"Do you think I was afraid of Viktor of Xochitl?" he demanded. "Half
a dozen ships; we could make a new Van Allen belt around Tanith of
them, with what we have here. Our real enemy is on Marduk, not
Xochitl; his name's Zaspar Makann. Zaspar Makann, and Andray Dunnan,
the man I came out from Gram to hunt; they're in alliance, and
I believe Dunnan is on Marduk, himself, now."
The delegation who had come out from Gram in the yacht of the
Duke of Bigglersport were unimpressed. Marduk was only a name to
them, one of the fabulous civilized Old Federation planets no
Sword-Worlder had ever seen. Zaspar Makann wasn't even that. And
so much had happened on Gram since the murder of Elaine Karvall and
the piracy of the _Enterprise_ that they had completely forgotten
Andray Dunnan. That put them at a disadvantage. All the people whom
they were trying to convince, the half-hundred members of the new
nobility of Tanith, spoke a language they didn't understand. They
didn't even understand the proposition, and couldn't argue against it.
Paytrik Morland, who was Gram-born and had been speaking for
a return in force to fight against Omfray of Glaspyth and his
supporters, defected from them at once. He had been on Marduk and
knew who Zaspar Makann was; he had made friends with the Royal Navy
officers, and had been shocked to hear that they were now enemies.
Manfred Ravallo and Boake Valkanhayn, among the more articulate of
the Raid-Xochitl-Now party, snatched up the idea and seemed
convinced that they'd thought of it themselves all along. Valkanhayn
had been on Gimli and talked to Mardukan naval officers; Ravallo had
brought Princess Bentrik to Tanith and heard her stories on the
voyage. They began adducing arguments in support of Trask's thesis.
Of course Dunnan and Makann were in collusion. Who tipped Dunnan off
that the _Victrix_ would be on Audhumla? Makann; his spies in the
Navy tipped him. What about the _Honest Horris_; wasn't Makann
blocking any investigation about her? Why was Admiral Shefter
retired as soon as Makann got into power?
"Well, here; we don't know anything about this Zaspar Makann," the
confidential secretary and spokesman of the Duke of Bigglersport began.
"No, you don't," Otto Harkaman told him. "I suggest you keep quiet
and listen, till you find out a little about him."
"Why, I wouldn't be surprised if Dunnan was on Marduk all the time
we were hunting for him," Valkanhayn said.
Trask began to wonder. What would Hitler have done if he'd told one
of his big lies, and then found it turning into the truth? Maybe
Makann had been on Marduk.... No; he couldn't have hidden half a
dozen ships on a civilized planet. Not even at the bottom of an
ocean.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Alvyn Karffard was shouting, "if Andray
Dunnan _was_ Zaspar Makann. I know he doesn't look like Dunnan, we
all saw him on screen, but there's such a thing as plastic surgery."
That was making the big lie just a trifle too big. Zaspar Makann was
six inches shorter than Dunnan; there are some things no plastic
surgery could do. Paytrik Morland, who had known Dunnan and had seen
Makann on screen, ought to have known that too, but he either didn't
think of it or didn't want to weaken a case he had completely accepted.
"As far as I can find out, nobody even heard of Makann till about
five years ago. That would be about the time Dunnan would have
arrived on Marduk," he said.
By this time, the big room in which they were meeting had become a
babel of voices, everybody trying to convince everybody else that
they'd known it all along. Then the Back-To-Gram party received its
_coup-de-grace_; Lothar Ffayle, to whom the emissaries of Duke Joris
had looked for their strongest support, went over.
"You people want us to abandon a planet we've built up from nothing,
and all the time and money we've invested in it, to go back to Gram
and pull your chestnuts out of the fire? Gehenna with you! We're
staying here and defending our own planet. If you're smart, you'll
stay here with us."
* * * * *
The Bigglersport delegation was still on Tanith, trying to recruit
mercenaries from the King of Tradetown and dickering with a
Gilgamesher to transport them to Gram, when the big lie turned
into something like the truth.
The observation post on the Moon of Tanith picked up an emergence at
twenty light-minutes due north of the planet. Half an hour later,
there was another one at five light-minutes; a very small one, and
then a third at two light-seconds, and this was detectable by radar
and microray as a ship's pinnace. He wondered if something had
happened on Amaterasu or Beowulf; somebody like Gratham or the
Everrards might have decided to take advantage of the defensive
mobilization on Tanith. Then they switched the call from the pinnace
over to his screen, and Prince Simon Bentrik was looking out of it.
