Starbuck Rogers In The 25th Century

A Battlestar Galactica/Galactica 1980/Buck Rogers in the 25th
Century/Tales of the Gold Monkey crossover fanfic by Paul H. Robison

Battlestar Galactica (c)1978 Universal Studios
Galactica: 1980 (c)1980 Universal Studios
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (c)1979 Universal Studios
Tales of the Gold Monkey (c)1982 Universal Studios


Main character:  Starbuck (Battlestar Galactica). Now Starbuck Rogers

Supporting Cast from Galactica 1980 and Battlestar Galactica (TOS):
Boxey
Dr. Zee
Uri
Ortega

Spoiler:  Buck Rogers in the 25th Century by Addison E. Steele.  Dell
Publishing Co., Inc. (c)1978 by Robert C. Dille

Foreword:  1987

     The spaceship, standing tall and proud in the early morning sunlight
at Cape Kennedy, Florida, was the most advanced production of American
technology.  Its lines were clean, its command module functional,
efficient, manufactured to the micromillimeter by the most brilliant
engineers, the most expensive machinery, and with the most sophisticated
techniques that mankind had ever conceived.
     Its engines were a dream, designed for maximum fuel efficiency,
control, economy, smoothness of operation, and versatility of
performance.
     The engineers had said it was impossible to design engines tha would
meet all those criteria.  The comptrollers had said it was
"prohibitivelyl expensive."  The politicians had said, "Our priorities
are all wrong! We need to rebuild the cities, feed starving nations,
clean up the air and the oceans, the rivers and the land."
     The politicians were then invited to attend secret high-level
briefings. Limousines that burned gasoline at the rate of five miles to
the gallon, gasoline that cost almost four dollars a gallon in 1987,
carried them through back streets past hushed onlookers on Penssylvania
Avenue, to the White House.  A presidential aide greeted them under the
front portico and guided them toa n executive conference room.
     The presidential aide disappeared shortly after the politicians
arrived.  He returned, now, carrying briefing materials that he
distributed to the senators.  Each of them received a packet.  Each
packet had a warning notice rubber-stamped on its cover in glaring,
incandescient red:


     These materials are classified maximum security.  They may not be
taken with you.  The information they contain may not be quoted, citied,
or referred to by you in public or in private, in any medium or manner,
directly or indirectly, under maximum legal penalty.


     The senators were given a few minutes to familiarize themselves with
the contents of the brieifing packets.  No discussion was permitted.
     The presidential aide disappeared still again and then returned in
advance of the President himself.  
     The President was neatly dressed, freshly shaved, smiling,
optimistic.  He was a convincing actor---but senators are good actors,
too.  They saw through his bright exterior.
     The President made an opening statement.  The senators responded
with questions.  What they had learened at State, at the Pentagon, at
Intelligence, here at the White House---all pointed in the same
direction.  The President did not need to plead, did not need to exert
any of the famous charm---or the infamous pressure-tactics---that had
brought him to his elevated position.
     The President told the senators the plain truth, and they went back
to the Senate and voted money.
     NASA and all of NASA's contractors then worked feverishly for
months, round the clock.
     And now the spaceship stood glittering in the morning sunlight. 
Inland, rows of palmettos and calamander trees hissed softly in a light
zephyr.  Out to sea, over the Atlantic Ocean, gulls swooped and hovered
in the clear, salt-tinged air.  There were no fishing boats, no rich
man's yachts, and no sight-seeing craft in the takeoff lane.
     Reaction materials, engine exhausts, staging particles might drop
there.  Anyone caught beneath a rocket as it thundered into the sky was
in dire peril of catching a thousand-ton cylinder of metals and plastics
and more exotic materials in his startled little lap.
     Inside the spaceship, one man worked alone through the checklist of
switches and controls, the safety measures, computer programs, instrument
readouts, telemetering connections, knobs, dials, indicators.  His
earphones brought him a constant stream of instructions and questions and
comments from Mission Control.  Into a tiny microphone he almost
whispered the readings and responses that Mission Control expected.
     Hundreds of minuscule probes picked up his skin temperature, blood
pressure, respiration rate, eyeball motion, heart action, muscle tension,
nerve conditions, even his brain waves.  Inside the Mission Control tower
these and scores more were displayed on video tubes that glowed with an
eerie light while automatic pens traced out a permanent record of the
astronaut's condition on long sheets of paper that rolled slowly past
their tips---lines in red, green, blue, black, purple, crossing and
recrossing each other as they danced and jiggled across the endlessly
unrolling plain of pale turquoise squares.
     High over the Atlantic a complex game of hide-and-seek was taking
place.  American space satellites were linked into the spaceship-Mission
Control net, ready to relay telemetered information, take observations,
provide data.  Simultaneously, foreign hunter-killer satellites sought
out the American instrumentation and communication satellites, invisible
laser beams flashing when one came into range; a destroyed satellite
would not plummet, meteorlike, to Earth.  It would remain in orbit,
calmly circling the Earth for years or even centuries until its path
slowly decayed and it burned up in the thicker air closer to the surface. 
But meanwhile, it would be dead.
     At the same time, foreign spy-satellietes tried electronically to
tap into the communication between the astronaut in his ship and the
hundreds of engineers and flight controllers who sat at their consoles,
reading their instruments and dials, switching their toggles and knobs,
checking off their logbooks...and listening to the near-whispered words
of the pilot in the spaceship, whispering back answers to his questions,
checking and double- and triple-checking every variable in the procedure.
     There was one funny thing about it all.  
     The astronaut, hazel-eyed, toe-headed, muscled with the lithe
strength of a trained gymnast rather than the bulging brute power of a
weight-lifter---sometimes hummed a little tune under his breath.  It was
an old tune.  It was the tune of a song written before the astronaut's
father was ever born, written when his grandfather was a little boy.  It
was a funny, infectious tune, and it had words to it that occasionally
broke through the humming, to the startlement of NASA flight controllers
and, we can be certain, to the absolute bafflement of anybody sitting on
another continent, sifting through the static and electronic background
noise of a spy satellite orbiting over Cape Kennedy, Florida, and
eavesdropping on the exchanges between the astronaut and his flight
controllers.
     He was signging, now and then, a funny little song about a wonderful
city, a "city that never sleeps," a city where a man even danced with his
wife.  New York was that city.  New York, New York.
     The world teetered between poverty and wealth, between famine and
plenty, between tyranny and freedom; it teetered between peace and war.
     High over the Atlantic an enemy hunter-killer satellite zeroed in on
an American telemetry relay satellite.  The hunter-killer automatically
adjusted its sights and focused its laser-projector preparatory to
disabling the relay satellite.  At the same time an American
counter-hunter-killer satellite detected the enemy device and switched on
its thrusters to bring itself into better range.
     At the same moment that the enemy hunter-killer switched on its
laser, the American satellite thrust itself against the enemy device and
knocked it tumbling from its course.
     And at the same time these actions were taking place, a swarm of
small meteorites spun silently and invisibly on their course above the
Earth's atmosphere.
     Scientists do not know how many meteors are scattered through the
solar system; no one has even made a reasonable estimate.  We know that
there are a lot of them, but whether that means thousands, millions,
billions or even more, is anyone's guess.  Meteors are not large objects,
lik comets.  They don't move in regular orbits, or if they do, those
orbits are seldom known to astronomers.
     There are too many meteors, and most of them are too small, and too
dim, to be seen from Earth.  The largest of them is likely as large as a
small planetoid; the smallest, the size of a grain of sodium chloride.
     And at the same time that the enemy and American satellites were
engaging in their deadly game of orbital musical chairs high above the
Atlantic Ocean, a swarm of meteors swept past---their orbit a mystery,
but their present position not much more than a thousand miles above the
Atlantic, not far downrange from the launching pads of Cape Kennedy.
     The automatic program-sequencer at Mission Control was methodically
ticking off the final seconds of the countdown for the day's dramatic
launch.  The chief capsule communicator was whispering the words so they
ghosted into the ears of the astronaut who half-sat, half-lay, all alone
in the capsule of the most advanced spaceship ever built by American
hands.
     "Ten."
     The astronaut took a final look at his checklist, saw the proper
mark in every square on the pasteboard page.
     "Nine."
     The chief flight controller duplicated the astronaut's actions,
nodding to himself in satisfaction.
     "Eight."
     Aboard the spaceship, the astronaut clicked down the cover on his
checklist and turned his eyes back to his real-time booster-condition
readout dials.
     "Seven."
     The direct-coupled communications system carried the same readout
information to Mission Control.
     "Six."
     A thousand miles overhead, the communications satellite, unaware of
its near-brush with death from the enemy hunter-killer machine, picked up
the information from the spaceship and sent it speeding at the speed of
radio-waves---that is to say, at the speed of light---back to Cape
Kennedy and simultaneously to NASA-Houson.  Thus the system showed its
multiple redundancy, an almost foolproof method of making sure nothing
went wrong.
     "Five."
     In Cape Kennedy and in Houston, hundreds of pairs of engineers's
eyes were glued to green oscilloscope screens, working as if by sheer
will power, to make sure that wiggling and wavering lines kept within
established limits of tolerance.
     "Four."
     Within the VIP viewing stand, dozens of generals and admirals and
congressmen and senators strained their eyes to catch the first flaring
burst of flame as the rocket's engines picked up their ignition.
     "Three."
     The chief administrator of NASA, a long-established atheist from the
age of nine, breathed a silent prayer for the safety of the pilot and the
success of the mission.  He didn't know what the outcome would be; if he
had known, he might've worded that prayer somewhat differently.
     "Two."
     Aboard the spaceship, the astronaut turned his blond head ninety
degrees and peered out the window for the last time before liftoff.  Hs
lips were moving, forming the sound of the lyrics of a funny little song
that had been written when his grandfather was a little boy.
     "Start spreading the news....."
     "One!"
     "I am leaving today..."
     "Zero!"
     "I want to be a part of it..."
     "Ignition!"
     "New York, New York!"
     An enemy spy-satellite picked up the last phrase and dutifully
transmitted it to a ground station on another continent, where a
scientific intelligence monitoring officer raised her dark eyebrows an an
expression of puzzlement replaced the usual one of intelligence
concentration on her regular features.
     The great orange and golden and red flower bloomed suddenly, for the
moment silently, on the great launching pad at Cape Kennedy.  For an
instant, the spaceship vanished, not merely before the dazzled eyes of
the VIP delegration watching with naked orbs, but even to the eyes of
more sensible and responsible workers watching the launch on
closed-circuit television monitors.
     Inside the cabin, the astronaut pressed into his acceleration couch
under the giant hand of monstrous G-forces that endless months of
training had only half-prepared him to encounter.  His sneaky-looking
hazel eyes closed with the strain.  His flesh sagged.  His hands pressed
against the rests designed for them.
     His pressure suit prevented his body from being squeezed out and
crushed flat beneath the pressure, but the torso of the suit itself
spread and stretched.
     Even the astronaut's own name, stitched carefully onto a patch of
duracooth and attached to his spacesuit, distorted.  It would've taken a
keen eye to read the name at this strange moment.
     The name was Rogers.  The pilot's personnel dossier listed him as
Dirk Niewoehner Rogers, Captain, United States Air Force, on loan to NASA
in connection with a classified special project under direct White House
sponsorship and authority.
     Captain Rogers's friends had a shorter name for him, a name that
he'd carried from childhood.  Nobody knew what exactly it referred to,
but everybody called him Starbuck.
     On closed-circuit video monitors in Florida and Texas, the spaceship
reappeared, riding atop the growing ball of orange-gold flame for a few
seconds, blancing there on its tail, then lofting away into the sunny
Florida morning.
     There was a brief exchange between Captain Rogers and Mission
Control.  The spaceship was cleared for staging.
     The automatic sequencer clicked in; the ship's computers raced
through their stored programs, electrons flowing silently and invisibly
along silicon-etched microcircuits, through gates and switches, taking
instrument readouts, tripping relays, setting indicators.  Triplicated
computers in Florida and Texas performed the same operations, compared
results, found agreement, turned all lights green.
     The first stage of the ship dropped away and the second stage engine
ignited.  For a second time, Captain Rogers felt the giant hand of the
space god crush him against his acceleration couching.  For the second
time his weight multiplied, his body flattened, then the engine cut off
and Starbuck resumed his task of checking instruments and adjusting
controls.
     The satellites continued their deadly game: jets puffed, verniers
squirted, satellites turned and slid silently through their orbits. 
Laser beams flashed invisibly, sometimes finding a target, sometimes not.
     Higher above the planet, a swarm of meteors, millions (billions?) of
years old, swept silently ahead.
     Stabuck Rogers's ship, its earlier stages exhausted and jettisoned,
its command capsule and auxiliary module resembling a sleek silvery dart,
left the Earth's atmosphere and continued on its course.
     Starbuck's mission was no quick expedition to the Moon and back. 
Lunar exploration had been condutcted two decades before. 
Scientist-astronauts had brought back their samples, conducted their
experiments, drawn their conclusions, buttressed those conclusions with
masses of data, and abandoned the daed, silent Moon to the solitude what
had ruled it for billions of years.
     Starbuck was to be gone from Earth for months, exploring the planets
and the deep vacuum between them.  He would return to Earth carrying the
records both of longest duration for a space flight beyond Earht, and
greatest distance covered by any traveler off the face of the Earth.  His
exploits would cover not millions but billions of miles.  His was the
dream of Verne and Wells, of Tsiolokovsky and Goddard and Von Braun and
Ley, of Hamilton and Williamson and Gernsback and Campbell and Brackett.
     The exterior of Starbuck Rogers's spaceship was suddenly struck by a
swarming hail of tiny meteors.  Insaide the ship they first set up a
racket like a fistful of gravel dropping onto a tin-roofed shack. In
seconds the sound had increased in intensity until it resembled that of a
machine gun firing at ttop speed, then to that of a battlefield where
rifles and machine guns fired constantly, their ceaseless chatter
punctuated by the occasional thud of a howitzer, a crash of a recoilless
rifle, whumpf of a heavy mortar lobbing its deadly cargo over
fortifications to drop it remorselessly on the enemy from above.
     Inside the command capsule, Starbuck Rogers had little time to
contemplate the syncopation of meteors rattling and thudding against the
hull of his ship.  The steady orbit of the craft was jolted and shaken by
the countless tiny and great impacts.  The ship threatened to lose
headway and tumble end-for-end.
     The meteors must have carried some weird electrical charge, for
suddenly the inside of the ship began to dance with scintillating lights. 
The very atmosphere within the ship was transformed into a seething
kaleidoscope of brilliantly glowing gasses. Every hue in the spectrum was
there, from strange greenish chartreuses to bizarre purplish reds and
blues, from dancing, pulsating yellows and golds to heavy, torpid grays,
ochres, and blacks.
     Trapped in his acceleration couch, Starbuck could only watch in
consternation as the life-support controls of the ship went mad. 
Ion-counters and radiation fluctuated wildly.  Pressure rose and dipped,
rose and dipped until he felt he was trapped in the middle of a giant
vacuum chamger.  The temperature rose briefly to a dangerous high, then
dropped almost immediately to total zero.
     Starbuck Rogers, still lying in his acceleration couch, his space
suit surprisingly intact, lay suddenly motionless as a statue of polished
marble.
     If any hand had touched him, he would've felt as cold and stiff as
the dead.
     But he was neither a statue nor a corpse.
     He was a man in a state of stasis.  Not merely frozen, but trapped
in a state of timeless preservation, he lay with unseeing eyes, unbeating
heart, unmoving hands, unthinking brain.
     His ship tumbled on through space. It might collide by accident with
some other object in its course, but space is vast and even the largest
objects in it fill only the smallest percentage of its volume.
     Starbuck's ship might collide with some other object, but all of the
laws of statistics said that it wasn't very likely. No, far more likely
it would just tumble on, and on, and on.
     Its planned journey of five months would stretch to years, then to
decades, even to centuries.  To Starbuck, lying in the metal-and-plastic
sarcophagous that was his spaceship, the time meant no more than it does
to an ordinary coprse lying buried safely in an earthly grave.
     But Starbuck Rogers was not dead!

