“We’ll have to risk that,” Buck insisted, “I came here for something and I’m not leaving without it. This whole affair is the result of my search, and I won’t quit now!”
Reluctantly, Ardala yielded. Instead of climbing from her window, Buck insisted on their using the door to the main corridor. Ardala was astonished not to find a guard there. “What did you do,” she asked Buck, “kill him?”
“No,” the earthman said, swirling his feminine chiffon. “I seduced him. He thinks he’s keeping a rendezvous with me right now.”
They made their way through darkened corridors and deserted halls. As they went, Buck carried on a whispered conversation with Ardala. “You people haven’t been exactly honest with me about this antibody matter, have you?” Buck demanded.
Ardala played innocent for starters. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you don’t need them to save your race from extinction. You need them to conquer Gregoria!”
“Yes, that’s true,” Ardala conceded. “But it wasn’t my idea, Buck, you can believe me. It was all Kane’s idea, Kane’s and Von Norbert’s. I’m blameless!”
“Sure you are. And Mayor Daley was a Republican.”
“What?”
“Nothing,” Buck grumbled.
They continued onward. Most of the corridors were vacant at this hour of Villus Beta’s night. But not all! When Ardala and Buck, both of them in seductive female attire, passed Draconian guardsmen, the guards acted solicitous. They were respectful of the princess’ position as daughter of the emperor and heiress-apparent to the throne of Draconia. They were also men who appreciated a beautiful woman when they saw one—or thought they saw two!
Buck halted in the anteroom of the main computer center, grasped Ardala by the wrist again and pressed her against the wall. In the princess, instincts fought—she resented being manhandled, forced against her will to stop, go, do anything that she did not choose to do . . . but at the same time she enjoyed the contact and the implied interaction with Buck Rogers.
“What is it?” Ardala demanded in a low voice.
“There’s something else I have to get straight before we round this last corner—just in case we get zapped inside there.” He inclined his head toward the main computer room.
“What is it?” Ardala asked her question a second time.
“I want to know about this business of raising people in five years. My would-be boyfriend asked if I was a regular woman or one of the five-year specials. What’s that all about?”
“There’s a new set of hormones that Professor Von Norbert invented. They speed up the growth and maturity processes.”
“Then—if I father children for Draconia, children with those vital antibodies in their bloodstreams—they’ll be all grown up in five years? In five years they’ll be troopers going into combat against the Gregorians?”
“That’s right!”
“And what about those girls they sent to me—Grenda, Blorim, Orell. They’re only five years old?”
“Yes and no,” Ardala temporized. “They’re five the same way you’re five hundred. They have all of the development and maturity of grown women—but they got it in five years.”
Buck rubbed his chin with his free hand, pondering. “Okay, you’ve got a point there, Ardala. Okay. Let’s get on with this.”
They turned the corner and strode into the computer room itself.
Two guards, uniforms sparkling and neat, weapons at the ready, stood at the door. At the approach of outsiders they were immediately on the alert, but as soon as they recognized the Princess Ardala they dropped their hostility and snapped to a crisp salute. Buck still in wig, makeup, and women’s clothing, hung back so he could be seen but would not draw attention away from Ardala.
“My Princess!” the senior of the two guards blurted. “May we be of service to Your Highness?”
“Yes,” Ardala commanded coolly, “you may let us pass.”
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. We are allowed to admit no one without authorization.”
Ardala nodded. “Very proper of you. Very well, I hereby grant you authorization to let us pass.” She looked over her shoulder at Buck, intoned imperiously, “Come along, I will need your assistance.”
Ardala and Buck strode past the two guards, who stood aside with their weapons returned to their holsters. As they were almost into the computer room the second guard gathered all of his courage and ordered them to halt again. “I beg pardon, Your Highness, but I’m sure you wouldn’t want us to disobey our orders. Mr. Kane and Professor Von Norbert ordered us to let no one pass who wasn’t on the list they gave us. I don’t believe that your name is on it, Your Highness.”