"I'm glad to see you! Your wife and son are here, worried about you,
but safe and well." He turned to shout to somebody to find young
Count Steven of Ravary and tell him to tell his mother. "How are you?"
"I had a broken leg when I left Moonbase, but that's mended on the
way," Bentrik said. "I have little Princess Myrna aboard with me.
For all I know, she's Queen of Marduk, now." He gulped slightly.
"Prince Trask, we've come as beggars. We're begging help for
our planet."
"You've come as honored guests, and you'll get all the help we can
give you." He blessed the Xochitl invasion scare, and the big lie
which was rapidly ceasing to be a lie; Tanith had the ships and
men and the will to act. "What happened? Makann deposed the King
and took over?"
It came to that, Bentrik told him. It had started even before the
election. The People's Watchmen had possessed weapons that had been
made openly and legally on Marduk for trade to the Neobarbarian
planets and then clandestinely diverted to secret People's Welfare
arsenals. Some of the police had gone over to Makann; the rest had
been terrorized into inaction. There had been riots fomented in
working-class districts of all the cities as pretexts for further
terrorization. The election had been a farce of bribery and
intimidation. Even so, Makann's party had failed of a complete
majority in the Chamber of Representatives, and had been compelled
to patch up a shady coalition in order to elect a favorable Chamber
of Delegates.
"And, of course, they elected Makann Chancellor; that did it,"
Bentrik said. "All the opposition leaders in the Chamber of
Representatives have been arrested, on all kinds of ridiculous
charges--sex-crimes, receiving bribes, being in the pay of foreign
powers, nothing too absurd. Then they rammed through a law
empowering the Chancellor to fill vacancies in the Chamber of
Representatives by appointment."
"Why did the Crown Prince lend himself to a thing like that?"
"He hoped that he could exercise some control. The Royal Family
is an almost holy symbol to the people. Even Makann was forced
to pretend loyalty to the King and the Crown Prince...."
"It didn't work; he played right into Makann's hands. What happened?"
The Crown Prince had been assassinated. The assassin, an unknown man
believed to be a Gilgamesher, had been shot to death by People's
Watchmen guarding Prince Edvard at once. Immediately Makann had
seized the Royal Palace to protect the King, and immediately there
had been massacres by People's Watchmen everywhere. The Mardukan
Planetary Army had ceased to exist; Makann's story was that there
had been a military plot against the King and the government.
Scattered over the planet in small detachments, the army had been
wiped out in two nights and a day. Now Makann was recruiting it up
again, exclusively from the People's Welfare Party.
"You weren't just sitting on your hands, were you?"
"Oh, no," Bentrik replied. "I was doing something I wouldn't have
thought myself capable of, a few years ago. Organizing a mutineering
conspiracy in the Royal Mardukan Navy. After Admiral Shefter was
forcibly retired and shut up in an insane asylum, I disappeared
and turned into a civilian contragravity-lifter operator at the
Malverton Navy Yard. Finally, when I was suspected, one of the
officers--he was arrested and tortured to death later--managed
to smuggle me onto a lighter for the Moonbase. I was an orderly
in the hospital there. The day the Crown Prince was murdered, we
had a mutiny of our own. We killed everybody we even suspected of
being a Makannist. The Moonbase has been under attack from the
planet ever since."
There was a stir behind him; turning, he saw Princess Bentrik and
the boy enter the room. He rose.
"We'll talk about this later. There are some people here...."
He motioned them forward and turned away, shoo-ing everybody else
out of the room.
* * * * *
The news was all over Rivington, and then all over Tanith, while
the pinnace was still coming down. There was a crowd at the
spaceport, staring as the little craft, with its blazon of the
crowned and planet-throned dragon, settled onto its landing legs,
and reporters of the Tanith News Service with their screen pickups.
He met Prince Bentrik, a little in advance of the others, and
managed to whisper to him hastily:
"While you're talking to anybody here, always remember that Andray
Dunnan is working with Zaspar Makann, and as soon as Makann
consolidates his position he's sending an expedition against
Tanith."
"How in blazes did you find that out, here?" Bentrik demanded.
"From the Gilgameshers?"