*****

     Starbuck Rogers's ship tumbled on and on through the limitless
reaches of the solar system.  What strange sights Starbuck must have seen
had he been observing as the ship passed the asteroid belt and the
great-gas-liquid giants with their titanic atmosphers and families of
rings and moons, he could not know.  For all practical purposes, Starbuck
Rogers was a corpse---and yet corpses do not rise from their tombs!
     Five hundred years!
     Five hundred years passed while Buck's ship tumbled aimlessly
through space.  On Earth, his mishap was headline news for a few days.
The newspapers bannered the tragedy of the lost hero and his unfortunate
ship.  The television newscasters ran and reran tapes of his lifoff, of
the guidance and mission control centers in Cape Kennedy and Housont,
interviews with his flight controller, his air force buddies, his family,
his old school chums, the milkman who delivered milk to his house and the
teacher who had scolded him for flying paper airplanes instead of
concentrating on social studies when he was in the sixth grade.
     There were even proposals to mount a rescue mission for Starbuck. 
But saner heads prevailed. It would take too long to equip and launch the
resecue ship.  It would never reach Starbuck's ship anyway.  And if it
did, it would only find a corpse.
     Better to let the space-martyr have a hero's burial in deep space. 
Better to let his tumbling spaceship carrying him to that strange
otherworldly Valhalla where the dead astronauts and cosmonauts of all
nations joined in their own fraternity of eternal space travel.
     In a week, the story was off page one and inside the papers; off the
prime-time news and onto the features and backgrounders and the talk
shows.  
     A few months later it was no longer Starbuck Rogers, but Starbuck
Who?  And then he was forgotten.
     Dynasties rose and fell.
     Wars were fought.
     The earth teetered---and tipped.

*****

One

     An incredibly antiquated spaceship tumbled aimlessly, out of
control, through the blackness between the planets.  Why it had never
found its way out of the solar system, to drift on forever in the space
between the stars, was a matter of cosmic laws.  In its disastrous
tumble, Starbuck Rogers's ship had failed to reach solar escape velocity. 
Falling freely, with no propulsion system functioning, it had reached the
farthest point of its orbit and then arched back toward its point of
origin.
     Decades had passed, then centuries, and now the ship was back, its
statuelike occupant preserved as if the strange mishapes had transpired
yesterday, instead of five hundred years ago, back in the lost days of
the twentieth century.  For this was the twenty-fifth century, and the
world was a different place than it had been in the past.
     Starbuck's ship glided on its slow but steady tack through deep
space when there was a sudden eruption in the star-punctuated space
around it.  The white heat of laser bolts exploded into a ball of flame
to one side of the ship, sent it rocking anew, tumbling more erratically
than ever as it continued on its own lengthy orbit.
     Where had the laser come from?  Had Starbuck's ship found its way at
last back to Earth, and were there still ancient hunter-killer satellites
orbiting in space around the Earth, ready to blast down any spacecraft
perceived as belonging to an enemy?
     Suddenly a voice, sinister and bass in tone, spoke.  "That, my
friend, was a warning shot. Reduce speed, bring your ship about, or my
next shot destroys you!"
     But the derelict ship continued to tumble on, all systems dead, its
pilot unconscious, in a state of complete mental and physical stasis for
the past five hundred years.
     The voice that had spoken belong to a dark, tight-lipped man with
cold eyes and an unsavory cast to his face.  This was the man
Ortega---and only known by the name, Ortega.  If he had a first name,
nobody had ever learned it.
     He sat at the controls of a space assault vessel, his big hands
guiding the controls with a competence that bordered on contempt. To
either flank of his ship a sister craft soared, and Ortega, like a
veteran halfback directing two powerful but inexperienced downfield
blockers as they cleared a path for him, barked his directions to the
ships to his left and right. 
     "Another round," Ortega gritted.
     The laser flared.  Starbuck's ship jounced at the proximity of the
blast. 
     "Closer," Ortega muttered. Not only were his two subordinates
fighting at his direction, but his own ship was armed as well and he
fired his own lasers, pressing the firing stud on his control rod as
Starbuck's tumbling antique came within his sights.  The five hundred
year old ship rocked and tumbled, unable either to fight back or flee.
     "In his space-fighter, Ortega commanded his two subordinates. "Stand
by to finish him off.  Five...four...three..."
     He pressed the throttle of his fighter forward.  The ship, already
coursing thorugh space at incredible speed, lurched ahead still faster,
faster, closing in for the kill, ready to blast its helpless prey into a
blossoming spray of white-hot space debris!
     Meanwhile, the interior of the derelict craft presented as creepy an
aspect as ever the human eye had perceived.  Think of any explorer
opening a crypt sealed and forgotten for hundreds of thousands of years,
breaking the seals of time, peering within, breath still, heart leaping,
hands icy, blood pounding.  And then....
     Through the window of Starbuck Rogers's derelict spaceship could be
seen a sight that might have been found in a deep freeze:  The window
itself was frosted, not with condensation on its ouside. But from within,
from the gases that had flooded the cabin in the last frantic seconds of
the meteor storm, from the water vapor dissolved in the very atmosphere
of the ship.
     And inside that strange deep-freeze, the slumped form of a bearded
man, his chin pressed against the collar of his flight suit, his head
leaning toward the frosted windo. And not merely the inner surface of the
window, but the entire interior of the spaceship's cabin was covered with
a soft, frosted glaze.  And in that glaze lay the man himself, covered
entirely with white condensation.
     Apparently the state of stasis was less than one hundred percent
effective.  For Starbuck Rogers had entered his ship a clean-shaven man,
and he was now heavily bearded, his blonde hair gorwn long and shaggy in
the five hundred years he had lain in the tumbling derelict.
     Ortega piloted his fighter plane alongside Starbuck's ship, with
competence borne of a hundred space battles, a thousand maneuvers.
     Through the double thickness of the window of his own ship and
Starbuck Rogers's, he peered with those cold, dark eyes of his.
     "He appears dead," Ortega rasped.
     "Then let's disintegrate him," a second voice spoke coldly. "Before
Princess Koji's ship sails through here and hits the old derilect."
     Ortega shook his head. "No," he considered coldly. "There's
something about that ship. I've never seen anything like it.  No, this
may be a prize worth exploiting."
     He rubbed his chin thoughtfully.  "Prepare to take the derelict in
tow. Open a communication channel to Princess Koji.  Inform her that
we're boarding a hostile spacecraft, and will report to her later with
details of what we find."

*****

     Consider this:  if some World War II avatior, say, Jimmy Doolitle or
Richard Bong or any of the others, had risen from some airbase in Europe
or America or in the Pacific theater, and had come face to face with a
Saturn V spaceship just lifting off its pad and heading at five thousand
miles per hour for orbit, he'd surely have returned to base, headed
straight for the nearest field hospital, and turned himself in for
treatement for a case of acute combat fatigue.
     They just wouldn't have believed it!
     Now consider this:  Dirk Rogers, Captain USAF, lifts off from Cape
Kennedy, Florida, on a bright morning in the year 1987.  He is caught in
a meteor storm above the Earth's atmosphere. He knows nothing for the
next five hundred years, and then......
     A massive ship moved through space.  It was not ten or twenty or
fifty years more advanced than Starbuck's craft had been. And it wasn not
merely as much larger as the Consolidated B-36 was than the Wright
Brothers' first plane. No, the difference in technology and size was five
centuries!
     Starbuck Rogers' craft lay on the floor of a giant launching bay as
Christopher Columbus's Santa Maria would have lain on the deck of the
QE2.  And around it swamed a throng of scurrying figures, a mix of
curious technicians and watched-eyed soldiers.  Again, it was as if some
experimental Breguet helicopter of early-1930s vintage had mysteriously
appeared over the Gulf of Tonkin and landed safely on the deck of an
American aircraft carrier in 1970.
     The twin reactions would have been an arousal of startled curiosity
and a wild, almost paranoid panic of the security forces!
     Now, on the great starship in whose bay Starbuck Roger's
half-millennium-old craft lay motionless, a swarm of inquiring
technicians peered and prodded at the ancient spacecraft, frantic with
curiosity to resolve its mysteries---while at the same time stern-visaged
starship troopers, Hydran Centurions of the Realm, circulated among them,
weapons at the ready.
     And at the command position stood one whose air of authority would
brook no opposition.
     Ortega.
     He looked through the window of the ancient spaceship and some
instinct prompted him, as he gazed on Starbuck Rogers's motionless form,
to mutter, "He's alive!"
     They moved the rigid form of the space pilot, laid him on a surgical
table ringed with bright spotlights.  They attached electronic probes,
chemical tubes, stimulators and resuscitators to the unresisting form. 
Powerful beams of a nearby blood-red intensity pulsed in the tubes.
     And Starbuck Rogers's eyelids fluttered!

*****

     The stateroom was magnficient.  It had the outfittings of the
captain's quarters on the most luxurious of ancient sea-yachts, yet it
could serve as its mistresse's audience chamber, her sitting room, or her
boudoir at her choice.
     There was a canopied bed, covered with bulky, spongy, white furs of
the most exotic animals, striped and tanned and fitted to suit the whim
of their powerful owner.  There were pillows and mirrors and perfume
dispensers, satin quilts and snow-white fur robes to please the most
demanding of sybarites.
     Lounging in the middle of this barbaric splendor was the one
creature to whom its beauty, its luxury, its promise of hedonistic
indulgence and its hint of barbaric sadism, were all fitted with perfect
appropriateness: a woman stunningly gowned, her raiment perfectly
designed to set off her long, flowing hair, her rich, smooth olive skin,
her big, slightly slanted eyes, her voluptuous body whose generous curves
were accentuated rather than concealed by the flowing lines of her gown.
     This was the Princess Koji.
     At a signal from the companionway outside her stateroom, the
Princess called a single imperious word: "Enter."
     The dark figure of Ortega appeared, with an expression of deeply
troubled concern on his face.
     His mediation was interrupted by the Princess Koji's annoyed
comment. "What of our intruder, Ortega, that is so imporpont it could not
await my rising?"
     Balter stepped forward with thoughtfully measured strides.  "He
lives," Ortega announced.  "Why he lives, we don't know."
     "He lives, and you don't know why?" Koji echoed.  "Have you brought
me this riddle to deal with, as a dimensional puzzle is tossed to a
troublesome child, to keep her busy at play while the adults tend to more
serious matters?"
     Ortega shook his head, ignoring her jibe. "The mystery is for me to
solve, my princess.  The ship is antiquated, it's unlike anything I've
ever seen in the whole span of stars---for that matter I've never seen
its like beyond the pages of some illustrated history book."
     Impatiently, Koji snapped, "Ortega, get on with..."
     "He was frozen, my princess!"
     "Frozen?"
     "By a combination of gasses," the man explained. "Oxygen, Freon,
cryogen." He paced as if reciting a chemistry lesson.  "Ozone."  He
nodded his head, ticked off the substances on his fingers. "Methalon.
Almost a perfect balance."
     Kid shrugged her smooth shoulders petulantly.  "These are techniques
used in cases of surgery and in the suspension of terminal illnesses
throughout the civilized galaxy."
     "Yes," Ortega agreed. "Yes, there are---today!  But this man is
another matter.  His ship, my princess!"
     "Ortega, I have no patience for lectures, any more than I have for
solving mysteries.  Come to the point, or else get out of my sight!"
     "It's the instrumentation on the ship!  It too was stopped.  Our
scientists have taken readouts from its circuitry, and they indicate that
this man and his ship have been frozen solid since the year Nineteen
hundred and eighty-seven!"
     Now curiosity conquered annoyance in the Princess Koji.  "You're
telling me, Ortega, that..."
     "Precisely, I am! That man must be over five hundred years old, my
princess!"
     Her eyebrows flew upward in surprise. "Are you serious?"
     "Completely!  The pilot of that ship was frozen by whatever disaster
overcame his ship, and then preserved by that combination of gases, so
instantaneously and so perfectly that now he is fullyl preserved...and
living!"
     The princess moved subtly on her fur-quilted bed. It was almost as
if a fascinating man had entered the room, and she was arranging herself
to display her charms in their most subtle, but most alluring pose. 
"Preserved," she purred.  "Young or old?"
     "Very young," Ortega responded.
     "No...shall I say, defects---from the ordeal?"
     "Fortunately for him," Ortega said, "we are quite advanced in the
science of cryogenics."
     "I've never met a five-hundred year-old man," Koji almost crooned.
She seemed lost in contemplation for the barest fraction of a moment.
Then she said, "Prepare him for an audience."
     Ortega did not assent immediately. "I would suggest that you allow
us a little time. We have been inducing massive amounts of oxygen into
his system, to resuscitate him. I'm afraid he might babble incoherently
for a little while.  You know, there is such a thing as oxygen
intoxication."
     Koji's eyes flashed. She was unaccustomed to having her wishes
denied, however subservient the manner of the latter. "I will make
allowances, she declared imperiously.

