Chapter 21

Prince Bentrik’s ten-year-old son, Count Steven of Ravary, wore the uniform of an ensign of the Royal Navy; he was accompanied by his tutor, an elderly Navy captain. They both stopped in the doorway of Trask’s suite, and the boy saluted smartly.

“Permission to come aboard, sir?” he asked.

“Welcome aboard, count; captain. Belay the ceremony and find seats; you’re just in time for second breakfast.”

As they sat down, he aimed his ultraviolet light-pencil at a serving robot. Unlike Mardukan robots, which looked like surrealist conceptions of Pre-Atomic armored knights, it was a smooth ovoid floating a few inches from the floor on its own contragravity; as it approached, its top opened like a bursting beetle shell and hinged trays of food swung out. The boy looked at it in fascination.

“Is that a Sword-World robot, sir, or did you capture it somewhere?”

“It’s one of our own.” He was pardonably proud; it had been built on Tanith a year before. “Has an ultrasonic dishwasher underneath, and it does some cooking on top, at the back.”

The elderly captain was, if anything, even more impressed than his young charge. He knew what went into it, and he had some conception of the society that would develop things like that.

“I take it you don’t use many human servants, with robots like that,” he said.

“Not many. We’re all low-population planets, and nobody wants to be a servant.”

“We have too many people on Marduk, and all of them want soft jobs as nobles’ servants,” the captain said. “Those that want any kind of jobs.”

“You need all your people for fighting men, don’t you?” the boy count asked.

“Well, we need a good many. The smallest of our ships will carry five hundred men; most of them around eight hundred.”

The captain lifted an eyebrow. The complement of the Victrix had been three hundred, and she’d been a big ship. Then he nodded.

“Of course. Most of them are ground-fighters.”

That started Count Steven off. Questions, about battles and raids and booty and the planets Trask had seen.

“I wish I were a Space Viking!”

“Well, you can’t be, Count Ravary. You’re an officer of the Royal Navy. You’re supposed to fight Space Vikings.”

“I won’t fight you.”

“You’d have to, if the King commanded,” the old captain told him.

“No. Prince Trask is my friend. He saved my father’s life.”

“And I won’t fight you, either, count. We’ll make a lot of fireworks, and then we’ll each go home and claim victory. How would that be?”

“I’ve heard of things like that,” the captain said. “We had a war with Odin, seventy years ago, that was mostly that sort of battles.”

“Besides, the King is Prince Trask’s friend, too,” the boy insisted. “Father and Mummy heard him say so, right on the Throne. Kings don’t lie when they’re on the Throne, do they?”

“Good Kings don’t,” Trask told him.

“Ours is a good King,” the young Count of Ravary declared proudly. “I would do anything my King commanded. Except fight Prince Trask. My house owes Prince Trask a debt.”

Trask nodded approvingly. “That’s the way a Sword-World noble would talk, Count Steven,” he said.

The Board of Inquiry, that afternoon, was more like a small and very sedate cocktail party. An Admiral Shefter, who seemed to be very high high-brass, presided while carefully avoiding the appearance of doing so. Alvyn Karffard and Vann Larch and Paytrik Morland were there from the Nemesis, and Bentrik and several of the officers from the Victrix, and there were a couple of Naval Intelligence officers, and somebody from Operational Planning, and from Ship Construction and Research & Development. They chatted pleasantly and in a deceptively random manner for a while. Then Shefter said:

“Well, there’s no blame or censure of any sort for the way Commodore Prince Bentrik was surprised. That couldn’t have been avoided, at the time.” He looked at the Research & Development officer. “It shouldn’t be allowed to happen many more times, though.”

“Not many more, sir. I’d say it’ll take my people a month, and then the time it’ll take to get all the ships equipped as they come in.”

Ship Construction didn’t think that would take too long.

“We’ll see to it that you get full information on the new submarine detection system, Prince Trask,” the admiral said.

