Ardala made a low, animal growl in her throat. Her eyes flashed and she raised her long, talonlike fingernails as if she intended to rake Kane’s face with them. She had actually started toward him, claws extended, when she felt Buck Rogers’ hand on her wrist. She turned, snarling, toward Buck, then got control of herself and pulled back from Kane.
The courtier stood before her, his normally swarthy complexion pallid for once. He had escaped by the narrowest of margins a public humiliation unparalleled in his career. If Ardala had clawed his face he would not have dared retaliate here in the Grand Ballroom before the assembled dignitaries of Earth and of Draconia. He would have had no choice but to submit to a public scourging and then withdraw in disgrace.
Instead, Ardala turned toward Buck and repeated a polite formula through angry, clenched teeth. “It’s been a great pleasure, Captain Rogers. But it seems that we both have our duty cut out for us.”
She extended her hand, those deadly talons now turned harmlessly down. Buck Rogers took the extended hand, courteously kissed it, murmured sotto voce, “Later, perhaps, Ardala?”
“I depart aboard my private launch at midnight, to return to the Draconia.” Her eyes met those of the dashing earthman, full of unspoken promise.
The princess turned, took Kane’s arm demandingly and ascended to rejoin her ministers who awaited beside her throne. Her bodyguard, Tigerman, watched all of this, the thoughts behind those inscrutable slitted eyes a mystery to all save himself.
Buck Rogers snapped a brittle wisecrack at Tigerman and strode away from the ellipse, headed toward the balcony outside the ballroom where Kane and Huer had conducted their earlier exchange. This time Buck found Wilma Deering standing there, alone, her eyes gazing sadly out over the beautiful, gleaming spires and shafts of the Inner City.
Buck approached Wilma from behind and spoke softly. “It’s a very beautiful sight, in its own way. We had city skylines in my era, Wilma, some of them breathtaking to behold. But the Inner City is unique.”
Wilma’s reply was so soft as to be nearly inaudible, yet it dripped icicles to the hearer. “I would much prefer to be alone just now. If you please, Captain Rogers.”
Buck heard his name accompanied by a little sound, a sound that Wilma nearly, but not quite, managed to suppress. The sound might have been a gasp—or a sob.
“Okay,” Buck said, “I’m sorry. So long.” He turned away and started back toward the Grand Ballroom.
“Wait!” Wilma cried. Buck stopped in his tracks, waiting for Wilma. “I’m sorry,” she echoed Buck’s earlier words.
“For what?” He turned to face her again. “Sorry for wanting to be alone? It’s good for you. A little solitude, helps you get your thoughts in order. Not five hundred years of it, maybe, but—”
“Don’t try to make me feel better, please. I’ve behaved very badly. It’s just that I’m so very mixed up.” She raised one hand to her brow. As she did so, Buck couldn’t help noticing the contrast between Wilma’s fingernails, gracefully rounded but trimmed short so as not to interfere with the operation of her Starfighter up in orbit, and the dark, pointed talons of the Draconian princess.
Buck shook his head. “I’m not quite myself either.”
“At least you have an excuse,” Wilma said. “That is, you do, if you’re—if you’re—”
“Telling the truth?” he supplied.
“You see?” Wilma said. A tear at last fell from one eye, landed with the tiniest of splashes on the form-fitting bodice of her trim military tunic. “Oh, Buck, I’m only making it worse.” She stopped again, clutched one hand with the other and forced herself to breath deeply. “This is very difficult, Captain Rogers,” she resumed. “l am a commander. I am not in the habit of explaining my—my—emotions.”
“Take your time,” Buck offered.
Wilma drew herself up, inhaled deeply and began. “It may not really help, Buck. You know, I’ve been trained all my life to be a leader. I couldn’t have elected a less demanding role. But in the National Sensitivity Tests, my score was a nine in Dominance. So it was natural for me to enter the military as a career.
“You see, Flight Officers are expected to go by the book. We are expected never to let personal feelings enter the equation. So if I’m clumsy and can’t express this correctly, I hope you’ll be patient with me.”
