council suspects that the Draconians are holding Buck in order to use his antibodies to secure immunities against viruses native to the Gregorian sector.”
“Then it’s all just part of their pattern for conquest,” Wilma gritted. “Sounds like something Kane would do.”
“Further,” Huer said, an office light glinting from his old-fashioned spectacles, “the council and the Intelligence and Scanning Center have both calculated the results of the Draconians’ capturing Gregoria. Wilma, child, it would give them an ideal position for an all-out attack against Earth!”
There was a long silence, broken at last when Wilma asked, simply, “What are my orders, Dr. Huer?”
“That is still being discussed here. Stand by, Wilma!” The hand of the figure in the vision screen reached for a control switch and Dr. Huer’s face faded slowly from the screen.
In the great hall of Villus Beta, a casual observer would have thought that a casual party was taking place, rather than a serious genetic experiment—or an interstellar war!
Six persons lounged around a groaning board. Scraps and fragments of a sumptuous meal were in evidence, but even more than that the table and the floor around it were littered with empty and half-empty bottles, and the men and women still filled and emptied their goblets from time to time.
The three men present were Buck Rogers, Kane, and Professor Von Norbert. Their three feminine companions, all of them decked in gorgeous, filmily provocative costumes, were none other than Grenda, Blorim, and Orell.
Kane, his wattled face and luxuriant costume spotted with spilled wine and dropped food, rose unsteadily to his feet. At one end of the table, her countenance darkened both by the shadows of the great hall and the misery of her state of mind, slumped a fourth woman: the Princess Ardala.
“To the professor,” Kane toasted happily. “He has found the solution to our problem!”
“To the professor,” Buck joined in the toast. He looked at Grenda, Blorim, Orell in turn. “I think I’m going to like his solution after all.”
They drank—Kane, draining a huge goblet at one gulp, part of its contents running over his chin and down his neck to be soaked into the rich cloth of his costume.
“You are too kind,” Professor Von Norbert said calmly. “It’s Buck here we should toast. The solution lies in the blood that runs in his veins. To you, Buck.” He lifted his own goblet.
They drank again, Kane refilling his goblet and emptying it again at a swallow. He turned a bleary eye toward Buck Rogers. “Not too much for you, Buck,” Kane laughed. “We wouldn’t want you to get too . . . drunk! Ah, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
Orell smiled and leaned her cheek against Buck’s shou
lder. “We sure wouldn’t want that,” she cooed her agreement with Kane. Orell and the other two young Draconian women tittered in unison. From her corner of the table, the uncharacteristically subdued Ardala glared at the other three females.
“Buck,” the professor asked, “which of the young ladies would you like to be sent to your quarters first?”
“What a choice,” Buck replied. He ran his eyes up one lush body and down the next. “I never could choose between chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla ice cream, either!”
The three young women tittered again. The Princess Ardala winced.
“Why choose?” Blorim suggested, “we’ll all go.”
The three females tittered again, their coyness even less convincing now than it had been earlier. Ardala threw a goblet furiously across the hall. As it bounded and clattered on the hard polished floor, the princess jumped from her seat and stormed from the room to the adjacent indoor-outdoor garden. Buck Rogers followed her with his eyes, grinning all the while.
“I’d rather be a little more—personal,” Buck commented in response to Blorim’s suggestion. “You know, we’re not machines, we’re people. And we can’t be mechanical about these things.”
“Quite true,” Professor Von Norbert put in.
“So, me Buck-o, what do you propose?” Kane asked with a belch.
Buck pondered briefly. “Why don’t we go by alphabetical order? Blorim, then Grenda, then Orell.”
“Great!” Blorim enthused.
Orell, pouting, said, “I never got to sit in the front of the class at school, either. Why don’t we use reverse alphabetical order for once!”
“I always wind up in the middle,” Grenda complained. “And to think, I was almost named Alice.”
“Girls,” Professor Von Norbert took charge, “it is time for you to get ready. Off to your own quarters, now, and prepare!”
They scurried off, jabbering with excitement. As they left the great hall, each gazed back longingly at Buck. He waved to them good-naturedly.
“Ah, I’d kind of like to take a little stroll in the garden myself,” Buck commented. “To prepare, you know.”
“Certainly,” Professor Von Norbert assented, “whatever you like, Buck.”
In the garden Buck had taken hardly a dozen steps when he was halted by a voice speaking his name.
The Princess Ardala stepped from behind a giant flowing fern. “Buck,” she asked him sadly, “how can you go through with this?”
“Through with what?” the earthman asked innocently.
“This inhuman . . . torture!” Ardala blurted.
“Gee,” Buck mused aloud, “I never thought of it as torture, myself. Just something, well, expected of me. Sometimes I wish I had a different name than Buck.”
“Well, you’re torturing me” Ardala asserted. “Don’t you know that?”
“How am I doing that, Princess?”
“Buck! Oh, Buck Rogers, I . . . I love you!” Ardala sobbed.
Buck stopped in mid-stride. “Oh,” he commented.
“And I hoped that you had some feeling for me,” Ardala added. “That night you spent with me aboard the Draconia . . . I thought . . .”
“Princess, it was very ungallant of me, I’ll admit, but—you know, I doctored your wine that night. I gave you a Mickey. And I didn’t sleep with you.”
“I know. I know,” Ardala admitted. “But I hoped that it could be different this time.”
Buck turned to face her. “Princess, I have the highest respect for you. And you are—well, probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.”
“Then, take me!” Ardala demanded.
“Princess”—Buck flinched away from her—“I hardly know you!”
