Roberts waited a moment, then snapped on the outside viewscreen, to see in astonishment that the space yacht was already painted jet black with silver markings, and was now acquiring a set of weird symbols—oddly distorted silver cats, skulls with one red and one blue eye, silver snakes with their gold-colored insides apparently pulled out through their mouths. The sight gave Roberts a nauseous sensation, but he watched as the slender arms with their batteries of nozzles moved over the space yacht while the patrol ship circled it.
There was a clank and rumble from inside the weapons lockers, then the patrol ship set down again.
Roberts quickly climbed out the hatch, and was startled to see that the patrol ship was now gold with a kind of platinum trim. Some kind of dark purple marking was evident farther forward, and Roberts glanced around, walked aft along a horizontal fin, dropped off, and took a look at the ship.
From a short, distance, the impression of wealth and power set Roberts back on his heels. No detail of trim had been overlooked, and on the sides of the ship were three complete coats of arms, the center one placed slightly higher than the other two, and surrounded by a kind of bright golden sunburst.
Roberts shook his head, and glanced up at the big hatch of the space yacht, where Hammell was leaning out to stare at the lurid designs on the space yacht.
The two men looked at each other blankly, then Roberts grinned, and called, “Ready?”
Hammell nodded. “How many passes?”
“Two should do it, especially if there’s some time in between.”
“O.K.”
* * *
They got back in their ships, lifted off, flew low and fast away from the direction of the city, and then rose high into the sky on the far side of the planet. From very high up, Hammell and Morrissey dove on the city, the speed of their passage creating a crack and rumble that brought people into the streets on both sides of the barrier. A few moments later, Roberts flashed low over the city, the sound of his passage creating an even sharper crack and louder rumble.
The communicator buzzed, and there was a faint click, as if someone had just snapped it on. An authoritative voice said, “Planetary Control Center, Paradise City, Paradise. No flights are authorized, and no landings permit—”
A harsh voice snarled, “Be damned with your authorization. This is the Imperial light cruiser Droit de Main, flagship of Search Force IX. Vice Admiral Sir Ian Cudleigh is aboard this ship, in direct service to their Imperial Highnesses, the Dukes of Malafont and Greme, who accompany His Royal and Imperial Highness, Vaughan, Duke of Trasimere, surnamed The Terrible, Prince Contestant to the Throne. You seek to bar our way at your own immediate and deadly peril. Submit at once, or we destroy you and every inhabitant of this place. We are on a business of holy vengeance, and you stand warned. Master of the Ordnance! Give them a taste of our steel!”
Roberts sat wide-eyed and half-paralyzed. As thick as he had intended to lay it on, this beat anything he’d had in mind.
There was a faint clicking from somewhere forward, and on the outside viewscreen, two buildings, one inside and one outside the foam-covered barrier of wire and mines, erupted in sheets of flame and smoke.
The harsh voice wasted scarcely a second. “Enough. Stand ready if this place lies servile to the fiend . . . All right, which is it? Oggbad, or Vaughan?”
There was a brief buzz from the receiver, then “Vaughan.”
“So be it. Now, know you that their Imperial Highnesses are locked in mortal combat with Oggbad the Traitor. Know you that Oggbad, though shorn of his material power, still sways mighty forces in the realms of sorcery. Only if his soul be cleaved from his body, and chained for its million years of punishment in the nether regions, will the blight be ended. Know, then, that as this condition is as yet unmet, and as you serve the Duke Vaughan, Oggbad may seek to smite you. Now, listen closely. If, under fear of the traitor’s evil power, you recant to Oggbad, Duke Vaughan with fire and sword will smite you to the death. If, mayhap, under influence of the fiend’s sorcery, you are bound over mindless into his evil cause, Duke Vaughan will then faithfully seek to cleanse your soul by agony here, before sending you to your reward. These are—There goes the fiend! Give chase!”
The scene on the viewscreen flashed backwards, whirled, and for the second time, the patrol ship streaked after the space yacht.