Buck checked his watch unobtrusively. Ardala’s launch would be taking off for its return flight to the Draconia soon.
“I’ll try to be brief,” Wilma said. She looked up into Buck’s blue-eyed countenance, then turned slowly to lean on the parapet and gaze out over the Inner City as she spoke. “I’ve never experienced feelings like this in my entire career, Buck. I’ve found myself laughing. Then crying. Furiously angry with you. Then overflowing with remorse and—and—tenderness for you. I did think you were a spy, Captain Rogers. But I know now that I was wrong.”
She took her hands from the parapet, turned and looked up at Buck, moving closer to him as she did. “I could never have fallen in love with a spy, I know that. And yet, I’ve fallen in love!”
At these words Buck was astonished. Before he could respond in any way, Wilma had reached up and drawn his face down to her own, and kissed him tenderly on the mouth. After a little bit she drew back and asked, “Did you like that?”
Buck blinked. “It was first class,” he said.
“Then I did it correctly?” Wilma asked.
“Really outstanding.”
“Thank you,” she said softly.
“You’re welcome as all get out,” Buck told her.
“Then why don’t we go someplace,” Wilma said. “The Palace of Mirrors is so public.”
Buck checked his watch again. “I’d really love to, Wilma, but it is getting late and I’m a little tired.” He saw the hurt expression on her face. “I’ve been out of it for five hundred years,” he added. “So I think I’d better go easy on reentry.”
He leaned over and kissed her softly on the cheek.
“You’re leaving!” Wilma exclaimed. “Just like that!”
“Just for tonight, colonel. We’ll get back to this later on, I promise.” He tossed her a casual salute and made for the nearest exit.
Wilma stared after him unbelievingly. For a few seconds her expression was one of deep hurt. Then the hurt was transformed into white-hot anger.
E I G H T
Princess Ardala gazed around the Grand Ballroom, still filled with swirling dancers, swaying musicians, glittering courtiers and dignitaries of the Draconian Empire and the Earth Directorate. The hour was late but the festive occasion would continue as long as its honored luminary the princess cared to have it do so.
When she felt that enough time had passed the princess discreetly signaled the orchestra leader and the music switched to the melody traditionally associated with the end of a formal gala. The leader of the Earth delegation, the aged Dr. Huer, ascended Princess Ardala’s dais to bid her goodnight.
He bent and kissed her hand. Then he made a circle of the dignitaries, exchanging a formal farewell and a handclasp with each. Even when he reached towering Tigerman, Huer raised his hand halfway. Tigerman made a deep, rumbling growl, perhaps his equivalent of a polite greeting.
“Er, yes. Well, and good evening and, er, pleasant dreams to you, too,” Dr. Huer mumbled. “Or, ah, good hunting. Catch a mousie or whatever one wishes a, ah, creature of your sort.”
Tigerman raised one murderously clawed paw.
Dr. Huer gingerly pressed his fragile old hand against the creature’s rasping pads, then withdrew.
The Princess Ardala cast a final glance around the ballroom, hoping to spot Buck Rogers in the still-colorful throng. She failed to find him and heaved a disappointed sigh as she drew her cloak around her regal shoulders.
She threw her head back regally and descended from the dais, her richly trimmed cloak drawn about her, Tigerman at her elbow, her ministers and courtiers trailing behind in an order rigidly determined by officia
l protocol. Prominent among them, jealous of his place in the line and eager as ever to move forward to the princess’ side, was the oily Kane.
They made their way, accompanied by an Intercept Squadron honor guard, to the princess’ private launch. As soon as they had boarded safely and found their proper positions, the launch streaked upward, headed from Earth’s glittering Inner City to the Emperor Draco’s great flagship Draconia.
Inside the cabin of the launch, Ardala was seated on a remarkable piece of furniture, a cross between a purely functional launch couch and a regal throne. The strap that ran across her graceful lap was another example of the same sort of compromise between function and symbolism. It was richly tooled in patterns derived from the royal crest of Draconia, studded with sparkling gems of every color. And it was a safety belt.
