Space Viking

They stood together at the parapet, their arms about each other’s waists, her head against his cheek. Behind, the broad leaved shrubbery gossiped softly with the wind, and from the lower main terrace came music and laughing voices. The city of Wardshaven spread in front of them, white buildings rising from the wide spaces of green treetops, under a shimmer of sun-reflecting aircars above. Far away, the mountains were violet in the afternoon haze, and the huge red sun hung in a sky as yellow as a ripe peach.

His eye caught a twinkle ten miles to the southwest, and for an instant he was puzzled. Then he frowned. The sunlight on the two thousand-foot globe of Duke Angus’ new ship, the Enterprise, back at the Gorram shipyards after her final trial cruise. He didn’t want to think about that, now.

Instead, he pressed the girl closer and whispered her name, “Elaine,” and then, caressing every syllable, “Lady Elaine Trask of Traskon.”

“Oh, no, Lucas!” Her protest was half joking and half apprehensive. “It’s bad luck to be called by your married name before the wedding.”

“I’ve been calling you that in my mind since the night of the Duke’s ball, when you were just home from school on Excalibur.”

She looked up from the corner of her eye.

“That was when I started calling me that, too,” she confessed.

“There’s a terrace to the west at Traskon New House,” he told her. “Tomorrow, we’ll have our dinner there, and watch the sunset together.”

“A pleasure, Lord Trask. I’ve met your lovely bride-to-be, and now that I meet you, let me congratulate both.” Then, as they were having a drink together, he put his foot in it by asking: “You’re not an investor in the Tanith Adventure, are you?”

He said he wasn’t, and would have let it go at that. Young Basil Gorram had to get his foot in, too.

“Lord Trask does not approve of the Tanith Adventure,” he said scornfully. “He thinks we should stay home and produce wealth, instead of exporting robbery and murder to the Old Federation for it.”

The smile remained on Otto Harkaman’s face; only the friendliness was gone. He unobtrusively shifted his drink to his left hand.

“Well, our operations are definable as robbery and murder,” he agreed. “Space Vikings are professional robbers and murderers. And you object? Perhaps you find me personally objectionable?”

“I wouldn’t have shaken your hand or had a drink with you if I did. I don’t care how many planets you raid or cities you sack, or how many innocents, if that’s what they are, you massacre in the Old Federation. You couldn’t possibly do anything worse than those people have been doing to one another for the past ten centuries. What I object to is the way you’re raiding the Sword-Worlds.”

Facing them, four men in black cloaks stood with their backs to the escalators. Two were commonfolk retainers; hired gunmen, to be precise. They were at pains to keep their hands plainly in sight, and seemed to be wishing themselves elsewhere. The man in front wore a diamond sunburst jewel on his beret, and his cloak was lined with pale blue silk. His thin, pointed face was deeply lined about the mouth and penciled with a thin black mustache. His eyes showed white all around the irises, and now and then his mouth would twitch in an involuntary grimace. Andray Dunnan; Trask wondered briefly how soon he would have to look at him from twenty-five meters over the sights of a pistol. The face of the slightly taller man who stood at his shoulder was paper-white, expressionless, with a black beard. His name was Nevil Ormm, nobody was quite sure whence he had come, and he was Dunnan’s henchman and constant companion.

“You lie!” Dunnan was shouting. “You lie damnably, in your stinking teeth, all of you! You’ve intercepted every message she’s tried to send me.”

“My daughter has sent you no messages, Lord Dunnan,” Sesar Karvall said, with forced patience. “None but the one I just gave you, that she wants nothing whatever to do with you.”

“You think I believe that? You’re holding her a prisoner; Satan only knows how you’ve been torturing her to force her into this abominable marriage⁠—”

Then he realized that somebody was speaking to him, in a small, bashful voice. He turned, and saw a little girl in shorts and a sleeveless jacket, holding in her arms a long-haired blond puppy with big ears and appealing eyes.

“Hello, both of you,” he said.

The puppy wriggled and tried to lick the girl’s face.

“Don’t, Mopsy. We want to talk to this gentleman,” she said. “Are you really and truly the Space Viking?”

“Really and truly. And who are you two?”

“I’m Myrna. And this is Mopsy.”

“Hello, Myrna. Hello, Mopsy.”

Hearing his name, the puppy wriggled again and dropped from the child’s arms; after a brief hesitation, he came over and jumped onto Trask’s lap, licking his face. While he petted the dog, the girl came over and sat on the bench beside him.

“Mopsy likes you,” she said. After a moment, she added: “I like you, too.”

“And I like you,” he said. “Would you want to be my girl? You know, a Space Viking has to have a girl on every planet. How would you like to be my girl on Marduk?”

Myrna thought that over carefully. “I’d like to, but I couldn’t. You see, I’m going to have to be Queen, some day.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Grandpa is King now, and when he’s through being King, Pappa will have to be King, and then when he’s through being King, I can’t be King because I’m a girl, so I’ll have to be Queen.