“You gentlemen understand you’ll have to keep it under your helmets, though,” one of the Intelligence men added. “If it got out that we were informing Space Vikings about our technical secrets...” He felt the back of his neck in a way that made Trask suspect that beheadment was the customary form of execution on Marduk.

“We’ll have to find out where the fellow has his base,” Operational Planning said. “I take it, Prince Trask, that you’re not going to assume that he was on his flagship when you blew it, and just put paid to him and forget him?”

“Oh, no. I’m assuming that he wasn’t. I don’t believe he and Ormm went anywhere on the same ship, after he came out here and established a base. I think one of them would stay home all the time.”

“Well, we’ll give you everything we have on them,” Shefter promised. “Most of that is classified and you’ll have to keep quiet about it, too. I just skimmed over the summary of what you gave us; I daresay we’ll both get a lot of new information. Have you any idea at all where he might be based, Prince Trask?”

“Only that we think it’s a non-Terra-type planet.” He told them about Dunnan’s heavy purchases of air-and-water recycling equipment and carniculture and hydroponic material. “That, of course, helps a great deal.”

“Yes; there are only about five million planets in the former Federation space-volume that are inhabitable in artificial environment. Including a few completely covered by seas, where you could put in underwater dome cities if you had the time and material.”

One of the Intelligence officers had been nursing a glass with a tiny remnant of cocktail in it. He downed it suddenly, filled the glass again, and glowered at it in silence for a while. Then he drank it briskly and refilled it.

“What I should like to know,” he said, “is how this double obscenity of a Dunnan knew we’d have a ship on Audhumla just when we did,” he said. “Your talking about underwater dome-cities reminded me of it. I don’t think he just pulled that planet out of a hat and then went there prepared to sit on the bottom of the ocean for a year and a half waiting for something to turn up. I think he knew the Victrix was coming to Audhumla, and just about when.”

“I don’t like that, commodore,” Shefter said.

“You think I do, sir?” the Intelligence officer countered. “There it is, though. We all have to face it.”

“We do,” Shefter agreed. “Get on it, commodore, and I don’t need to caution you to screen everybody you put onto it very carefully.” He looked at his own glass; it had a bare thimbleful in the bottom. He replenished it slowly and carefully. “It’s been a long time since the Navy’s had anything like this to worry about.” He turned to Trask. “I suppose I can get in touch with you at the Palace whenever I must?”

“Well, Prince Trask and I have been invited as house-guests at Prince Edvard’s, I mean Baron Cragdale’s, hunting lodge,” Bentrik said. “We’ll be going there directly from here.”

“Ah.” Admiral Shefter smiled slightly. Beside not having three horns and a spiked tail, this Space Viking was definitely persona grata with the Royal Family. “Well, we’ll keep in contact, Prince Trask.”

The hunting lodge where Crown Prince Edvard was simple Baron Cragdale lay at the head of a sharply-sloping mountain valley down which a river tumbled. Mountains rose on either side in high scarps, some topped with perpetual snow, glaciers curling down from them. The lower ranges were forested, as was the valley between, and there was a red-mauve alpenglow on the great peak that rose from the head of the valley. For the first time in over a year, Elaine was with him, silently clinging to him to see the beauty of it through his eyes. He had thought that she had gone from him forever.

The hunting lodge itself was not quite what a Sword-Worlder would expect a hunting lodge to be. At first sight, from the air, it looked like a sundial, a slender tower rising like a gnomen above a circle of low buildings and formal gardens. The boat landed at the foot of it, and he and Prince and Princess Bentrik and the young Count of Ravary and his tutor descended. Immediately, they were beset by a flurry of servants; the second boat, with the Bentrik servants and their luggage, was circling in to land. Elaine, he discovered, wasn’t with him any more, and then he was separated from the Bentriks and was being floated up an inside shaft in a lifter-car. More servants installed him in his rooms, unpacked his cases, drew his bath and even tried to help him take it, and fussed over him while he dressed.