Above the princess’ head twin tiny speakers hung on wires so fine as to be invisible, providing musical distraction for her highness during the tedium of flight. Ardala gazed from the launch, watching the stars of the earthly sky, moving her head slightly in time with the music as if reliving a moment of the ball just ended. To either side of her throne-couch the launch’s bulkheads were covered with the richest spotted animal pelts, hung with the crest and arms of Imperial Draconia.
Suddenly the pleasant, soothing music was interrupted. Ardala reached for a control panel to correct the malfunction, but before she could reach the switch a new, yet familiar, voice came over the twin speakers mounted on their invisible wires.
“Chicago, Chicago,” the voice sang merrily.
Ardala swung her head around to see where the singing was coming from. The curtain that cut off the galley from the royal cabin was drawn aside and Buck Rogers entered the room. He was singing his old-fashioned song, carrying a tray in both hands with a bottle of Vinol on it and two elaborate goblets.
Tigerman leaped to his feet, snarling, placing himself between Princess Ardala and the earthman Buck Rogers.
“It’s all right,” Ardala soothed Tigerman. He cropped his menace from a snarl to a low, rumbling growl but continued slowly to advance toward Buck.
“Listen to her, fella,” Buck urged. “She’s making sense. Take it easy. It really is okay.”
“I invited Captain Rogers to join me,” Ardala said.
Tigerman halted and turned a curious look upon the princess. Never before had a stranger appeared in the royal cabin, and his lifelong conditioning had been to kill, if need be to die, in defense of his mistress. But if she herself said that this earthman was an invited, if unexpected, guest, then it must be all right.
He returned to his place beside the royal launch-couch and curled up on the floor, for all the world like a thousand-pound housecat curled up by his mistress’ easy chair.
“This is state business,” Princess Ardala told her bodyguard. “As soon as we arrive you will escort us to the royal stateroom and post yourself in the corridor to see that we are not disturbed.”
“That’s right,” Buck agreed. “In the corridor. Outside the princess’ door.”
Tigerman lifted one tawny eyebrow and glared at Buck from out of one yellow slitted eye.
Meanwhile, behind the curtain in the launch’s galley, a cupboard door sprung open revealing the sanitary, stainless-steel interior of the storage area. In the midst of the racks and shelves of shipboard food supplies stood a three-foot-tall metal drone and, slung around his neck, lights flashing the colors of the spectrum, a super-advanced computer-brain.
With a quick glance around, the little quad scuttered out of the cupboard and stood in the middle of the galley.
“We’re almost there,” Dr. Theopolis’ soothing, low voice said. “Twiki, where you going now? I know that it was chilly there in the cupboard, but we have little choice, you know. Our orders were to stick close to Buck and keep him out of trouble. He may need us at any time. So back into the cupboard, let’s go. Twiki, I’m speaking to you!”
The quad shook his head and squealed.
“Oh, I know there are refrigeration coils in that cupboard,” Theopolis said. “It can’t be helped. After all, that’s how the Draconians preserve their food.”
Twiki hugged himself, opened another cupboard—this one not refrigerated—and withdrew a bottle from it. He opened the bottle and took a drink.
“All right,” Theopolis said. “It’s too bad there isn’t room for us in that cupboard. But a little Vinol will keep your circuits from freezing when we go back where we came from. All right now, I suppose we can take the bottle with us. Back into the cooler.”
Twiki edged back into the refrigerated cupboard, shivering, Theopolis around his neck, the Vinol bottle in his metal hand.
While the royal launch arrowed upward from earth, a brief conversation took place back in the Inner City. Its participants were Colonel Wilma Deering of the Third Force Intercept Squadron and the aged Dr. Huer, chairman of the Earth Directorate.
“Any word?” Wilma Deering fretted, hoping that Huer would have some information for her.
“I’m afraid not,” Huer replied. “We’ve searched the entire Intercept Squadron base and all adjacent sectors of the Inner City. Captain Rogers is simply nowhere to be found!”
“Oh, what did I expect?” Wilma asked bitterly. “What should I ever have expected from a primitive who came to us from half a thousand years in the past, before the great holocaust even took place?”
“Don’t blame yourself, child,” Huer said. “I shall go and see if there’s any word at all.” Huer left the room.