*****

     For the first time in five hundred years, Starbuck Rogers opened his
eyes and tried to focus them on the ring of faces surrounding ihm.  They
peered down, eyes shining with curiosity.
     "Where am I?" Starbuck said.
     One of the faces---that of the dark, dominating person who had just
left the chamber of the Princess Koji---swam into clearer focus. "We will
ask the questions," Ortega lipped thinly. "Have you got a name,
spaceman?"
     Rogers, Dirk," Starbuck stammered, automatically. "Captain, United
States Air Force.  And---who are you?"
     Ortega exchanged significant looks with the other faces surrounding
Starbuck.

*****

     Another voice cut through the conversation---a smooth, sensual
woman's voice coming from the entryway of the medical examining room. 
"What did that man say?"
     The faces turned away from Rogers, and toward the newcomer.  It was
the Princess Koji, but no longer was she gowned in the lounging robes of
her sumptuous boudoir.  She had exchanged them for the resplendent finery
of the Imperial Princess and Heir Apparent of the Hydran Interstellar
Empire.
     Even in his weakened and semi-incoherent condition, Starbuck Rogers
managed to halfway raise his head and see who had spoken in the lovely
and sensual, yet imperious tones.
     Ortega said to Koji, "Something about a United States. I've never
heard of it." He turned commandingly upon Starbuck. "Captain, what is
your destination?"
     Reaction to his first movement in half a millennium overcame
Starbuck. He clutched at his head, collapsed back onto the table. 
"Ahhhhh," he gasped.
     The princess looked on in alarm.  "What is it?"
     "My head." He clutched at his temples. "I don't suppose you've got
any aspirin around here?"
     Puzzled, the princess asked, "What does that mean?"
     "Probably some sort of anti-pain drug," Ortega supplied.
     "By all means, then.  Give him something to ease his discomfort,"
Koji commanded.
     Taking his cue from the princess, Ortega nodded toward an orderly.
The latter moved off to bring a medication.
     Starbuck had recovered sufficiently to speak again. "What is this
place?  Where am I?  Who are you?"
     "You're aboard the supreme sovereign's flagship Galactica," Ortega
supplied. "Under the command of the Royal Princess Koji."
     "Oh," Starbuck said. Then it sank in. "Who?"
     "Never mind," Ortega interrupted the exchanged.  "We want to know
all about you.  Where you are from."
     "Wait," Starbuck pleaded. "Slow down. Now, what was that about a
ship?"
     "One of His Majesty's Battlestars," Koji said. "On its way to Earth
on a mission of peace."
     "On its way to Earth?" Starbuck was startled. "You mean, you guys
aren't from....I mean, we aren't on..." He tried to rise, but failed.
"Oh, I'm definitely gonna need that aspirin."
     At this moment the orderly returned, a hypodermic syringe held
carefully in one hand.
     "Give it to him," Koji commanded.
     "Hey," Starbuck exclaimed. "What's in that?" Ooooh."
     Ortega spoke menacingly.  "Captain, bearing in mind that you are a
captive of a dynasty that has conquered three fourths of the
universe...you will answer very carefully, if you want to live."
     Starbuck stared at Ortega, dumbstruck.  The drug that had been
administered was beginning to take effect:  his eyes were grown vague. 
"What...?"
     "You claim to have been blown off course," Ortega said accusingly.
     "Hmmmm?"
     "How do you explain that you were conveniently drifting in an
unconscious state that would take you directly onto the princess's
announced flight path to Earth?"
     Starbuck turned his gaze away from the menacing Ortega, toward the
beautifully and splendidly garbed princess.  "He talking about you?" he
asked with childlike wonder.  "Hey, are you a real live princess?"
     "I think you've given our captain a little too much medication,"
Koji commented.
     "Oh, no, no," Starbuck countered almost drunkenly. "I feel like a
million dollars! And he began to giggle, and giggle, and giggle and
giggle, while the technicians stared at him as if he had gone mad!

*****

     Later, three figures walked together down one of the corridors of
the ship.  One of them was Ortega. Another was the Princess Koji.  The
third was a strange being, a mutant, neither human nor animal, neither
man nor beast, but something in between.  As intelligent as a human---or
almost so---and as powerful and cunning as the jungle predators from whom
his ancestors had been bred.  He was Jaguar-Man.
     Koji and Ortega were conversing seriously while Jaguar-Man padded
silently, watchfully, menacingly beside them.
     "The United States of America," Koji said thoughfully.  "I recall
that it was an empire on the planet Earth, some centuries ago."
     "Those Imperial tutors gave you your money's worth," Ortega
commented wryly.
     "But you are from Earth," Koji snapped. "Surely you remember its
history better than I!"
     "The United States," Ortega took up the thread.  "It persished
almost five hundred years ago.  It doesn't exist any longer.  That man,
Rogers, is lying."
     "Then how do you account for his clothing?" Koji said.  "And his
spacecraft and the settings of its instruments?"
     "Obviously, he's a clever plant from the insidious schemers of
Earth's Central Directorate.," Ortega countered.
     Koji stopped in mid-stride and swung upon Ortega.  "A plant?"
     "A spy, yes!  Placed in our path deliberately by their military, so
we would discover him, by accident." The irony was heavy in his voice.
      "They would not be so foolish," Koji said scornfully. "They know
we're on a peace mission, that we come as an Imperial envoy to Earth from
my father's kingdom."
     "They only know your father's stated purpose," Ortega replied. "To
guarantee trade between Earth and the Supreme House of Hydra." 
     "Then why would they be so foolish as to place a spy aboard our
ship?" Koji asked.
     "To search our ship," Ortega answered. "To see if we're unarmed!"
     "Yes."  Koji's imperious posture seemed to sink a little.  She gazed
down the corridor and said, "Yes, that does sound like her style, doesn't
it?"
     "We cannot allow it," Ortega said flatly.
     "Agreed...."
     "Then, I am to assume that I may---let us say, dispose---of Captain
Rogers, as I see fit?"
     Koji turned away without making a direct reply.  "Pomp and
circumstance are my prerogative," she said.  "Dealing with national
security matters is your pergoative, Ortega."

*****                                             

Two

     Inside the great bay, Starbuck Rogers's ship was all blut lost in
the immensity of the cavernous interior and the massive, complex array of
machinery.  Workmen were bustling over and around the ship, studying,
investigating, restoring it to working order.  From one of the corridor
portals, Ortega entered the bay.  He was carrying a small oblong box. He
handed it to one of the technicians working on the ship and instructed
the worker.  "These are computer boards to be reinstalled on Captain
Rogers's ship, now that we've studied and tested them thoroughly.  As
soon as they're reconnected, stand by to launch!"
     Starbuck himself, still recovering from his long ordeal, was wheeled
into the bay, rather than walking under his own power.  "Now this is
realistic," he was saying, still half-bemused by the Hydran drug that had
been injected into him.  "What a layout this place is. It looks like
Howard Hughes's bathroom!"
     Ortega stepped away from the ship, stood over Starbuck's rolling
transport.  "How do you feel?" Ortega asked unxiously.
     "I feel great," Starbuck grinned. "I wish you were all really here,
but I know I'm gonna wake up, and when I do...poof!"
     Starbuck continued talking to Ortega as he rolled toward his ship.
"Say, what a coincidence! I've got ship just like that one."
     Ortega shot a significant glance to one of Starbuck's medical
orderlies. 'Discontinue the medication," he commanded.
     "Oh, don't do that," Starbuck countered. "I love it. Leave it on."
     "You'll be on your way shortly," Ortega muttered.
     Buck said, "Great!  Where are we going?"
     "You're going home," Ortega answered.
     "Great. Where's that?"
     "Earth."
     "Oh, yeah. I forgot."
     They had arrived at the ship.  The orderlies helped Starbuck to a
sitting position.  He heard Ortega continuing to speak.  "Your ship has
been serviced and its computers reprogrammed to take you home. Surely you
are anxious to return?"
     "Roger that," Starbuck said. "I feel like I must've been gone for
weeks. Weeks and weeks and weeks." He started to climb down from the
rolling cart but his knees buckled underneath him.  Orderlies sprang
forward to keep him from falling.
     "Whooo-eeeee!" Starbuck grabbed his head.  "I must've had some good
time with you guys.  I'm gonna miss you.  Hey, why don't we all go down
there together?"
     "No, Captain," Ortega said, "you go on ahead. But don't worry; we'll
follow in just a few days."
     "Not if I wake up," Starbuck grinned. "Poof!"
     An orderly at either side, Starbuck was helped through the boarding
hatch into his ancient spaceship.  "Guess I'll be seeing you.  I mean,
you're going to be hard to miss coming donw in this thing.  Piece of
advice," he grinned. "Don't try landing at New York.  They weren't even
too crazy about the Concorde." Again, Starbuck burst into a giggle fit. 
The others remained serious.
     "Say," Starbuck complained, "I guess you guys can't fix everything.
My chronomete's still acting whacky.  Seems to say that I've been gone
for five hundred years.  Hahahaha!"  As Starbuck's laughter echoed
through the great bay, Ortega nodded to a crew of technicians.  They
slammed shut the boarding hatch on Starbuck's spaceship and locked it
with all seals down.
     Inside the ship, Starbuck muttered to himself. "Boy, are they going
to be surprised when back at Houston when I show up with this story. 
Talk about deep space rapture making you hallucinate!"
     And the ancient spaceship blasted through the opened doors of the
giant bay, back ot the blackness and emptiness from which it had been
retrieved after its journey of half a millennium.
     As Starbuck's ship shrank from a spacecraft to a tiny point of
gleaming light, the Princess Koji peered after it, her thoughts lost in
the distant stars.  Her giant Jaguar-Man bodyguard loomed powerfully
behind her, and Ortega advanced to parley with his princess.
     "Is it possible?" Koji asked. "Could he really have come through
space from the Earth of five hundred years ago?"
     "Yes," Ortega nodded. "It's just possible.  Precisely why I believe
it would be an ingenous plan to dupe us, undoubtedly masterminded by Dr.
Salik.  Well, we will turn this little charade againt its creator!"
     "Against him? Why? How?" Koji asked.
     "He has given us the perfect opportunity to teast the Earth's
defense shield."
     "What do you mean, 'test it?' We know that anything approaching
Earth without clearance is immediately incinerated."
     "But if our captain is a spy," Ortega purred, "as I suspect he
is...they will escort him through the shield.  Along the narrow channel
that is known only to their military."
     "How will that help us?" Koji demanded.
     "I've hidden a microtransmittere aboard Captain Rogers's ship,"
Ortega exploained. "There's no way he can detect its presence...I had our
techs build it into his computer's circuits.  When they take him down,
the transmitter will be giving us the equivalent of a guide map.  When we
give the signal, that map will be used by your father's force to pour
thorugh their defensive shield."
     Koji looked up into Ortega's face, admiration filling her own.  "You
are clever, Ortega!"
     "A perfect combination," he responded. "Your throne and my
abilities.  We will one day rule your father's kingdom!"
     "Don't be too eager to unseat my father," Koji snapped. "What if our
captain is not a spy---what happens then?"
     Ortega shrugged. "He dies."
     Koji looked away oddly. "I see."
     "You don't look so pleased," Ortega said.
     "Of course I'm pleased. It's just that...I had the strangest feeling
that...I'd meet Captain Rogers again, somewhere." Koji looked away from
Ortega, a wistful expression on her beautiful features.

*****     

     Inside his spaceship, Starbuck Rogers was functioning as a space
pilot for the first time in a half a thousand years.  His skillful finger
switched controls, flipped levers as he ran through his pre-touchdown
checklist. He was thoroughly enjoying his last hours in space, singing
half-aloud as he worked.
     "I'm flying down...I'm getting down...down, down, down...to my kind
of town!" He broke off his song and switched on his transmitter. 
"Houston/CAPCOM," he snapped in businesslike terms.  "This is
astro-flight 711. Put down the cards and the backgammon boards and get on
the horn to me.  Starubuck is back!"
     Starbuck switched off his transmitter, turned up the receiver of his
radio set.  It whined and blasted out amplified static, but there was no
voice in reply to his own.  "Hello," Starbuck tried again.
"Houston/CAPCOM! Hello!  Waddya say, guys?  Do you read me...?"