The communicator clicked off. The voice of the symbiotic computer said, “The instruments in the city are now picking up all the signs and indications of a formidable fleet passing the planet.”
“Good.”
Roberts, streaking along the curve of the planet after the space yacht, was starting to wonder what a patrol ship with fully trained crew would be like. What had happened so far was apparently mere routine, as far as the symbiotic computer was concerned.
Then he was swinging the patrol ship low over the forest, and following the space yacht in a wide curve to a landing in the clearing. He extended the stabilizer feet, snapped off the gravitors, and got up.
He yanked open the weapons locker, to get out the battle armor, and a glittering suit of armor with helmet curving up into a slender spire came out on its sling. The breastplate of this suit was covered with a dazzling coat of arms. The big fusion gun that hung on the right side was matched on the left by a broadsword. Tied to the top of the helmet’s spire was a thing like a pink silk handkerchief.
Looking closely, Roberts could see that his armor was essentially the same as what he’d been wearing before. But the effect was very different.
He wasted a moment asking himself how that had been done. Was there some kind of metal-working equipment recessed into the hull behind the weapons locker? How—”
The voice of the symbiotic computer spoke dryly: “In a crisis, each minute is a precious jewel.”
Roberts swore, got into the armor hurriedly, and started for the hatch. On the way, the sword banged around and got crosswise of his legs. He’d barely recovered his balance when he straightened up and rammed the helmet’s spire into the ceiling. There was a sarcastic throat-clearing noise in the earphones, but the symbiotic computer didn’t actually say anything; the cause of this trouble was its own fault.
* * *
Roberts finally managed to get the hatch open despite the spire, heaved himself out, and crossed to the space yacht, where Morrissey and Hammell looked up from the spy screen to stare at him in amazement.
“Not my idea,” said Roberts, getting out of the armor. “This idea belongs to the computer. What’s going on in the city?”
Morrissey said, “I’ve been watching this screen since we started, and as nearly as I can tell, the people generally are scared, and subject to all kinds of rumors. The general impression seems to be that the planetary computer got a spaceship up, and the Great Leader is up there fighting it with one of his own. As for the fanatics themselves, the more rank they have, the more uncertain they seem to be; but again, so far as I’ve been able to find out, the top ones are still out of sight.”
“That makes it nice,” said Roberts, trying to tilt the armor against the wall. The needlelike tip of the spire, even though it rested at a shallow angle against the wall, looked as if it just might push a hole through the hull. Exasperated, Roberts tilted the armor away from the wall, and tried to ease it down on the deck. At the last moment, it got away from him, and hit with a heavy thud.
Hammell and Morrissey jumped and looked around. Roberts straightened up carefully, “This thing sure isn’t made of feathers. And watch out for the spike on the helmet. I don’t know what kind of metal it is, but it doesn’t give, and it’s got a point like a needle.” Hammell and Morrissey acknowledged the warning with bare grunts and immediately turned back to the screen. Roberts, uneasily conscious what ship he was in, looked around at the porthole to find it temporarily repaired with an airtight double plate-and-gasket screwtight seal. Satisfied that nothing was going to come in there, Roberts slid into his chair, and immediately saw, on the screen, Kelty and the red-bearded technician.
“Nuts,” the technician was saying. “There isn’t any such place. You’ve been sold a bill of goods. The whole—”
“Shut up for a minute,” said Kelty, “and see for yourself. We got the whole thing down as it happened. Look at this.” He tapped one of several buttons on the edge of his desk, and the far wall of the room suddenly was like blue sky, across which a black-and-silver ship, weirdly decorated, streaked erratically into view, followed a moment later by a dazzling golden ship that unleashed searing bolts of energy that missed the black-and-silver ship by the narrowest of margins. The golden ship was suddenly enormously magnified, to fill the wall. The details of its trim and armament stood out clearly, the coats of arms thoroughly detailed and distinct, the center coat of arms raised above the others and set off in a blaze of bright gold trim.