Space Viking | Page 5

up trouble, trying to organize a strike to get rid of the
robots.
"Yes," Harkaman pounced on that last. "I know of at least forty
instances, on a dozen and a half planets, in the last eight centuries, of
anti-technological movements. They had them on Terra, back as far as
the Second Century Pre-Atomic. And after Venus seceded from the
First Federation, before the Second Federation was organized."
"You're interested in history?" Rathmore asked.
"A hobby. All spacemen have hobbies. There's very little work aboard
ship in hyperspace; boredom is the worst enemy. My guns-and-missiles
officer, Vann Larch, is a painter. Most of his work was lost with the
Corisande on Durendal, but he kept us from starving a few times on
Flamberge by painting pictures and selling them. My hyperspatial
astrogator, Guatt Kirbey, composes music; he tries to express the
mathematics of hyperspatial theory in musical terms. I don't care much
for it, myself," he admitted. "I study history. You know, it's odd;
practically everything that's happened on any of the inhabited planets
happened on Terra before the first spaceship."
The garden immediately around them was quiet, now; everybody was
over by the landing-stage escalators. Harkaman would have said more,
but at that moment he saw half a dozen of Sesar Karvall's uniformed
guardsmen run past. They were helmeted and in bullet-proofs; one of
them had an auto-rifle, and the rest carried knobbed plastic truncheons.
The Space Viking set down his drink.
"Let's go," he said. "Our host is calling up his troops; I think the guests
ought to find battle-stations, too."

III
The gaily-dressed crowd formed a semicircle facing the landing-stage
escalators; everybody was staring in embarrassed curiosity, those
behind craning over the shoulders of those in front. The ladies had

drawn up their shawls in frigid formality; many had even covered their
heads. There were four news-service cars hovering above; whatever
was going on was getting a planetwide screen showing. The Karvall
guardsmen were trying to get through; their sergeant was saying, over
and over, "Please, ladies and gentlemen; your pardon, noble sir," and
getting nowhere.
Otto Harkaman swore disgustedly and shoved the sergeant aside.
"Make way, here!" he bellowed. "Let these guards pass." With that, he
almost hurled a gaily-dressed gentleman aside on either hand; they both
turned to glare angrily, then got hastily out of his way. Meditating
briefly on the uses of bad manners in an emergency, Trask followed,
with the others; the big Space Viking plowed to the front, where Sesar
Karvall and Rovard Grauffis and several others were standing.
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--"
There was a stir among the bystanders; that was more than
well-mannered restraint could stand. Out of the murmur of incredulous
voices, one woman's was quite audible:
"Well, really! He actually is crazy!"
Dunnan, like everybody else, heard it. "Crazy, am I?" he blazed.
"Because I can see through this hypocritical sham? Here's Lucas Trask,
he wants an interest in Karvall mills, and here's Sesar Karvall, he wants
access to iron deposits on Traskon land. And my loving uncle, he wants
the help of both of them in stealing Omfray of Glaspyth's duchy. And
here's this loan-shark of a Ffayle, trying to claw my lands away from
me, and Rovard Grauffis, the fetchdog of my uncle who won't lift a
finger to save his kinsman from ruin, and this foreigner Harkaman