*****

     On the Earth below the results of half a thousand years of history
lay spread across the face of the planet, across her continents and her
oceans; no square foot of Earth's face was untouched by the hands of
Mankind, from the polar ice-caps, to the equatorial deserts, from the
ice-capped mountain peaks to the steaming, green tropical rain forests.
     In some places, the hand of man had wrought beauty.
     In others---horror.
     Inside a towering city of the twenty-fifth century, iside one of the
great supermodern buildings, there was a room....a strange room with no
discernable walls.  Only planes of velvety blackness, strange, deep
velvety blackness, and on the blackness, outlines and points of light,
lights that represented the stars surrounding Earth. And on the floor of
the strange room, a gridwork of coordinates with pinpoints of gleaming
color moving back and forth, left and right.
     This strange room was unknown to  most of the inhabitants of Earth. 
Ninety-nine percent of humanity had never heard of this strange place,
and the one percent who knew of its existence spoke of it in hushed
whispers, glancing furtively about to make sure that their statements
were not overheard.
     This was the War Room.
     Inside the War Room a technician's eyes widened as she saw the light
moving across the face of her scope.  She was unconscious of the curves
of her body, how how they were emphasized by her trim, form-fitting tunic
and tight-cut military trousers.  She thought only of her duty, of the
responsibilities which she bore.
     "Um, sir..." the technician said aloud. "Super..."
     Her supervisor, a similarly uniformed technician wearing the unisex
garb of his nation, turned at the sound of her voice. "Super here," he
spoke into a mouthpiece.  "What station is this?"
     "Fidela Minor, Supervisor."  A momentary pause. "You don't hear from
me very often.  My scanners monitor the low-frequency direct-commo
bands."
     "Yes, yes, Fidela Minor. I'm sure you're picking up Bandit and
Raider chatter.  No reason for alarm.  It's probably Van Allen belt
echoes from that attack on our freighters last night. Those signals will
be bouncing around the spectrum for a week at most."
     "Yes, sir.  I mean...no, sir!  It's not an echo. It's a voice, a
strong voice. And it's singing."
     "Singing?  Fidela Minor, did you say singing?  Stay on the line,
Fidela."  He switched lines. "Operational Control, this is supervisor
control on the floor. I want a direct feed-line from Fidela Minor."
     And into his monitor minispeaker there came the static-distorted
tones of a man's voice singing.  "These vagabond shoes.  They are longing
to stay...." The voice dropped the old song, switched over to
businesslike, almost urgent tones. "Hey, you guys wake up and fly right! 
What's goin' on down there?  I'm on final reentry countdown and I can't
get anything from you. If I don't get some landing instructioms from you,
I'm going to put a big black hole right in the middle of downtown
Burbank.  Or Peoria.  Or to tell the God's honest truth, I don't have the
slightest idea where the hell I'm going!"
     A look of puzzlement crossed the supervisor's face. "This is
practically an alien language. Got to be some joker having fun at our
expense!"
     But the supervior's summation wasn't left to reach its final
conclusion.  Another voice broke in, even more urgently on the line. 
"Alert!  Alert!  Alien spacecraft invading defense belt, vecdtor four one
zero.  Repeat, alien space craft..."
     The supervisor leaped into action. "Oh, my God!" he exclaimed, "it's
heading directly for the defense shield!" Into his transmitter he almost
shouted, "Get me intercept.  Intercept squadron on the line---quickly.
Top-red emergency!'
     At Intercept Squadron headquarters the commanding officer picked up
her handset.  Colonel Giana Fairshare was herself a beautiful woman,
fully aware of her own features and the power they gave her in human
dealings, but when she was on duty there was no consideration of glamor
or romance.  Her job was far too important for her to permit any
dalliance to distract her from its performance.
     "Colenel Fairshare here.  Yes. I read. What are the coordinates? 
Right!  She hung her commo unit away.  Pressed the control stud under a
glaringly flashing light.  A raucous claxon sent up its grating, grinding
hoots.  "Alert intercept!" Giana commanded via loudspeaker.  "Retard
defense shield counterforce one hundred miles.  Hold fire until we verify
target identification!"
     And from launching pads where sleek interceptor craft were held in
flight-ready preparedness twenty-four hours a day, engines roared into
shrieking, urgent life and gleaming, powerful fighting craft screamed
away from Earth, ready to engage any enemy that appeared.
     "Alert all intercept aircraft," Colonel Fairshare's voice came. 
"Stand by for readout on position of enemy craft!"
     The War Room supervisor's voice came metallically over the
transmitter to Giana's earphone.  "Very odd, Colonel."
     "What's odd?" she snapped.
     "The target seems to be moving unusually slowly for any known type
of spacecraft. And its flight path is strange, too---erratic."
     A technician's voice broke in on the line.  "Target thirty seconds
from electronic destruct field."
     Giana Fairshare peered through her window. She was no deskbound
commander, but flew every mission with her squadron, fought in every
engagement and shared every risk that she asked her subordinates to run.
"I have the target in visual sight, now," she was saying.  "My God!  What
is that thing?"
     As astonished as their commander, the members of the Intercept
Squadron streaked past Starbuck's antiquated spaceship, banking smoothly
for another pass at the intruder.
     "All right," Starbuck Rogers exclaimed, unaware of the purpose of
the craft that had scrambled to meet him. "Hey, it's really nice to see
some friendly space-jockeys up to meet me!" His eyes widened, then
narrowed again. "Hey, hold on a minute."  He gazed in amazement at these
sleek, yet brutally powerful space fighters as they roared around his
primitive ship like turbohydroplanes circling a wallowing rowboat. "Who
are you guys?" Starbuck asked weakly. "Hell, what are ya?"
     The voice that returned through his headset was that of Giana
Fairshare. "Attention alien spacecraft.  Do you read me?"
     "You bet I read you! And watch you you're calling alien!  You don't
look so fuckin' familiar yourself.  Who are you?
      The female voice was sharp.  "You will restrict your responses to
yes and no. You are in grave danger."
     "From who?" Starbuck demanded. "You?"
     "You are traversing a narrow corridor into our island cities."
     "Island what? Look, honey..."
     "Colonel Fairshare, if you please.  Commander, Intercept Squadron. 
Now please be quiet. If you deviate from my orders by so much as a
thousand yards you will be burned into vapor.  Do you understand that?"
     "Vapor?!  Yeah, I got that.  What do I do?"
     "Do you have manual override capabilities?"
     "You bet!"
     "Then follow me very closely."
     "I'll be right on your tail.  Just show me the way, honey!" He
punched the manual override button, putting his ship's computer into
standby mode and taking control of the ship himself.  Just like an old
time jet jockey, he thought to himself, and then---well, we really blew
it this time.  That's gotta be the Russians...that commander of their
sounds like one tough chick!
     Through his speakers came the harsh voice. "You're doing fine so
far."
     "Das vidanya," Starbuck replied bitterly.
     "What was that?" the woman's voice sounded puzzled.
     "Hey, I was only trying to be friendly."
     "I didn't understand those last words. But let me assure you,
whoever you are, pilot, that violating our planetary airspace is not an
act of friendship. It's an act of war!"
     Starbuck shook his head and concentrated on following the sleek
interceptor down to land. "Wait'll the guys at the Cape hear this one,"
he muttered to himself.  "Starbuck Rogers sets down right in the middle
of Red Square.  But they'd better not torture me for everything I know; I
took a crash course in resisting before I left."
     Minutes later he found himself seated inside a streamlined monorail
car as it streaked along its track.  It was surrounded by a city of
incredible beauty, graceful towers and glistening spires thrusting upward
nearly to touch the metallic and glassite dome that covered the entire
metropolis.
     Guards stood alert at the front and rear of the monorail car.  The
only passengers between the steely-eyed guardians were Starbuck Rogers
and the Giana Fairshare.  The car's windows were darkened, but he could
peer through them and see the golden, glittering city outside.
     "Wow!" Starbuck exclaimed.  "This sure isn't the Moscow they told us
about back in the good ole' Big Apple!"
     "This is the Island City, pilot," Giana said coldly.  "But who are
you not to know that?"
     "Okay, okay. I know I'm in the Island City.  There, you satisfied?"
Starbuck said sarcastically.  "It's just---I've never seen anything like
this.  What kind of place is it?"
     "Come away from the window, please," Giana said.  Although her words
were couched as a request, their tone made it clear that she spoke a
command.  She pointed premportily to a button beneath the clear panel and
Starbuck obediently pressed it.  The window went dark.
     "Look," he said, returning to his seat beside Giana.  "I think I
deserve some kind of explanation.  Where are we really?  I don't even
know what planet I'm on!"
     "What you really deserve is the gas chamber," Giana answered
sharply.  "But we don't have anything like that any more.  We have a
better fate awaiting you after your interrogation is completed."
     "And I thought Princess Koji was a nightmare," Starbuck muttered
bitterly.
     "Princess Koji!" Giana jerked at the name.  "I'm sure you'd like me
to believe that she sent you. Well, it may interest you to know that
whoever really did send you here planted a bomb on your ship.  It was to
be triggered by the Earth's atmosphere entering your ship when you opened
the hatch after you landed."
     "A b--bomb?  Are you sure?"
     "Had we not moved your ship directly into a decontamination chamber
to remove alien microbes, we would not have discovered the charge.  And
you, pilot, would be dead!"
     Starbuck took a minute to assimilate this latest blockbuster.  Not
only was he no closer to an understanding of what was taking place around
him---each new revalation only seemed to move him further away from one! 
He shook his head and stared introspectively into the darkened window
panel.  "If this is all a nightmare....then I can only say that it's a
beaut!"