Then Harkaman and Rathmore and Valkanhayn and Lothar Ffayle and
the others were crowding up behind, and more people were coming off
the pinnace, and Prince Bentrik was trying to embrace both his wife
and his son at the same time.
"Prince Trask." He started at the voice, and was looking into deep
blue eyes under coal-black hair. His pulse gave a sudden jump, and
he said, "Valerie!" and then, "Lady Alvarath; I'm most happy to see
you here." Then he saw who was beside her, and squatted on his heels
to bring himself down to a convenient size. "And Princess Myrna.
Welcome to Tanith, Your Highness!"
The child flung her arms around his neck. "Oh, Prince Lucas! I'm so
glad to see you. There's been such awful things happened!"
"There won't be anything awful happen here, Princess Myrna. You are
among friends; friends with whom you have a treaty. Remember?"
The child began to cry, bitterly. "That was when I was just a
play-Queen. And now I know what they meant when they talked about
when Grandpa and Pappa would be through being King. Pappa didn't
even get to be King!"
Something big and warm and soft was trying to push between them;
a dog with long blond hair and floppy ears. In a year and a half,
puppies can grow surprisingly. Mopsy was trying to lick his face.
He took the dog by the collar and straightened.
"Lady Valerie, will you come with us?" he asked. "I'm going to find
quarters for Princess Myrna."
* * * * *
"Is it Princess Myrna, or is it Queen Myrna?" he asked.
Prince Bentrik shook his head. "We don't know. The King was alive
when we left Moonbase, but that was five hundred hours ago. We don't
know anything about her mother, either. She was at the Palace when
Prince Edvard was murdered; we've heard absolutely nothing about
her. The King made a few screen appearances, parroting things Makann
wanted him to say. Under hypnosis. That was probably the very least
of what they did to him. They've turned him into a zombi."
"Well, how did Myrna get to Moonbase?"
"That was Lady Valerie, as much as anybody else. She and Sir Thomas
Kobbly, and Captain Rainer. They armed the servants at Cragdale with
hunting rifles and everything else they could scrape up, captured
Prince Edvard's space-yacht, and took off in her. Took a couple of
hits from ground batteries getting off, and from ships around
Moonbase getting in. Ships of the Royal Mardukan Navy!" he added
furiously.
The pinnace in which they had made the trip to Tanith had taken
a few hits, too, running the blockade. Not many; her captain had
thrown her into hyperspace almost at once.
"They sent the yacht off to Gimli," Bentrik said. "From there,
they'll try to rally as many of the Royal Navy units as haven't gone
over to Makann. They're to assemble on Gimli and await my return.
If I don't return in fifteen hundred hours from the time I left
Moonbase, they're to use their own judgment. I'd expect that
they'd move in on Marduk and attack."
"That's sixty-odd days," Otto Harkaman said. "That's an awfully long
time to expect that lunar base to hold out, against a whole planet."
"It's a strong base. It was built four hundred years ago, when
Marduk was fighting a combination of six other planets. It held out
against continuous attack, once, for almost a year. It's been
constantly strengthened ever since."
"And what have they to throw at it?" Harkaman persisted.
"When I left, six ships of the former Royal Navy, that had gone
over to Makann. Four fifteen-hundred-footers, same class as the
_Victrix_, and two thousand-footers. Then, there were four of
Andray Dunnan's ships--"
"You mean, he really is on Marduk?"
"I thought you knew that, and I was wondering how you'd found out.
Yes: _Fortuna_, _Bolide_, and two armed merchantmen, a Baldurbuilt
ship called the _Reliable_, and your friend _Honest Horris_."
"You didn't really believe Dunnan was on Marduk?" Boake Valkanhayn
asked.
"Actually, I didn't. I had to have some kind of a story, to talk
those people out of that crusade against Omfray of Glaspyth." He
left unmentioned Valkanhayn's own insistence on a plundering
expedition against Xochitl. "Now that it turns out to be true,
I'm not surprised. We decided, long ago, that Dunnan was planning
to raid Marduk. It appears that we underestimated him. Maybe he
was reading about Hitler, too. He wasn't planning any raid; he
was planning conquest, in the only way a great civilization can
be conquered--by subversion."
"Yes," Harkaman put in. "Five years ago, when Dunnan started this
programme, who was this Makann, anyhow?"