“Mr. Kane and the professor work for me,” Ardala said sharply.
“Yes, of course, Your Highness.”
“Very well. I am adding my name to the list, effective now.”
“Very well, Your Highness, if you put it that way. Your name will be on the list. But, er, I’m afraid that your lady-in-waiting will have to remain outside.”
“My lady-in-waiting is my closest friend and assistant. She goes where I go. But if it will help your conscience to rest easier, put her name on the list, too. It’s—Bussy Exer.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” Again the guard stood aside, and this time Ardala and Buck entered the computer room. Behind them, the automatic atmosphere-seal doors hissed softly shut.
“Wow!” Buck exclaimed. “You brought that off beautifully, Ardala! Thanks!” He embraced her. From Buck’s side, the embrace was one of friendship and gratitude. From Ardala’s, it was—something else!
Buck slipped from Ardala’s arms and slid into the operator’s chair at the main control console of the computer bank. He keyed in a series of commands through the typewriterlike device that held center position at the desk-type console. The computer’s indicator panels sprang to life, reels of tape whirred, readout screens glowed eerily.
“Hurry,” Ardala urged. “That guard is going to decide to cover his tracks sooner or later by checking our story out with Kane. Once that happens we’re in the soup!”
“I’m going as fast as I can. Is there any faster way to work with this piece of iron?”
Ardala leaned past Buck, flipped several control knobs on the console. She pressed the input-mode button for oral, held her hand to the pattern-reader, said, “On oral. Princess Ardala. Go ahead.” She turned to Buck. “Put your hand where I held mine.”
He complied.
“Captain Buck Rogers,” the computer’s electronic voice intoned, “pilot, Inner City, Earth. Though you sure don’t look it today! Proceed.”
Buck gave a startled exclamation at the machine’s unexpected comment. Then he turned serious. “I want access to your data-banks. I need all available genealogical information on my family.”
“Please be specific in your inquiry,” the electronic voice responded.
“I want everything you have.”
“Buck,” Ardala interrupted the dialogue, “we don’t have time to argue all night with a computer. And even if we did, we surely won’t have time for a whole long readout.”
Buck thought. “Wait a minute, then.” He addressed the computer input again. “Are you compatible with a compuvisor? Can you feed data directly into his storage bank so I can get it back out later?” Buck held Theopolis against the computer console’s pattern-reader. The small computer’s indicator panel lights all came on.
There was a moment of tense silence, then the big computer said, “Yes. Compuvisor model one-four-eight-zero is compatible with my output format. Data-transfer procedure initiated—now!”
The main computer’s indicator panels flashed, then lights flicked off one by one as the information was fed through a direct computer-to-computer linkage into Dr. Theopolis. In less than a minute the big computer’s indicator panel was dark. The synthesized voice announced that the transfer was complete.
“Right,” Dr. Theopolis confirmed, “I’ve got it all. Say,
that’s a nice computer there. I really enjoyed chatting with him.”
“So you can still talk,” Buck scolded Theopolis.
“Yes, but not to strange women,” Theopolis replied.
“Thanks,” said Buck.
“Let’s get out of here,” Ardala urged. “If you’ve got what you want, you can play quiz with that toy later on.”
“Toy!” Theopolis protested.
“A term of royal affection,” Ardala soothed him.
“Well, that’s better, then.”
“Okay,” said Buck, “let’s go. Say good-bye to your big playmate, Theopolis, and we’ll head for the spaceport.” He gave Theo a moment to commune with the big machine, then flicked the giant computer’s master switch off and climbed from the operator’s chair.
Buck and Ardala—with Theopolis still hung around Buck’s neck—set out a second time through the hallways and chambers of Villus Beta. This time they were headed for the spaceport by the most direct possible route. Time after time they passed Draconian guardsmen, and each time the princess brazened out any challenge by citing her royal credentials and threatening any recalcitrant guard with reassignment to the stoker gang.