*****

Three

     A sterile room, gleaming white from floor to ceiling, from wall to
wall.  Light glared down from ever direction.  The room was furnished
with the most spartan of implements.  Two hard chairs.  One small table. 
A single panel barely distinguishable from the sterile glaring walls that
surrounded it.
     And one living occupant.
     Dirk Rogers, Captain, United States Air Force.
     Starbuck sat in one of the two chairs, gazing morosely at the white
panel, wondering, wondering who or what might come through it---and when!
     He stood up, moved away from his chair, strode nervously around the
room chewing his lower lip, smacking the fist of one hand into the palm
of the other. Finally he went to the white panel and tried to press it
open.  It did not respond.
     Instead, an even more inconspicuous panel slid aside, at the
opposite end of the room, and a man passed through it to stand staring at
Starbuck from the rear.  The newcomer was built along the delicate lines
of a person who has lived long and grown far from the fleshy existence of
youth or even middle age.  His hair was a gray that was heavily salted
with white.  His features were round, asectic, almost spiritual in
appearance.  Yet a keenness of intellect so marked his features that non
one would ever have mistaken him for less than the genius he was!
     "Doctor Salik is my name," the newcomer announced.  "It's a pleasure
to meet you, Captain Rogers."
     Starbuck spun on one heel, faced the other in readiness to make any
move necessary.  "What in hell is going on here?  Where am I and what are
you doing to me?"
     "You're being probed," Salik announced as calmly and
matter-of-factly as if he were an adult answering the simple question of
a small child.
     Starbuck swung around, glaring at the walls and the ceiling of the
sterile chamber.
     "It's all electronic and quite painless," the old man told him.  His
voice was thin, his tone a strange combination of gentleness and
abrasiveness, as if he had seen all that the world had to show, and had
reached a point of tolerance toward human foibles, yielding only
occasionally to impatience with the foolishness of the mortal beings.
     "I must say," Salik continued, "we're quite as astonished as you
are, Captain, by what has happened. Your testing has provided the most
extraordinary data!"
     "All right, get to it," Starbuck snapped impatiently.  "What's
happened ot me?  If I'm dead, I obviously didn't go to heaven. So just
what planet is this?"
     "What planet?" Salik laughed. "Why, Earth, of course!  You returned
yesterday morning, just as your mission required and on almost the
precise landing area originally programmed into your ship's computer."
     Starbuck shook his head despairingly.  "Doctor, I may have been
through a lot, but there's no way you're going to tell me that city out
there is anything like New York City."
     "No, it's not," Salik conceded.  "That's because there's nothing
like the New York City you knew in the twentieth century left on Earth." 
     Starbuck stared impatiently at the doctor.
     "Captain," Salik resumed, "we're trying to find a way to ease you
into what's happened."
     Starbuck Rogers leaped from his chair and stood glaring at the
portly scientist.  "I was raised back in the 1960s, Doc.  So don't be
afraid to shock me.  I know what culture shock is!  Just let me have the
facts, man!  Tell me the plain truth and you can spare us a lot of time
and trouble beating around the bush!"
     "I'm afraid that even I am not permitted to tell you everything,"
Salik replied. "For your own protection, Captain, it's been decided that
the shock would be too great-despite what you've told me.  Your 1960s
were a difficult period, were they? I confess that my specialty is not
ancient history."
     "Never mind that.  You say it's been decided I can't handle the
thruth, eh?  Well, who decided that?  I have a right to...."
     "Please!" the overly-dignified scientist broke in. "I am but a
humble man of science.  Allow me to bring in my administrator, Dr. Zee."
     "Aw, look, Doc," Starbuck complained in annoyance.  
     Salik crossed the wall to the semiconcealed white panel.  It opened
silently at his approach and he spoke to someone outside the sterile
chamber.  "Would you please bring Dr. Zee in here?"
     From the opened panel there emerged the most astonishing creature
that Starbuck Rogers had ever laid eyes on.  In his own time ther had
been fiction about intelligent rogbots, more or less manlike machines
built with elaborate control circuitry capable of duplicationg---or at
least simulating---human thought.  The famous ones---C-3P0, R2D2, Robby,
Adam Link, Gog, Mr. Atom, the Daleks---had one their place in the hearts
of lovers of science fiction.
     But when the time came for the building of that kind of creature,
technology had taken a turn in a different direction.  Instead of
furnishing the ordinary household with a robot who would stand over a
washtub by the hour, scrubbing dirty linens, the technologists had
invented washing machines with their own controls to do the job.  Later,
instead of building humanlike robots and teaching them to fly airplanes,
the technologists had invented autopilots and built them directly into
the instrumentation of the planes.  And so it had gone---the traditional,
manlike robot of science fiction and fantasy from the Tin Woodsman
onward, had been a scientific dead end, left behind by the march of
progress.
     Or so it had been in Starbuck's time.
     But now, there trotted into the sterile chamber a being whose very
presence and existence disproved this scientific theory.  For here was a
robot, made more or less along the lines of the fanciful ideas of
Starbuck's own boyhood.
     It was barely three-feet tall, made in a humanlike but far from
human form.  It held its head at an angle and tottered around the room in
a manner that brought Starbuck to the brink of laughter despite the
desperate nature of his situation.  For all that it was a thing of a
metal and glass, the robot reminded Starbuck of the caperings of a
chimpanzee in the New York City Zoo half a millennium before.
     "What is it?" Starbuck asked Salik.
     "That's your drone," the scientist replied. 'His name is Boxey."
     "He's my---what?" Starbuck was flabbergasted.
     While the two men spoke, the robot went about its business, totally
ignoring them.  It crossed the sterile chamber, opened another door and
tottered into the next room.
     "For the duration of your debriefing and determination," Dr. Salik
said, "he will act as your personal aide."
     As Starbuck stood in gaping amazement, the drone totterd back into
the sterile chamber and the door slid shut behind him.  The robot was
unchanged, but now he had an odd object hanging from a cable around his
neck.  The thing was not very large---smaller than a breadbox, Starbuck
thought to himself, yet rather larger than a deck of playing cards.
     It was clearly a highly sophisticated machine, with complex
circuitry, controls and indicator lights that flashed continually,
glowing brightly, dimming, flashing suddenly and then disappearing again. 
Yet---Starbuck wonderd if it was his imagination at work or a real
phenomenon he observed---the ever-changing pattern of lights bore an
uncanny resemblance to the features of a human face.
     Then a voice came from the odd, boxlike object. It spoke not to
Starbuck but to his scientist-companion, in a voice of astonishing
richness, soft and benevolent, soothing and serene. Yet it was also a
voice of absolute authority.
     "Good morning, Dr. Zee," Salik greeted the box. "It's a lovely day."
     "Thank you," the box replied. "I did my best today."
     Starbuck gaped in amazement as the gray-headed scientist and the
flashing lighted box conducted a pleasant social conversation.  The
scientist turned toward Starbuck and introduced the newcomer.
     "Dr. Zee is a member of our Computer Council and in addition to
other duties, he is personally responsible for all environmental controls
here within the Island City."
     The box said, "I think I'll introduce a pale hint of mauve into this
evening's sunset.  Not so deep as amethyst, but I'll try for something
more subtle, more like the texture of carefully roasted cinnamon."
     The box's lights flashed with something that Starbuck Rogers had
come to identify as an expression of preening self-satisfaction.
     "I do hope the Captain can watch it with us," Dr. Zee continued.
"It's truly going to be lovely, and one does always strive to capture the
approbation of a new audience."
     Starbuck stared at the box, then murmured to Dr. Salik, "I'd do some
checking if I were you.  Find out who's programming that thing and maybe
check him out a little."
     The box indicated that it had heard every syllable.  "Captain
Rogers, it is we of the Council who do the programming for the entire
city.  Kindly reserve your opinions for your own delecation.  Now," and
the machine made a sound that can only be identified as clearing its
throat, "shall we get down to cases?"
     Dr. Salik rose and indicated that he was about to leave.  "I shall
offer you a little word of advice before I go, Captain Rogers.  These
drones, or quads as they are sometimes known, have been programmed by one
another, over a span of many generations.  We have been saved by them, in
a sense.  The mistakes that we have made in areas like our environment
have been entirely turned over to them.
     "They averted what must have been certain doom for the Earth,
Captain.  Little by little, they bring us back to where we will not have
to depend entirely on other planets for food and water.  A quad is not a
human.  But you can hurt their feelings---their circuitry and their
programming include emotions.  It is their sensitivity that separates
them from mere machines."
     Salike stepped through the doorway.  As he disappeared, he called
back to Starbuck, "I'll see you in approximately sixteen hours."
     "Sixteen hours!" Starbuck leaped to his feet. "Sixteen hours!  Wait
a minute!"
     He started after Dr. Salik, jumped back just in time to avoid being
clobbered by the automatically closing panel.  "If you think I'm going to
sit here talking to a package of Christmas lights for sixteen hours...."
     "Sit down, Captain," the soothing voice of Dr. Zee came to Buck.
"Now, let's try to be as pleasant to each other as we can, eh?  Please
don't snap at me, and I shall try to be sympathetic to your plight. 
That's a good fellow.  Thank you."
     Starbuck stared at the box of flashing lights, dumbfounded.
     Dr. Zee spoek to the quad from whose neck he hung. "Be a good drone,
Boxey...and place me on the table where I can get a good look at the
Captain. While Captain Rogers and I begin to get acquainted, perhaps you
could offer him a bit of liquid refreshment."
     "I'm not thirsty!" Starbuck snapped.
     "Of course you are," the soothing voice droned on.  "You're
extremely dehydrated from your ordeal. Sit down, Starbuck---do you mind? 
May I call you Starbuck?"
     While Starbuck stared, Boxey removed Dr. Zee from around his neck
and placed him carefully on the table.  The little robot marched
mechanically through the sliding door.
     "Well now," the box of lights said, "what an attractive man you are,
Starbuck.  My word, is that hair of yours blonde?"
     Starbuck slid slowly back into his chair.  He felt as if he'd been
handed a live concussion grenade and asked to make friends with it.
"Blonde," he murmured. "that's right."
     "How truly rare blonde hair is these days," Dr. Zee said.
     "My mother had blonde hair," Starbuck snapped back. "Look, can we
blast right through this rainbow and cut to the chase?  I've been trying
to find out where I am...who I am...who you are...Can I please have some
answers?"
     "Of course, Starbuck," the box of lights replied. "That's why I'm
here.  To answer your questions."
     "Great!  Then let's have it, the straight data!"
     The lights flashed like a patient man nodding his head to calm an
impatient adolescent.  "First, you are Captain Starbuck Rogers. 
According to your ship's chronometer, you left Earth in 1987 on a mission
of exploration..."
     "That much I know," Starbuck broke it. "Try telling me something I
don't already know!"
     "Well, if preliminary data hold up, it appears you have returned to
Earth five hundred and four years later, to be precise.  Starbuck---you,
we, all of us---are now in the twenty-fifth century."
     Starbuck stared at Zee, then turned to the drone Boxey who had
returned and stood beside him with a glass in his metallic hand.
     "I believe I will take that drink now, thanks. In fact, thanks very
much!' He reached for the liquid and tilted back his head.

*****

     Elsewhere, in an efficiently furnished corridor, Dr. Salik was
carrying on a consultation with Colonel Giana Fairshare of the Intercept
Squadron.  They walked briskly along the corridor, almost trotting. Dr.
Salik had just made a statement and Giana Fairshare responded.
     "I don't believe a word of it!"
     "I'm not easily duped," Dr. Salik said.
     "It's not my opinion of you," the smartly uniformed officer said.
"But my respect for those bandits who have been decimating my squadron. 
The bandits would do anything to prevent our completing a treaty with
Hydra.  Anything including planting a phony man-from-the-past on us, for
heaven knows what purposes of espionage or sabotage."
     While Dr. Salik and Colonel Fairshare continued their conference,
Starbuck Rogers continued his confrontation with Dr. Zee.  Still later,
while Starbuck rested from his ordeal, the others met.  The setting was a
sleek, modernistic office, comfortable yet efficient.  Dr. Zee rested on
a desk between Colonel Giana Fairshare and the gray-headed scientist
Salik.
     "You are wrong, Giana," Zee's smooth voice poured from the box. 
"Starbuck Rogers is not a bandit or a plant of the bandits."
     "It's Colonel Fairshare, not Giana, to you, if you don't mind." The
officer was clearly unhappy with the situation.  "And I'll rely," she
continued, "on the full Council's judgment, not yours alone."
     "My dear," the box replied, "I personally interrogated Captain R
ogers.  You can take my word for it.  He's a wonnnnnnnnnderful man,
believe me!"
     Giana pursed her lips angrily. 'I do believe you when you tell me
you believe he's a 'wonnnnnnnnderful' man.  But then, you're not being
asked to risk the lives of our few surviving soldiers on sneaky
subterfuge."
     "He's only one man," Dr. Salik put in conciliatorily. "What could he
possibly do to endanger our people?"
     'He could attempt to discredit the treaty with Hydra!" Giana
snapped.
     "But he has made no such attempt," Zee said. "He comes to us a very
bewildered young man.  Devastated by the loss of every loved one.  To
him, there is nothing left to save.  He has already lost everything."
     "I would like an opportunity to spend some time with the Captain,"
Giana Fairshare said.
     "If you're hoping to find fault with his testimony, you'll be
wasting your time."
     "Saving Earth cannot be a waste of time, despite my having to endure
the Captain's company!"
     "If Dr. Zee has no objections," Salik said, "I certainly have none."
     "Then the captain is mine," Giana asserted triumphantly, "until I
expose him!" She rose from her seat and left the room, trailing a
military sense of order.
     The box on the desk said, "I've not seen Colonel Fairshare so
uncharacteristically emotional about anything before this."
     "About anything?" Salik echoed his mechanical colleague. "Or about
anyone?"