"Nobody," Bentrik said. "A crackpot agitator in Drepplin; he had
a coven of fellow-crackpots, who met in the back room of a saloon
and had their office in a cigar box. The next year, he had a suite
of offices and was buying time on a couple of telecasts. The year
after that, he had three telecast stations of his own, and
was holding rallies and meetings of thousands of people. And
so on, upward."
"Yes. Dunnan financed him, and moved in behind him, the same way
Makann moved in behind the King. And Dunnan will have him shot
the way he had Prince Edvard shot, and use the murder as a pretext
to liquidate his personal followers."
"And then he'll own Marduk. And we'll have the Mardukan navy coming
out of hyperspace on Tanith," Valkanhayn added. "So we go to Marduk
and smash him now, while he's still little enough to smash."
There had been a few who had wanted to do that about Hitler, and
a great many, later, who had regretted that it hadn't been done.
"The _Nemesis_, the _Corisande_, and the _Space Scourge_ for sure?"
he asked.
Harkaman and Valkanhayn agreed; Valkanhayn thought the _Viking's
Gift_ of Beowulf would go along, and Harkaman was almost sure of
the _Black Star_ and _Queen Flavia_. He turned to Bentrik.
"Start that pinnace off for Gimli at once; within the hour if
possible. We don't know how many ships will be gathered there,
but we don't want them wasted in detail-attacks. Tell whoever's
in command there that ships from Tanith are on the way, and to
wait for them."
Fifteen hundred hours, less the five hundred Bentrik was in space
from Marduk. He hadn't time to estimate voyage-time to Gimli from
the other Mardukan trade-planets, and nobody could estimate how many
ships would respond.
"It may take us a little time to get an effective fleet together.
Even after we get through arguing about it. Argument," he told
Bentrik, "is not exclusively a feature of democracies."
* * * * *
Actually, there was very little argument, and most of that among
the Mardukans. Prince Bentrik insisted that Crown Princess Myrna
would have to be taken along; King Mikhyl would be either dead or
brainwashed into imbecility by now, and they would have to have
somebody to take the throne. Lady Valerie Alvarath, Sir Thomas
Kobbly, the tutor, and the nurse Margot refused to be separated
from her. Prince Bentrik was equally firm, with less success, on
leaving his wife and son on Tanith. In the end, it was agreed that
the entire Mardukan party would space out on the _Nemesis_.
The leader of the Bigglersport delegation attempted an impassioned
tirade about going to the aid of strangers while their own planet
was being enslaved. He was booed down by everybody else and informed
that Tanith was being defended where a planet ought to be, on
somebody else's real estate. When the Bigglersporters emerged
from the meeting, they found that their own space-yacht had been
commandeered and sent off to Amaterasu and Beowulf for assistance,
that the regiment of local infantry they had enlisted from the King
of Tradetown had been taken over by the Rivington authorities, and
that the Gilgamesh freighter they had chartered to transport them
to Gram would now take them to Marduk.
The problem broke into two halves: the purely naval action that
would be fought to relieve the Moon of Marduk, if it still held out,
and to destroy the Dunnan and Makann ships, and the ground-fighting
problem of wiping out Makann's supporters and restoring the Mardukan
monarchy. A great many of the people of Marduk would be glad of
a chance to turn on Makann, once they had arms and were properly
supported. Combat weapons were almost unknown among the people,
however, and even sporting arms uncommon. All the small arms and
light artillery and auto-weapons available were gathered up.
The _Grendelsbane_ came in from Beowulf, and the _Sun Goddess_ from
Amaterasu. Three independent Space Viking ships were still in orbit
on Tanith; they joined the expedition. There would be trouble with
them on Marduk; they'd want to loot. Let the Mardukans worry about
that. They could charge it off as part of the price for letting
Zaspar Makann get into power in the first place.
* * * * *
There were twelve spacecraft in line outside the Moon of Tanith,
counting the three independents and the forcibly chartered
Gilgamesher troop-transport; that was the biggest fleet Space
Vikings had ever assembled in their history. Alvyn Karffard said
as much while they were checking the formation by screen.
"It isn't a Space Viking fleet," Prince Bentrik differed. "There
are only three Space Vikings in it. The rest are the ships of three
civilized planets. Tanith, Beowulf and Amaterasu."
Karffard was surprised. "You mean _we're_ civilized planets? Like
Marduk, or Baldur or Odin, or...?"
"Well, aren't you?"