“But you don’t know those women in there at all! Those women—I should say, those little girls. Silly, giggling five-year-olds.”
Buck gazed at her, puzzled.
“You won’t take me, but you’re willing to . . . I don’t understand you earthlings,” Ardala resumed.
“Hey, I’m a prisoner here, you forget that?” Buck snapped. “I’m just doing what I’m told. This wasn’t my scheme, Ardala!”
“But you act as though you liked the idea.”
“Well, I’ll let you in on a great big secret, Princess! It’s a lot nicer to do this than to be locked up, starved, and tortured.”
“You mean you don’t really want to do what they’ve demanded?”
“Let me put it this way,” Buck explained his attitude. “I like this about as much as a sheep likes to give wool. It may not be his preference, but it’s a lot better fate than getting turned into muttonchops!”
“If that’s your real feeling, Buck, then I have a way out of this for you. Come away with me. Away from Villus Beta. I can get you out of here!”
Buck stood thinking deeply. Things were taking just the turn he’d hoped they would. And now he had to play his hand with skill! “Where could we go?” he asked innocently.
“Out of this sector altogether. Home—to my castle. We’d be safe from Kane there.”
“But would we be safe from the Emperor Draco?”
“No,” Ardala admitted bitterly. “No, we wouldn’t. It’s hopeless. Everyone else worships my father, but he’s the bane of my existence. If only the Gregorians would kill him.” She whirled. “Buck! We could kill him. You and I—we could do it together!”
“Princess, I’m a lover, not a killer. At least,” he paused an instant, “the professor thinks so.”
Ardala shook her head as if to clear it of cobwebs. “Then take me to Earth. I can get a ship for us. My father will never reach us there on Earth. We’ll be safe in the Inner City!”
Before Buck could reply, the professor’s voice sounded, calling to him as the scientist strode from the great hall. Unlike Kane, Von Norbert was a temperate drinker and had remained sober. “Buck! Are you there?” Von Norbert called.
Ardala gestured a message to Buck, hid herself again in the foliage. Buck answered the professor. “Over here!”
“Very good,” Von Norbert answered. “Well, young fellow, the time has come. Shall we proceed?” They strode off together. As they passed from Ardala’s earshot, the professor said to Buck, “You haven’t seen the Princess Ardala, have you?”
Buck said that he hadn’t.
F I F T E E N
From his sparkling office in the Inner City of Earth, Dr. Huer placed another spacephone call to Wilma Deering. Colonel Deering was still seated in the cockpit of her star-warping rocket fighter. Their exchange was extremely brief—but vitally important to Earth!
“Wilma, child! We’ve determined the Draconian strategy, and Earth stands in dire peril. You must stop the Draconians from using Buck Rogers’ antibodies. You must stop them at any cost! Even if it means the loss of—Buck Rogers himself!”
Wilma looked tragically at her telescreen where the living image of Dr. Huer gazed solemnly back at her. “Acknowledged,” she said softly. With one graceful, trembling hand, Wilma Deering reached for the control knob beneath the visiscreen and wiped away the pink-faced image of Dr. Huer.
Blorim, quivering with eagerness and decked out in a costume that made her former brief attire seem puritanical by comparison, strode the corridors of Villus Beta, headed at last for the entrance to Buck Rogers’ quarters. She was escorted by a guard, whose job it was to see that Buck did not use the arrival of his guest as a means to make good his escape.
“What a lucky guy, that Rogers bum,” the guard commented philosophically.
“This is a scientific experiment,” Blorim countered.
“Well then, I wouldn’t mind volunteering as a guinea pig!”
“Do you have any qualifications?” Blorim inquired.
“I’ll compare my qualifications with anyone’s,” the guard told her. He halted before a door. “Anyhow,” he continued, “here’s the place.”
“I was thinking of mental qualifications,” Blorim told him as the guard hit the door controls and
an opening swung aside before Blorim.
She stepped into the room and the door swung shut behind her.
Buck was garbed in a new outfit—rough, masculine, yet neatly cut of raw leathers. He had no shirt on, and the muscles rippled beneath the skin of his torso and arms. He held a bottle in one hand and two glasses in the other.
Suddenly shy, Blorim blurted, “Uh, hi, Buck.”
“Hi,” the earthman grinned back at her.
“Uh, I’m glad they didn’t name me Zenor,” Blorim said. “I don’t think I could have waited!” She overcame her shyness as suddenly as she had been overcome by it, and ran to Buck. He was forced to hold his arms outstretched to keep the bottle and glasses from being knocked to the floor. Blorim threw her arms around his naked torso and began to plant little kisses all over his chest and face.
Bottle and glasses still clutched in his fingers, Buck closed his arms around Blorim’s shapely body. “Uh,” he stammered, “er, have a sip of this, ah, champagne or whatever it is,” Buck offered.
“Champagne? What’s that?” Blorim asked.
“Well, I don’t know what they call it nowadays,” Buck said, “but this stuff at least reminds me of champagne. Here, look!” He maneuvered her so she sat down—but she maneuvered him so it was the bed she sat on.
He handed her the two glasses, used his thumbs to work the cork gradually from the mouth of the champagne bottle. When he’d finally worked it loose, the cork leaped from the mouth of the bottle and flew across the room with a loud pop!
Blorim shrieked, then joined Buck as he laughed aloud. She held the glasses up and he leaned over, filled both of them with bright, bubbling fluid, then put the bottle down at his side.
“To us,” Buck suggested.
Blorim accepted the toast. They drank—Blorim draining her glass at a single draught. Buck refilled her glass.
Buck said, “Your turn, now.”
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