*****

     On a downtown mall of the Island City, gold elevators whisked
silently up and down in transparent columns surrounding a central
fountain of waters illuminated by dancing, colorful lights.  Buildings
and vehicles gleamed in a bright, pleasant light.  Smartly dressed and
happy citizens moved from place to place, stopping for a bit of
refreshment, shopping, appreciating works of art that were carefully
spaced around the plaza, or conducting any other business that they
happened to have.
     Far across the mall, dwarfed by the towering spire of levels of
magnificent architecture, two figures strolled slowly, side by side.
     The man gazed around himself, obviously awestruck by the
magnificence of his amazing surroundings.
     The woman, accustomed to the mall and everything in it, kept her
attention for the man at her side.
     "This part doesn't seem so much a nightmare as a beautiful dream,"
Starbuck Rogers commented happily.
     "It's taken a long time to rebuilt," Giana Fairshare responded.
"We've reached the point where we can once again start to grow.  For more
than four hundred years after the worldwide holocause, people did little
more than eke out their own bare survival!"
     "Tell me what happened," Starbuck almost pleaded.  He was
half-fearful to hear the horrors that he knew must be coming, yet he
could not continue to live in this new world without finding out what had
happened to the old one!
     "I can't tell you," Giana answered. "It isn't so much that I'm
unwilling to tell you, it's the Council's decision. They will tell you,
when they feel that the time has come to do so."
     "I've been hearing that ever since I got here," Starbuck said
angrily.
     "Why is it so imperative?" Giana demanded. "Why must you hear that
story? The end of your world was so hideous!"
     Starbuck paused and reached for Giana's hands.  She let him take
them.  They stood facing each other, looking into each other's eyes. "I
need to hear because until I do, until I hear it, and feel it, it's not
real," Starbuck explained. "Look, I've lost everything I ever cared
about. My father, mothr, brothers and sisters. And---a woman who had
sensitivities and feeling that make all you people seem like robots.
     "You're sanitized, ethicized, scrubbed, polished, and packaged so
completely that you don't realize you're acting like a pack of Pavlov's
dogs.  Your Computer Council rings the bell and everybody salivates, nice
and neat and on command.
     "But somewhere, somehow..." He stood gazing off, not into the
gleaming vista of Island City's plaza, but into the inevitable mists of
his lost past. "Somplace else in space and time, my own people, the real
people, the real people are waiting for me. And until somebody shows me
different, they're going to remain more real to me than anything I've
seen in this monument of plastic, or anyone I've met since I happened to
doze off one afternoon in Anno Domini one-nine-eight-seven."
     Starbuck and Giana stood for long seconds, then the serious, almost
bitter expression on his face gave way to a boyish look of abashment.  "I
guess that's the end of the tour. I'm sorry, Colonel Fairshare, that I
don't make a better tourist here in your pretty plastic utopia."
     He started to move away from her, but Giana ran the few steps that
separated them and put her hand on Starbuck's arm.  "Wait! I'm sorry. I
know it's hard for you to understand, but some of this is being done for
your own good."
     Starbuck suppressed a laugh. "Some of it?  For my own good?"
     "There's our own security to think of. Look, give us a little time.
We are a feeling people, whether we appear so to you or not.  We want to
trust you.  But you'll have to put some of your trust in us, too.  It
can't be all one way, Starbuck."
     He shrugged. "I don't guess I've got a lot of choice."
     She smiled. "No, I guess you don't, either. But if you're ready to
take it fatalistically, you could make things a little easier for us all,
and a little pleasanter.  How about a little glass of Ambrosa?"
     He looked at her curiously. "A little glass of what?"
     "Ambrosa.  It's a synthetic wine that we use. Some find it very
intoxicating."
     "Okay," Starbuck consented. "Then let's make it two or three. I'd
like to get good and drunk."
     They moved across the mall until they reached a pleasantly decorated
area furnished with tables and chairs.  The atmosphere was a little like
that of a sidewalk caf‚ in the days of Starbuck's boyhood, but of course,
here in the domed Island City, there was no real difference between
outdoors and indoors.
     People were sitting at tables, sipping glasses of a shimmering
liquid.  Individuals and couples strolled up, greeted one another,
forming and shifting into pairs and threesomes and quartets, then
drifting away on other errands of their own.
     Starbuck and Giana found a vacant table and sat at it.  A waiter
appeared and Giana ordered two Ambrosas.
     As soon as the waiter had moved away to bring their drinks, Starbuck
asked, "What's it like outside?"
     "Outside the dome?" Giana echoed. "You..." She considered for a
little. "You wouldn't like it out there."
     "Why not? Too much radiation?  Pollution?  Environmental spoilage? 
We were making a mess of things back in my time. Some people were trying
to preserve the countryside, but for ever band of ecological idealists
trying to save a wild river, there were ten billion-dollar corporations
swinging all their clouts to turn it into a running cesspool."
     Giana started to answer, but before she could speak Starbuck
continued. "Or is it the opposite? Has the outside gone back to nature? 
Maybe there's a real utopia outside the dome and you people are afraid to
let anyone see it for fear that they'll rebel against your shiny plastic
world inside?"
     Starbuck stopped speaking as the waiter arrived and placed drinks in
front of each of them.  As soon as the waiter had left, Giana answered
Starbuck.
     "You're just being paranoid about a secret utopia outside and a
conspiracy to keep our people unaware of it. Ah, if only that were the
case!  We could get past that in a heartbeat.
     "No, I'm afraid your first guess was more on target, Starbuck. 
There's radiation in some places, ruins and scorched earth just about
everywhere else. That's why we're so dependent on trade with other
planets.  We can't grow our own food here!  We're trying to restore the
Earth, there are a few experimental farms and orchards under cultivation,
but it's just the tiniest beginning."
     "And this trade agreement," Starbuck said, "this treaty with Hydra.
What's that all about?  What's the role of this princess of theirs?"
     "We're being starved out by bandits," Giana said grimly.
     "Bandits?  You mean, like---space pirates? We had a look at space
pirates five hundred years in advance. But nobody believed there would
ever but such things really!"
     "Well, there are!  They've choked off our supply lines from our
trading partners.  The Hydrans have promised to keep those supply lines
open for us, in exchange for landing privileges here on Earth."
     "You won't let them land here now?" Starbuck asked.
     "They're a powerful force, Starbuck. Frighteningly powerful. 
They've conquered worlds from here to Aeterna Medusar! We're afraid,
frankly, of letting them get a toehold on our planet.  But on the other
hand, if we can get them to help us against the bandits, we can have an
assured food supply until we've got our own production back to higher
levels."
     Starbuck shook his head. "If these Hydrans are so powerful and Earth
is in such a sorry state, why didn't they just swoop in here and take
over?"
     "We're very far from the strong-points of their empire. It would be
very hard for them to wage war in Earth's sector.  You have a military
background, Captain Rogers. You understand about overextended lines of
support."
     Starbuck nodded to show that he did understand. "But if the Earth is
such a mess," he countered, "if there's nothing growing here and the land
is wrecked with radiation and rubble---why do the Hydrans want to land at
all?"
     "Because Earth is the gateway to the galaxies beyond. I don't know
how much was understood of cosmic astrogation in your time..."
     "Damned little," Starbuck broke in. "We'd sent probes to the other
planets and humans had visited the Moon and worked in space. My own
flight was to've been the first manned tour of the solar system and I
obviously didn't make it!  What came after is a closed book to me!  As of
1988 onward, you know more than I do, however much or little that might
happen to be."
     "Well," Giana said, "I don't want to get too technical for starters,
Starbuck.  But speaking in layman's terms, space is like an ocean.  You
can travel across it, or through it...but there are reefs and shoals and
whirlpools and all sorts of all other perils.  But there are also safe
channels, and even shortcuts.
     "And it so happens that by reason of its location in the cosmic sea,
Earth is a place of access to the farther island universes.  I know my
analogy to an ocean isn't perfect, but..."
     "I understand," Starbuck nodded. "Yes, it makes sense, even to me." 
He grinned, self-deprecatingly, just for a moment, before his features
grew grim once again. "But what it amounts to, then, is that you're going
to let the Hydrans use Earth as a military base for conquering uncounted
worlds,"---he gestured to the roof of the dome---"out there."
     "The treaty has safeguards in it, Starbuck.  It's for the good of
Earth."
     "What kind of safeguards?"
     "No man-o-war or ship bearing any kind of arms will ever be allowed
within our defense shields.  The only ships will let through are
scientific exploration craft.  And then, later on, trading vessels."
     "Well, that sounds nice.  Just how do you think you're going to
enforce it, once they're inside the shield?"
     "That will be my job," Giana said gravely.  "My job...ours....the
military."  Suddenly she changed the subject of her conversation. "You
haven't even tasted your Ambrosa, Starbuck!"
     He grinned at her and lifted his glass for a sip.
     "Well, what do you think it it?" Giana asked.
     "Tastes kinda---weak," Starbuck commented.  
     "We're a culture of moderation," Giana responded. "We don't go in
for the tough, he-man kind of booze that you used to have back in your
time."
     "Really?  So what do you guys do if you're feeling a
tad...immoderate?"
     "In our country, Starbuck---why, things may look comfortable to
you," she swept her hand in a circle, indicating the broad, shining mall. 
"But the truth is, everything is carefully balanced.  We have little
margin for error and absolutely none for waste.  If somebody ruins a
serving of food, or greedily consumes two when he's entitled to
one---then somebody else goes without a meal that day.  That's how
closely things are planned and balanced.  What you would call
immoderation, what you would call just a petty foible in your world---is
a crime in mine. And criminals are ordered to leave the Island City."
     "That's it?!" Starbuck asked. "If theyr'e criminals, aren't they
jailed or punished in some other way?"
     "The outside world isn't very pleasant anymore.  You said before
that you thought there might be a secret utopia outside the dome.  If you
ever see the outside, you'll change your mind.  The outside world has a
name.  Inferno. There, you are denied the protection of society.  You
take your chances with thieves, murderers, and worse!  Worse!  Believe
me!"
     "You mean I'd risk all that just to get a stronger drink than this
Ambrosa stuff?"
     Giana lifted her glass and they chinked their rims before sipping
again.
     "To your treaty," Starbuck toasted.
     Giana said, "You seem unusually interested in that treaty for
someone who claims to have no interest in it at all."
     Starbuck shook his head.  Their conversation seemed to bounce back
and forth between lighthearted banter and deadly seriousness.  "Now that
you mention it, there is something bothering me about that treaty," he
conceded.
     "Then you do have a point of view after all.  Do you have something
to recommend to the Council?"
     "I'd like to see my ship," Starbuck said, "if that's possible."
     "All things are possible," Giana said. But there was suspicion in
her face and doubt in her voice. "All things are possible, Captain
Rogers," she repeated.

*****

Four

     Starbuck's five-hundred-year-old spaceship had been moved from its
landing pad to a great, cavernous hangar.  The distant walls of the place
were so far off, so dimly illuminated that standing beside the ship gave
one the impression of being in the center of a great, darkling plain, the
spaceship and oneself the only objects for untold expanses in all
directions.
     Starbuck stood gazing thoughtfully at his old ship.  Giana Fairshare
waiting at his side for some reaction.
     "Those guards," Starbuck broke the silence. "They must've thought we
were crazy coming out here at this hour of the night.  But I admire the
way you handled them, Giana."
     "Rank has its privileges, Starbuck. I am the commander of the
Intercept Squadron, as well as carrying a full colonel's commission." 
She stifled a yawn.  "The only crazy part of it for me, was having to
wake up in the wee hours to get here!"
     "You may not have had your usual beauty sleep," Starbuck said, "but
I've had enough sleep to last me a lifetime.  Five hundred years of
shut-eye!  That's enough to put ol' Rip Van Winkle himself to shame!"
     He moved from Giana's side and stood closer to his ship. He stood
gazing wistfully inside, through its window, while Giana watched him
appraisingly.  Suddenly Starbuck reacted to something he saw.  He nearly
jumped in surprise, then leaned over to examine some strange streaks that
he found on the ship's fuselage.
     He turned back toward Giana, gestured urgently. "What are these
markings?" he asked.
     Giana moved to the ship, standing beside Starbuck.  "Ah, I forgot. 
In your time space exploration was just beginning and space warfare was
something no one had ever experienced."
     "Right. So what's that got to do with my ship?" Starbuck asked.
     "Well, these streaks are fairly common on combat spacecraft."
     "I wasn't in combat.  The Hydrans found me, revived me, and sent me
back here to Earth. I remember when I was approaching, your craft came up
and threatened me pretty effectively, but they didn't fire, did they?"
     "Certainly not," Giana asserted.
     "Then---whose did?  And---when?"
     Giana pondered. 'Most likely the bandits who attack our shipping,
took a few shots at you while you were having your long nap, Starbuck. 
You wouldn't have any memory of that happening, but you're lucky to be
alive at all."
     He nodded in deep concentration. "All right, it's possible. But
then, why didn't they finish me off?  An inactive, derelict spaceship. If
they didn't destroy me outright, they'd want to strip my spacecraft for
salvage and loot, wouldn't they?  Especialy once I'd gotten their
attention enough so they'd fired on me!"
     'You were in space a long time," Giana said. "Anything might have
happened over those centuries."
     Starbuck shook his head. "No so," he disagreed. "Look." He rubbed
his finger on one of the streaks, pulled it away and showed Giana the
vivid smudge on his flesh. "These burns are fresh!  The cordite's not
even oxidized yet!"
     He gazed at the hangar floor in concentration, walked in a circle
once while working out his thoughts.  When he stopped he gazed straight
into Giana's eyes. "I think Princess Koji's attack fighters fired on me
before they towed my ship on board!"
     "But that doesn't make sense either," Giana exclaimed.  "Princess
Koji's ship is unarmed. That's the law!"
     "Then she's bending all hell out of it," Starbuck said angrily.
     "If you're so sure of that, Captain, what do you suggest we do about
it?"
     "I'd search that battlestar, or whatever you call that flying
palace, before I'd ever let it inside Earth's defense shield!"
     "That would be an insulting way to begin an alliance supposedly
built up on good faith."
     "Good faith is for diplomats," Starbuck answered bitterly. "And look
what it gets you," he gestured. "A plastic city with a dome on top of it
sitting right smack dab in the middle of nowhere.  I'd go up there armed
to the teeth. Full squadrons, fully prepared to fight.  If I'm mistaken,
you can always say it was a military escort of honor or some such line. 
Nobody's really be fooled, but it would save face all around. But if you
don't, you're just sitting ducks."
     Giana said, "For a man who's been asleep for five hundred years, you
seem to have strong opinions about this world you never made."
     "Okay," Starbuck grated. "Okay, you're right, right as rain.  It's
none of my fuckin' business how you blow up your world.  My generation
didn't undersand what the hell we were doing either, and it looks like we
knocked it all apart shortly after I crawled into my jammies, so I guess
there's a kind of poetic justice there after all.  Well, thanks for
everything, Colonel.  Go back to bed and sweet dreams to you."
     He turned and began to stride away across the floor of the vast,
echoing hangar.
     "Just a minute, Rogers!  Where do you think you're going?" Giana
Fairshare was all the military commander now.
     Starbuck stopped and turned back toward her for a moment.  "I'm
going outside the city, thanks."
     Giana started to run after him.  "You can't do that!" she cried in
horror. "It's---you'll die out there, Starbuck!"
     "I've got to find out what happened to my people," he said.
     "That's illegal!"
     "What the hell, Colonel?  This is a free country. Or at least it
used to be."
     "Captain Rogers, you are in a technical state of military custody. 
Regardless of what we think of each other, you're officially my prisoner
and I'm officially your guard.  I cannot permit you to escape."
     "You gonna stop me?"
     She put her hand on the holster attached to her military officer's
tunic. "I will if you force me to, Starbuck."
     Starbuck walked away from her, advancing steadily toward the exit
from the hangar.  It was a calculated risk, he knew. In his life he had
faced down more deadly foes, from enemy pilots in combat fights, to
cold-blooded murderers to raging berserkers.  He knew that the first few
seconds were the most critical.
     He knew that Colonel Giana Fairshare, despite her military position,
was a warm, feeling human being.  Even as he had accused her entire
world---and by implication Giana herself---of being an army of
emotionaless, conditioned zombies, her own reactions had shown the anger
and distress that he had provoked. He knew that she would balk at the
prospect of shooting him now.
     There was no question of her courage. She could face up to an
opponent in fair battle and give as good as she got---could kill without
hesitation in a kill-or-be-killed confrontation.  If she had been
incapable of that, she would never have reached the position of command
she now occupied.  She would have transferred to a softer branch of
service long ago, or paid for her bravado with her life.
     But would she shoot a man in the back?
     An unarmed man?
     Starbuck knew that Colonel Fairshare's sense of duty required her to
undog her holster, open its flap, lift her sidearm from it, aim it at
him, and fire if he refused to stop.  But he knew that Giana Fairshare's
sense of humanity and fair play would do battle with her sense of duty. 
And if the two countering impulses held her paralyzed for a few seconds
more he would be out of her sight, into the darks shadows that ringed the
edge of the cavernous hangar. In another ten seconds or so, he
calculated, he would be in the shadows, invisible to even Giana
Fairshare's sharp eyes---and safe.
     He counted down---ten...a couple of paces...nine....a couple
more...eight...and he heard a slight sound behind him....seven...he
fought down an impulse to look over his shoulder, an impulse that would
reestablish eye-contact between himself and Giana, an impulse that might
be fatal...six....five....he thought he heard a soft sob from behind him,
and felt himself tremble as he continued to walk purposefully
ahead...four...he was past the halfway mark in his march from peril to
safety....three....he could all but feel the shadows deepening around
him....two---
     ---and the world ended!
     Starbuck never knew what hit him.  There was no sound of an
explosion of propellent fuel or discharge of electrical potential; there
was no sense of impact, no flash, no odor of burned cordite or sour,
ionized ozone.
     There was just---nothing.