Alone, Wilma paced the room, fuming. Finally she picked up a miniature statuette that stood on a little pedestal all its own and hurled it furiously into what appeared to be a roaring fireplace. The fire and the fireplace were nothing but a TV simulation, and the impact of the heavy statuette shattered the screen into a million tinkling fragments.
“You are a spy, Buck Rogers!” Wilma almost shouted. “You were never anything but a double agent, and I know exactly where you’ve gone to now!”
Suddenly Wilma began to sob in a most un-colonel-like manner.
And aboard the flagship Draconia the royal launch had docked with absolute precision and its occupants debarked into the spacious landing bay of the great starship.
The Princess Ardala and Captain Buck Rogers made their way through corridors, past bowing guards and Draconian troopers, to the princess’ royal stateroom. They entered, accompanied by Ardala’s guardian Tigerman. The princess turned and commanded Tigerman with a single sharp word, “Out!”
The giant bodyguard growled menacingly at Buck but obeyed. Ardala reached and slammed the door behind him. She clicked a latch into place. “There. Now we will be undisturbed,” she gloated.
Buck looked around him. The magnificent stateroom glowed with indirect lighting. The sumptuous, semibarbaric style of the Draconian Realm at its most self-indulgent was apparent, giving the room a romantically anachronistic suggestion of some regal chamber in the ziggurats of ancient Babylon or the palaces of Macchu Pichu.
“I bet that Tigerman would make a better pet if you’d have him fixed,” Buck wisecracked.
Ardala registered a smirk at the jibe, then moved behind her privacy screen. In a moment Buck saw the royal cloak flung over the top of the screen.
“Pour yourself a drink while I slip into something more comfortable,” Ardala’s voice came from the other side of the screen.
“Nothing has changed,” Buck muttered, “Five hundred and four years and they’re still slipping into something more comfortable. Oh well . . .”
He located the Vinol in an ornate side-cabinet near the princess’ bed, lifted the bottle from its place and poured two goblets of the sparkling liquid. From the waistband of his tunic he extracted the vial of headache pills that Theopolis and Twiki had fetched for him during the gala at the Grand Ballroom in the Palace of Mirrors. He removed several of the tiny tablets and dropped them carefully into one of the goblets. Each pill, as it struck the Vinol, blossomed into a miniature fou
ntain of bubbles and foam, then subsided, leaving the Vinol appearing exactly as it had before.
“You’re in for a little surprise, Ardala,” Buck said.
From behind the screen Ardala called back, “You mustn’t peek, now, Captain.”
“Bear with me, Princess,” Buck replied. “You know, it’s been over five hundred years.”
“I hope I don’t disappoint then, all the more,” Ardala said. She swept from behind the screen wearing a boudoir gown the likes of which Buck had never even imagined. Her dress possessed the outward appearance of thoughtless casualness that Buck in his inner recesses knew must actually be the most studied purposefulness.
While he appreciated the effect of the gown, Buck was too preoccupied with his mission to be swept away by the beautiful temptations the princess offered.
Now came the hardest part. How to lead the lovely Ardala to drink the doctored Vinol before things got out of hand. Buck decided to play as straight as he could.
He gaped.
“Have you nothing to say?” Ardala demanded.
Buck made his voice sound as if he was profoundly affected by the performance. “I-uh. Princess Ardala, you don’t know what you can do to the weak heart of a man who’s five hundred twenty-eight years old!” He caught his breath. “Until this moment, I’d kind of forgotten what I’ve been missing since 1987.”
“Well then—I, too have a confession to make,” Ardala crooned.
Ardala moved slowly toward him. “It’s that—I hadn’t realized what I’d been missing, either! You’re different, Captain Rogers—different from the kind of men I’m accustomed to knowing.” Ardala’s voice had changed subtly. Now there was a note of pleading creeping into her silken tones.
“A princess of the realm pretty much has her way, you know. For a while that’s very pleasant, but after enough of it she wants a man who is—more manly. Like you. You’re arrogant. You flagrantly disregard orders, from me as well as from anyone else.”
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