They didn’t know where Wilma Deering was. Buck and Ardala both had witnessed her blastoff in the captured starfighter, but they had to assume that she would return all the way to Earth and then gather a rescue force from among her own command. They didn’t know about the Ellis Plan; they didn’t know that the Inner City defense squadron was already speeding at top star-warp acceleration toward Villus Beta.
Nor did they know the whereabouts of Kane and Professor Von Norbert. The partners in—if not crime, then something hardly distinguishable from it—had long since dozed in front of the telescreen trained on Buck’s private room. They didn’t know that Buck had found their second monitor camera, or that the last of Buck’s five-year-old “girlfriends,” the voluptuous Orell, still sat impatiently on Buck’s bed, awaiting his return from his rendezvous with the Princess Ardala.
But the professor and the courtier Kane might awaken at any moment, and once they did, a certain sequence of events must follow as inevitably as the chain reaction that follows the attainment of critical mass in an imploding nuclear device.
They would see the blank telescreen. They would suspect that Buck had discovered and disabled the second monitor camera. They would hurry to his room to confirm that he was present.
Instead of Buck and a voluptuous mating-partner, they would find the impatient Orell sitting alone on Buck’s bed. They would question her and Orell would tell them that Buck had gone to a meeting with the Princess Ardala—or at least that one of the princess’ maids had told them as much.
So the chain of events would develop, link by inevitable link.
Kane and Von Norbert would next head for Ardala’s private suite of chambers. They would find her missing, sound a local alarm, learn from the guards that she and a companion had consulted the central computer facility and left.
And then they would sound a general alarm—if they hadn’t done so earlier in their sequence of inevitable events.
Buck and Ardala stepped out of the mouth of the elevator tube at the entrance to the Villus Beta spaceport.
They were met by a team of Draconian guardsmen.
“Princess!” one of the Draconians exclaimed. “We didn’t expect to see Your Highness here.”
“Well, here I am!” Ardala snapped. “I’ve no time to chat. Let my maid and myself pass at once.”
“But I have my orders, ma’am,” the guard insisted. “No one may pass without the express authorization of Chancellor Kane.”
Ardala tried to use the line which had got herself and Buck past the guards at the computer center. “Kane is my chancellor,” she announced imperiously. “He can give commands only by my authority, and I have the authority to override those commands as well. I order you to let us pass.”
At the computer room this tactic had worked. At the spaceport, it failed. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I can’t unless I hear it from Mr. Kane himself, ma’am.”
Ardala seethed. “I will give you one more opportunity, soldier. You and your partner here step aside and let us pass, or you might as well turn in your uniforms and draw stoker-gang outfits right now.”
“I’m sorry, Your Highness. I can’t do it.”
Ardala drew back one arm, balled her fist and let fly at the guard.
He staggered back, more startled by the fact that the princess had actually taken a punch at him than he was by the stinging force of the blow itself. The second guard stood equally thunderstruck, uncertain whether to go to the aid of his companion or to give his attention to Princess Ardala.
As the two guards stood frozen in a moment of indecision, Buck Rogers launched himself through the air at the second of them. The guard had drawn his laser-pistol, but the force of Buck’s muscular body pounding against his chest sent the weapon clattering to the tarmac.
Ardala rushed to the skittering pistol and scrambled to grab it while the second guard grappled futilely with Buck and the first, recovered now from the princess’ blow to the jaw, drew his own laser-weapon and pointed it at Ardala.
“You dare aim a weapon at your princess?” Ardala screamed at him imperiously.
The guard, confused, turned instead to point his weapon at Buck. He would have fired off a bolt, but Buck and the second guard were locked in a struggle, rolling and thrashing about on the tarmac.
While the first guard stood pointing his laser at Buck and his foe, frantically striving to find an opening for a shot at the earthman, Princess Ardala calmly pointed the laser-pistol that she held at the first guard. She coolly squeezed the trigger. There was a flash of light as the guardsman took the laser bolt at point-blank range.