*****     

     Giana Fairshare stood dumbly where she had stood to fire her sidearm
at the escsaping detainee.  She had seen the flash of her turbo-laser,
felt the surge of electricity as it went screaming through every atom in
Starbuck Rogers's body.  For the seconds that she hesitated she had been
two women.
     Colonel Fairshare of the Intercept Squadron coldly and deliberately
performing her duty to the service and her planet.  And she had been
Giana Fairshare, woman of flesh and blood and emotions, struggling to
keep her other self from firing at the man for whom she had come to feel
as she had never before felt for any person.
     And now, the dutiful military officer having triumphed for just the
length of time it took to raise and fire her weapon, the warm, feeling
woman stood shattered by her own cold-blooded act.
     She lowered the laser, dumbly returned it to its holster and stood
watching the scene before her.  She saw guards rushing from the remote
entrances of the hangar toward the motionless form of the man she had
shot.

*****

     A day later, Dr. Salik looked up from his desk at the sound of the
door to his office opening.  A box stood on his desk, its surfaces
gleaming translucent plexiglass through which multi-colored lights
flashed and glowed in an ever-changing, yet oddly facelike pattern.
Between the aged scientist and the computer-brain lay a typewritten
document both had been studying.
     Colonel Giana Fairshare entered the office and stood for a moment
contemplating the scientist and the computer-brain.  Her glance finally
took in the document and she asked them what it might be.
     Salik cleared his throat as if to win a delay of even half a second
in answering to the young woman.  Then he said, "It's something to make
you feel a little better about what you had to do last night."  He lifted
the paper from the desktop and handed it to Colonel Fairchild.
     She stood silently while she scanned its contents, then read it a
second time, more carefully.  At last she raised her eyes from the flimsy
sheet to the face of the old scientist.  "Then it's true," she said
despairingly, "he was working for the bandits."
     Before Dr. Salik could answer her words the computer-brain on his
desk flashed its lights into a brighter pattern than ever.  "I don't
agree with you," the computer grated, "I simply am not convinced of
Captain Rogers's guilt."
     Dr. Salik raised his hands in resignation. "You're entitled to your
opinion, of course, just like anyone else, Zee.  But you see, you'll find
yourself standing alone, if you'll pardon my use of the expression.  The
evidence is conclusive, isn't it?"
     "Rogers's ship had a microtransmitter attached to its navigational
computer.  Whoever had a receiver tuned to the transmitter's frequency
now has a clear map revealing all of Earth's secret access corridors
through space..."
     "Still...." The computer-brain was hesitant to accept Salik's
conclusions.
     "Still indeed," the old man said. "Our planet is in the soup now.
Who do you think was on the other end of the circuit, Zee?  I think it
was the bandits, and now we're more dependent upon the protection of the
Hydran Empire than ever.  And as for Captain Rogers, I think he stands
convicted by his own actions.  Coming in here with that mapping
transmitter in his ship, then trying to escape from the custody of
Colonel Fairshare...."
     He shifted his glance from the computer to the colonel as he
mentioned her name.  He saw her turn away, unbelieving, stunned by the
new, damning evidence against the man she was still hoping to see
vindicated.  "At first I thought he was guilty," Giana sobbed. "But
then..." She was unable to continue.
     "Personal contact is always a mistake, my dear." That came in the
computer voice of Dr. Zee. 
     Giana wheeled furiously upon the box of lights.  "Don't lecture me
on human behavior, Doctor. I may not be the world's greatest expert on
the subject, but I believe I have an edge on you!"
     "I meant nothing personal," the computer said. "But you are
obviously being subjective in the way your evaluation is made. I, on the
other hand, also support Starbuck Rogers.  But for very practical and
impersonal reasons."
     "What are they?" Dr. Salik asked.
     "Well," Zee replied, "I am convinced of one thing.  Our friend
Captain Rogers has indeed met Princess Koji and been aboard the Hydran
flagship.  His descriptions are too precise to be the guesswork of a
bandit."
     Gaining hope, Giana said, "Maybe the bandits have been aboard
Princess Koji's ship.  They could have coached Starbuck...."
     "My dear," Zee said, "they are the deadliest of enemies.  It is
unlikely that any pirate could survive such a visit at all."    
     "Then you think the Council will share your faith in Captain Rogers?
Even in the face of this damning evidence?"
     "Of course they will.  I am a member of the Council, revered and
respected by all."
     Zee's lights flashed smugly.

*****     

     In deep space, far above the entry corridors to Earth, the Princess
Koji's Hydran flagship still drove contemptuously through the darkness.
Its every line, every jet-thruster, every jutting laser-weapon spoke of
its arrogance and power. 
     In the private quarters of the Princess Koji, the mutant Jaguar-Man
who stood constantly on guard moved aside grudgingly and permitted the
Princess's caller to enter. 
     The visitor was Ortega.
     "I have word from Earth," Ortega announced.
     The Princess Koji was in her luxurious bath, surrounded by a group
of ladies in waiting.  They themselves were only half-clad, as they
performed their duties of attending to every luxurious whim of their
mistresss, anointing her smooth skin and gleaming sensous tresses with
exotic oils and fabulous perfumes.
     Ortega pointedly ignored the display of feminine allure that paraded
before his hungry eyes. "Word of Captain Rogers's fate, that is," he
elaborated.
     Now the Princess Koji looked up, deeply interested.  "He's alive,"
she told Ortega.
     "How did you know that?" he demanded, his eyes narrowing coldly.
     "I just...did," Koji replied cryptically.
     "In any case---you're right!  His ship was intercepted and led down
to planetfall, as I expected."
     "And did the transmitter we secreted aboard the ship provide the
information we need?  Can we lead father's forces through Earth''s
defense shield now?"
     Ortega looked uncomfortable. "Yes, I think so."
     "You think so?" the princess snapped furiously.  "What do you mean,
you 'think so'?" I want a straight answer to my questions, Ortega, not an
evasion."
     "The transmitter has been discovered, my princesss.  So---we know
the present pathway through their shielding, but they know that their
shield has been compromised.  By the time we could get the Imperial fleet
to Earth, they'll surely have changed the coding and we'll be back in a
standoff again."
     "Then we cannot win," Koji gritted furiously.  
     "Oh, no," Ortega shook his head. "No so, my Princess, not so at all! 
We cannot lose!  We will enter their shield in the guise of a peaceful
diplomatic trade mission, and once they have welcomed us inside, we will
destroy the entire shield from within and extend a welcome to the
Imperial fleet!"
     The princess smiled grimly.  "So. You would destroy their defenses
from within.  Just as you destroyed Starbuck Rogers.  Ortega, I though
you were going to plant a bomb on Rogers's ship."
     "I did, my Princess.  But Rogers eluded it."
     Koji smiled enigmatically. "I feel so sorry for you, Ortega.  For
the first time in your life you've been outwitted...by a
five-hundred-year-old man."
     Ortega's face assumed a petulant, bitter expression.  "I wouldn't
worry," he asserted, "Captain Rogers is as good as dead. He will not be
able to explain the presence of the microtransmitter in his ship's
computer circuitry.  They'll know who betrayed their defenses.  In fact,
they already know it." Ortega grinned wolfishly.  "At this very moment,
Starbuck Rogers is on trial for his life!"

*****     

     In a comfortable but spartanly furnished waiting room in the heart
of the Island City on Earth, Starbuck Rogers sat on a sofa, his head held
despairingly in his hands.  Beside him the quad Boxey stood patiently,
the computer-brain Dr. Zee draped around his metal neck.
     Zee's voice was at its richest and most sympathetic as the
computer-sage asked Starbuck how he felt.  The very lights of Dr. Zee
seemed to blink in kindly concern.
     "I feel like hell!" Starbuck moaned.  "Good Lord, what did she use
on me?"
     "A laser charge set to stun," Zee replied.  "No question about it,
Starbuck, women just don't seem to take to you."
     "Women?" Starbuck raised his face from his hands and stared at the
light-face curiously.  "What's that supposed to mean?"
     "Let's face it," Zee answered. "Princess Koji tried to plant a bomb
under you; Giana Fairshare shot you with her laser gun..."
     "I guess I'm just out of step with the times."
     "Well, I'm going to get you back in, Captain. Now, stop worrying
about this little trial. I'm a member of the Council and I am going to
defend you personally."
     "It's nice to have a least one friend," Starbuck muttered.
     Suddenly the robot drone Boxey cocked his head at an odd angle and
gave off a shrill, hurt squeal.
     "Sorry, Boxey," Starbuck laughed. "Two friends."