Trask smiled. He'd begun to suspect something of the sort a couple
of years ago. He hadn't really been sure until now. His most junior
staff officer, Count Steven of Ravary, didn't seem to appreciate
the compliment.
"We _are_ Space Vikings!" he insisted. "And we are going to battle
with the Neobarbarians of Zaspar Makann."
"Well, I won't argue the last half of it, Steven," his father told him.
"Are you people done yakking about who's civilized and who isn't?"
Guatt Kirbey asked. "Then give the signal. All the other ships are
ready to jump."
Trask pressed the button on the desk in front of him. A light went
on over Kirbey's control panel as one would on each of the other
ships. He said, "Jumping," around the stem of his pipe, and twisted
the red handle and shoved it in.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
Four hundred and fifty hours, in the private universe that was the
_Nemesis_; outside, nothing else existed, and inside there was
nothing to do but wait, as each hour carried them six trillion miles
nearer to Gimli. At first, the ruthless and terrible Space Viking,
Steven, Count of Ravary, was wildly excited, but before long he
found that there was nothing exciting going on; it was just a
spaceship, and he'd been on ships before. Her Highness the Crown
Princess, or maybe her Majesty the Queen of Marduk, stopped being
excited about the same time, and she and Steven and Mopsy played
together. Of course, Myrna was only a girl, and two years younger
than Steven, but she was, or at least might be, his sovereign, and
beside, she had been in a space action, if you call what lies
between a planet and its satellite space and if you call being shot
at without being able to shoot back an action, and Relentless
Ravary, the Interstellar Terror, had not. This rather made up
for being a girl and a mere baby of going-on-ten.
One thing, there were no lessons. Sir Thomas Kobbly fancied himself
as a landscape-painter and spent most of his time arguing techniques
with Vann Larch, and Steven's tutor, Captain Rainer was a normal-space
astrogator and found a kindred spirit in Sharll Renner. This left
Lady Valerie Alvarath at a loose end. There were plenty of volunteers
to help her fill in the time, but Rank Hath Its Privileges; Trask
undertook to see to it that she did not suffer excessively from
shipboard ennui.
Sharll Renner and Captain Rainer approached him, during the cocktail
hour before dinner, some hundred hours short of emergence.
"We think we've figured out where Dunnan's base is," Renner said.
"Oh, good!" Everybody else had, on a different planet. "Where's yours?"
"Abaddon," the Count of Ravary's tutor said. When he saw that the
name meant nothing to Trask, he added, "The ninth, outer, planet of
the Marduk system." He said it disgustedly.
"Yes; remember how you had Boake and Manfred out with their ships,
checking our outside planets to see if Prince Viktor might be hiding
on one of them? Well, what with the time element, and the way the
_Honest Horris_ was shuttling back and forth from Marduk to some
place that wasn't Gimli, and the way Dunnan was able to bring his
ships in as soon as the shooting started on Marduk, we thought he
must be on an uninhabited outer planet of the Marduk system."
"I don't know why we never thought of that, ourselves," Rainer put
in. "I suppose because nobody ever thinks of Abaddon for any reason.
It's only a small planet, about four thousand miles in diameter, and
it's three and a half billion miles from primary. It's frozen solid.
It would take almost a year to get to it on Abbot drive, and if your
ship has Dillinghams, why not take a little longer and go to a good
planet? So nobody bothered with Abaddon."
But for Dunnan's purpose, it would be perfect. He called Prince
Bentrik and Alvyn Karffard to him; they found the idea instantly
convincing. They talked about it through dinner, and held a general
discussion afterward. Even Guatt Kirbey, the ship's pessimist, could
find no objection to it. Trask and Bentrik began at once making
battle plans. Karffard wondered if they hadn't better wait till they
got to Gimli and discuss it with the others.
"No," Trask told him. "This is the flagship; here's where the
strategy is decided."
"Well, how about the Mardukan Navy?" Captain Rainer asked. "I think
Fleet Admiral Bargham's in command at Gimli."
Prince Simon Bentrik was silent for a moment, as though he realized,
with reluctance, that the big decision was no longer avoidable.
"He may be, at present, but he won't be when I get there. I will be."
"But ... Your Highness, he's a fleet admiral; you're just a
commodore."
"I am not just a commodore. The King is a prisoner, and for all we
know dead. The Crown Prince is dead. The Princess Myrna is a child.
I am assuming the position of Regent and Prince-Protector of the Realm."