With a look of astonishment in his eyes, he sank slowly to the ground, his knees crumpling beneath him, his laser-pistol clattering from his hand.
Ardala advanced the few steps that separated them, picked up the guard’s weapon, and walked back to the place where Buck and the second guard were wrestling. For the moment Buck was on top, but the guard with a mighty heave threw the earthman off him and started to rise to his feet.
In that instant Ardala fired a second laser blast, sending the guard crashing back onto his skull and shoulders. He lay unmoving, a few yards from his equally stationary companion.
“Well now,” Ardala said to Buck, “that takes care of that. Here”—and she tossed him the second of the two laser-pistols. “I doubt that we’ll have any more trouble,” Ardala continued, “but if we do, we’ll not have to bandy words any longer!”
S E V E N T E E N
Chancellor Kane and Professor Von Norbert strode through the corridor leading to Buck Rogers’ private room. The inevitable had happened. They had awakened and discovered the blank telescreen connecting them—or, more accurately, not connecting them—with Buck’s quarters.
A guard, standing at attention outside the door to Buck’s room, snapped a proper salute to the chancellor and the professor at their approach.
“Everything all right, guard?” Kane demanded.
“Fine, sir, yes, sir.”
Kane strode past the trembling guard and shoved the door open. He looked inside and spotted Orell sitting disconsolately on the edge of Buck’s unmade bed.
“Where’s Rogers?” Kane demanded.
“I don’t know,” Orell wailed. “He was supposed to be visiting the princess but it’s been so long, I wonder if he’s ever going to come back here at all!”
“The princess?” Kane echoed.
“Yes,” Orell’s lower lip quivered, “you know, the princess, that beautiful, sexy Princess Ardala!”
Kane whirled furiously to confront the guard. “I thought you told me everything was all right here,” he roared furiously.
“Yes, sir,” the guard quavered, “it is. Er, isn’t it? Sir?”
“I’ll ‘sir’ you, you damned jackass! Rogers is gone!”
&n
bsp; “But he can’t be, sir. I mean—he didn’t leave. I’d have seen him, sir.”
“You idiot! Come with me!” Guard in tow and Von Norbert trailing breathlessly behind, the burly Kane set off through the corridors toward Princess Ardala’s suite.
At the spaceport, Ardala and Buck raced across the field to the nearest ship. “Can you pilot that?” Ardala panted, pointing to a large, sleek rocket ship, a D-III.
“I can pilot anything on this field!” Buck snapped. “I don’t mean to sound conceited, but I’ve done a lot of test-piloting—flying a new ship is nothing to me. If I can’t handle it, it hasn’t come off the line yet!”
They clambered through the hatch, made their way to the bridge of the powerful craft. Ardala pointed to the control panel of the ship. It was studded with hundreds of dials and levers, screens, knobs, and switches. “How do you feel now?” she asked Buck. “Are you still so sure of yourself?”
Buck’s eyes gleamed happily. They contained an expression, as he let them rove over the instrument panel of the spaceship, that Ardala had longed to see in them when Buck looked at her.
“Am I ever,” Buck said. “Can you run this thing?” he asked the princess, impishly.
“I hire people to do things like that,” she replied.
“Well then,” Buck grinned, “you just hired me.” He sat down in the pilot’s seat, began to study the controls. “Of course,” he muttered with just a trifle less confidence in his voice, “it’ll take me a little while to figure out what some of these gadgets and doohickies are for, but I’ll get the hang of it pretty soon.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “I think so, anyhow,” he added.
Suddenly lights sprang into full, glaring life all around the ship. Their glare penetrated the thick, polarizing viewports of the cruiser, blinding Buck and Ardala. They both rubbed their eyes, slowly regaining their sight.
Emergency sirens wailed. Squads of mounted soldiers roared across the tarmac in groundcars and armored personnel carriers. Other squads followed on foot, dog-trotting to reach the ship as quickly as possible.
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