*****     

     That was the last laugh that Starbuck had before he was led into the
darkened Council Chamber for his trial.  It was a good thing that he had
it, for the trial itself was as grim and deadly an ordeal as ever an
accused man had had to endure.
     The Chamber was as dark as the darkest chamber of the now almost
legendary Inquisition of medieval times, with only a single oval window
positioned as if to torment the victim with a final glance of the world
of life and light and color that he had forever forfeited by whatever
crime brought him before the Council.
     A dark, semi-cicular table filled most of the room, and placed at
equidistant positons around its perimeter stood eleven boxes, each
containing circuits and indicator lights that bore an uncanny resemblance
to eleven grave councilmen gathered in solemn debate.  Behind each of the
eleven, stood a motionless, gleaming, three-foot-tall robot-drone, ready
to take decisive action as soon as the Council so directed.
     A cold, mechanical, computer-created voice rang throughout the
silent Council Chamber.  "We, the Computer Council of the Island City,
stand ready to hear the final arguments in the case of the Directorat
versus Captain Starbuck Rogers....on charges of espionage, and of
treason."  There was a moment of silence, then the voice spoke yet again. 
"We will now hear from Councilman Uri."
     The glowing lights on the face of one of the computer-boxes
increased in intensity, as a spotlight mounted in the ceiling of the
Chamber also shone down upon the computer.  The Council had been in long
session, but the computers and their drone-servants knew no fatigue. 
Councilman Uri presented the summary of the prosecution's case in his
mechanically grating voice.
     "Our case is elementary," Uri grated. "Captain Rogers piloted a
foreign aircraft through our defense network on a path that could only
have been programmed by a hostile force in possession of secret
information available only to this Council, and a handful of key military
personnel.
     "His explanation of this situation, while stopping short of the
physically impossible, is totally lacking in credibility.  He has been
unable to provide us with a single shred of evidence to prove that he is
a son of this planet and not the offspring of some long-forsaken
outcasts!
     "What price, you may ask, what bounty, would Captain Rogers consider
his just reward for selling out the human race and the planet Earth? 
Only his bandit friends can answer that, but I will offer my fellow
Councilmen an educated guess.  I submit that the price of treason is the
destruction of Earth's treaty with Hydra.  The bandits seek this at all
costs!  For its enactment spells doom for them!"
     There was a long, dramatic pause, then Uri stated simply, "I rest my
case."
     The ceiling light dimmed over Uri, as the lights on the front of his
control panel slowly returned to their normal, subhumanoid form.
     Now the light grew in intensity over another computer-box, and the
great impersonal voice of the Council said, "Zee, we will now hear from
the defense."
     For a moment, Starbuck Rogers, silently witnessing the proceeding
upon whose outcome his future and his very life hung by a threat, shifted
his gaze to the oval window of the Chamber.  Through the glass, he could
see the witnesses of the trial:  an array of civil authorities and
military dignitaries, and a few interested parties including a grim-faced
Giana Fairshare and the gray-headed, portly genius Dr. Salik.
     Starbuck's attention was recaptured by the voice of Dr. Zee.
"Distinguished colleagues," the computer said, "you have heard the
evidence, and upon its strength I challenge you to find Starbuck Rogers
guilty!"
     Starbuck gaped incredulously at Zee as he issued the challenge and
at the other ten Councilmen as they received it.
     "No evidence," Zee continued, "has been produced to support a claim
to Rogers's birth upon this planet because---as we all know fully
well---no records survived the Final Destruction.  Captain Rogers has no
explanation as to how his ship was programmed to maneuver through our
defense shield," he paused dramatically, then resumed, "because," another
momentary pause, "it....was......not...his......doing!"
     There was another pause while Zee let his summary of the defense
sink into the other ten members of the Computer Council. "Starbuck Rogers
is an innocent pawn in the great war," Zee concluded, "but I go on record
as testifying that this man can be one of our truly great leaders. That
destiny has placed him here amongst us now, to help deliver us from our
enemies."
     With a bitter, ringing irony, Uri countered:  "From our enemies,
Zee? Don't you mean to our enemies?"
     "No," Zee blinked his lights as a human would shake his head.  "No,
Uri. No, I say to you, to all my colleagues here, that if you find this
man guilty, you must find me guilty as well.  For I cannot continue to
serve a society that doubts the core of my being.  I am programmed to be
discerning.  My sensors tell me that this man is good."
     Now the disembodied voice of the Computer Council spoke again. 
"Captain Rogers---have you any final words before we pronounce sentence?"
     Starbuck rose slowly from his seat.  He seemed to be speaking to the
disembodied voice rather than to Zee or Uri or any other of the members
of the Council.  Through the oval window, Giana and Dr. Salik could be
seen inching forward, balancing on the edges of their chairs.
     "I'd like to say just this," Starbuck began.  "I don't blame you for
lining up against me. Someone---or something---is selling you out.  I
didn't find my way through your shield.  Someone pulled the strings to
arrange all of that.  But you'd better be off worrying less about me,
whatever happens to me personally, and worrying more about whoever, or
whatever it was that did the string-pulling. I can't do you any more
harm, even if I were guilty of the charges against me. That damage is
done.  But the one who masterminded all of this can still do harm.  He
can destroy you, in fact!" Starbuck finished his statement to the
Council, looked around the room once more, and resumed his chair.
     The lights on Dr. Zee's control panel flashed brightly. "Very nice
work, Starbuck. We don't have a thing to worry about!"
     There was a momentary pause while the eleven computers of the
Council were electronically polled as to their verdicts, then the great
voice spoke once more. "By unanimous vote, the Council finds for the
state.  Captain Rogers, you and your representative, Councilman Zee, are
banished from the Island Cities.  You will be removed at once to Inferno,
there to live out your lives as you see fit.
     "That concludes this meeting of the Council."
     If ever a computer could be said to gasp in astonishment, Dr. Zee
did so when he heard the Council's verdict. "I don't believe it!" his
mellow voice sounded completely disconcerted.  
     On the other side of the oval window of the Council Chamber,
bureaucrats and military officers were shaking hands and clapping one
another on the back in congratualation at what was obviously a highly
popular verdict.  Justice was no concern of theirs.  They were part of
the official status quo of the Island City; the established order of
things had been challenged by the very appearance of this unruly
man-from-the-past.  Now he was to be disposed of, the powers-that-be
could return to their usual state of tranquility, and all was rejoicing
among the ruling circles.
     Only two individuals in the spectators' gallery failed to join in
the general celebration.  One was Colonel Giana Fairshare of the
Intercept Squadron; the other, Dr. Salik, the sage of the Island City. 
Dr. Salik had risen and started for the door at the moment the verdict
was announced.  Now he turned back to face the spectators and spoke to
one of them.
     "Giana, are you coming, child? We've got a lot to do, a lot of
preparations to make for the Princess Koji's escort down to Earth from
orbit."
     Stunned, almost as if sleepwalking, Giana assented. "Yes, Dr.
Salik," she said, "I---I'm coming, Doctor."
     She toseed a last glance behind her, over one shapely tunicked
shoulder.  "Funny," she said, almost to herself, "in a way, Starbuck's
getting what he wanted all along.  He just doesn't understand what's
going to happen to him when he gets there."
     On the other side of the glass, Starbuck Rogers calmly submitted to
the burly guards who flanked and escorted himself and Boxey---the quad
with Dr. Zee hung around his neck---from the room.
     It was barely a matter of an hour before two lonely forms plodded
down the rocky road from the Island City to the barren and seething land
called Inferno.  One was Starbuck Rogers; the other, Boxey, with Dr. Zee
hanging from his neck.  
     "Not much to see, really," Starbuck muttered. "I never thought I'd
say this," he went on, "but that place is starting to look good to me!"
     The little quad made one of his infrequent little squawks of
distress.  Dr. Zee, hanging from the drone's metal neck, glowed softly as
he spoke.  "I wouldn't start feeling sorry for myself yet, Boxey.  This
is nothing compared to what lies ahead of us."
     "Maybe we ought to stay right here until it gets light," Starbuck
suggested.
     "Oh, I'm afraid we'd freeze to death," Dr. Zee said. "That is, you
would freeze to death, Starbuck. But in fact, it wouldn't be any too good
for Boxey's mechanical fittings or for my own more environmentally
sensitive circuits. It'll be way below zero here long before sunrise
starts it to warming up again.
     Starbuck shrugged, and he and Boxey turned away from the Island City
and began their slow walk along the windblown dirt road.
     "Well," Zee philosophized, "I guess we just have to move on, then."
     "I'm sorry," Starbuck said. "I did what I thought was right, and for
my own sake I'd do it again if I had to.  But I'm sorry that I had to
take you fellows down with me."
     "No one forced me into your camp," Zee replied. "I did what I did
because I believed in you, Starbuck. And I still do---and I'd do it again
if I had to, as well!"
     Starbuck thanked the computer.
     The drone Boxey made an odd squeaking sound. 
     "What'd he say?" Starbuck asked Zee.
     "You don't want to hear it," the computer replied.
     And they kept walking, walking, up the windswept dirt road, away
from the brilliant domed city, until they reached an unbelievable vista
of ruin, destruction, and desolation.

*****

Five

     Back in the Island City, in the office of Dr. Salik, to be precise,
the old scientist was sitting, disconsolately contemplating the recently
completed trail and its tragic verdict.  He looked up in shock as Giana
Fairshare hurriedly entered and cried out to him, "Doctor, I need your
help---desperately!"
     "What appears to be the problem?" Salik asked, startled.
     "It's Starbuck Rogers," Giana was nearly in tears.  "We've got to
get him back, Dr. Salik, we've just got to!"
     "Back? My dear," the old man said, "you can't be serious. You know
what the life expectancy is outside the Island City?"
     "It's the life expectancy of the Island City itself that I'm
concerened with saving, Dr. Salik.  That, and the entire planet Earth!"
     Salik's eyebrows flew ceilingward in alarm.  "What are you saying,
child?"
     "I realize how foolish I was in pressing the Council to pass
judgment on Captain Rogers.  We had the perfect test of his guilt or
innocence in our hands and we failed to apply it!"
     Dr. Salik shook his head in puzzlement. "I'm afraid I don't..."
     Giana interrupted the old man..  "Starbuck Rogers claims that the
Hydrans helped him.  He could provide us with the perfect opportunity,
the perfect excuse, to go aboard their ship and check out his story."
     "While using the same expedition to do a little looking around
for...other things.  That is very good, child."
     "Exactly," Giana agreed. "It's a good plan, I have to say that even
though I invented it myself."
     "Well," tubby old Salik said drily, "you chose a fine time to think
of it.  I doubt that Captain Rogers feels in a very friendly or
cooperative mood as far as the Island City is concerned. That is, if he's
even alive."
     "Never mind," Giana cried."I know he's alive, somehow.  Just help me
to convince the Council to suspend their sentence while they review my
new findings."
     Salik rubbed his chin with a pale, blue-veined hand. "I'll try,
Giana, that's all that I can promise you. I'll try."

*****

     In the Council Chamber of the Computer Council of the Island City,
membership had been brought back to a full twelve by the elevation of a
replacement for the banished Dr. Zee.  The Councilmen were again
assembled, the lights dimmed, and this time it was not Starbuck Rogers
but Dr. Salik who held the floor of the meeting.
     "It is in the city's and the planet's best interests," Dr. Salik was
saying. "As things stand now, we have nothing further to lose, for all
will be lost anyway."
     "But the very fabric of our society," the computer Uri said, "is
threatened when a ruling of the Council is reversed, or even suspended. 
The word of the Council must be final and absolute."
     "No," Salik differed. "This case transcends all rules and precedents
of the Council.  If the Council has erred in its judgment, the danger of
letting the error stand is far greater than that of admitting fallibility
and correcting the error.  If by some horrible error of judgment the
Hydrans are admitted to Earth, and they come to us not as friends but as
traitors and enemies in our very midst---then all will be lost!  Then we
would suffer an absolute defeat. Therefore, we must seize this
opportunity to verify the honesty of their stated intentions."
     The disembodied voice of the Council rang out. "You make a good
case, Dr. Salik."
     "But a dangerous one," the computer Uri differed. "The Hydrans are
the most powerful force in the entire civilized universe, and if they are
insulted by our behavior, we will be in dire peril."
     The disembodied voice replied loudly. "They can only be sympathetic
to our need to find justice in the case of this man who has suffered at
our hands, and who has offered the Hydrans' own charity at his only
defense."
     "Nonetheless," the computer Uri shrilled petulantly, "nonetheless,
nonetheless, learned Councilmen, I wish to go on record, yes, to go on
record, as being opposed to this motion.  Opposed, yes, opposed to this
motion." His lights blinked furiously until it appeared that he was in
danger of blowing a circuit.
     "Are there any others in opposition?" the great voice asked calmly.
When no others joined Uri, the voice resumed. "Council moves to suspend
Captain Rogers's sentence until it, and the evidence upon which his
conviction was based, have been reviewed."
     In the spectators' gallery Dr. Salik turned to Giana.  She ran and
hugged him in jubilation. "Thank you, Doctor. You were magnificent!"
     Dr. Salik's answering glance was sober.  "I'm afraid that this
action by the Council means nothing if you can't locate Captain Rogers in
time!"
     "We'll find him in time," Giana answered gravely, "we'll find
Starbuck!"
     "I'd like to go with you, my dear.  I'd like to help, if I could,
but..." He gestured as if to say, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is
too old.  "But you must take a sizeable force," he resumed. "You know
that the sight of Island City troops rouses the Ovion people and their
rabble companions to a rage.  You'll need a strong party to fend off
their attack."
     "I'll have no trouble finding volunteers," Giana said.  "For some
reason, the members of the Intercept Squadron seem to regard Captain
Rogers as some kind of folk hero.  We'll have to leave behind a crew to
man duty stations, but ever member of the squadron who can be spared,
will almost certainly want to go."
     Salik smiled sadly, disappointed at having to pass up the adventure
of rescuing Starbuck. "Try to keep him from becoming a martyr as well,"
he said. "Good luck to you, Giana.  Good luck to you all."
      He reached for her hand before she spun around to leave, but as he
did so, Giana impulsively leaned over and kissed the old man on the
cheek.  He raised his hand to the spot her lips had touched and gazed
wistfully after her as she strode away.

*****     

     Striding side-by-side down the windswept road, Starbuck and Boxey
with Zee suspended from his neck had reached the remnants of a ruined
city, the hellish heart of Inferno.  He felt his foot brush against what
seemed like a rock.  But when he glanced down, he felt a chill go through
him when he saw that it was a human skull, still attached to an
incomplete skeleton. So brittle were the bones that the astronaut's brief
contact had shatterd the entire right side into dust. "Lovely," Starbuck
muttered grimly as he and the quads moved on.
     Starbuck remembered all the National Geographics he'd read in
boyhood, about the ruins of Egypt, Mexico, and Cambodia. Those ruins
still possessed an aura of stately grandeur to them, even after the
passing of time that conjured up visions of the once-proud civilizations
that built them. It wasn't the case with these ruins.  They had a dirty,
seedy quality of neglect to them.  Craters, rubble, bricks and girders
and shards of glass lay higgledy-piggledy where they had tumbled in that
final paroxysm of combat between the forces of old America and her
enemies.
     No vehicle moved in the cracked streets; instead, rank weeds had
sprouted in every crevice and spread their sickly effluvium over the
macadam.  Vicious rats, skulking mongrel hounds, giant aggressive snakes
slithered from shelter to hold.  Some of the shadows contained vague,
dark figures that seemed to be insect-like creatures with rough and
clawlike hands; these formshed a promise of horror indescribable, and the
true nature of those creatures more than fulfilled the worst substance of
that promise. 
     As Starbuck and the drone advanced warily from their wilderness into
this living hell, the quad exclaimed in his wordlessly eloquent squeal
and the computer hung around his neck flashed in horror.  "Oh, my word,"
Zee crooned, "oh, heavens preserve us!  I knew that Inferno would be bad,
but this is worse than ever I'd imagined."
     "Just keep moving," Starbuck urged gruffly.      Again, Boxey made
his squeaking noise. "What's he saying?" Starbuck demanded of Zee.
     "You don't want to hear it," the computer answered.
     "Stop saying I don't want to hear it. I do want to hear it!"
     Very well, Starbuck, but don't say I didn't warn you.  Boxey says he
thinks we're being followed."
     Starbuck swung around to check on the little drone's suspicions.  A
darkened, wrecked doorway stood nearby, leading into the hulk of what had
once been a building of some sort.  In the murky dusk a group of
monstrous alien shadows seemed to duck into the doorway.
     "It's just your imagination," Starbuck said to the drone.  "Come on,
Boxey, let's just keep moving ahead."
     The drone squeaked again.
     "Boxey says he doesn't believe you," Zee interpreted.
     "Tell him he's a lot smarter than I thought," Starbuck conceded. 
"But come on anyhow.  There's no point in playing target for some
bug-eyed monster!"
     With Starbuck in the lead, they slipped down a side street, found
their way into a shadowed opening not unlike the one form which they had
been menaced.  On the street they had deserted, a gang of five insectoid
creatures with gigantic eyes emerged from the building-hulk.  Numerous
layers of colorful, but filthy, cloth rose and fell across the contours
of their green bodies.
     They skulked and lumbered down the street after Starbuck and Boxey
and Zee, high pitched screeches emitting from them as they went.
     Zee somehow sensed their presence. "My God!" he cried.
     "Shut-up!" Starbuck warned. Then, in a whispered undertone, "What do
you mean, your God?  Who made you anywhow, somebody down in the canning
works?"
     "This is no time to discuss theology," Zee whispered back to
Starbuck.  "Oh, my God, this situation is hopeless.  Oh, why didn't we
stay out in the countryside where all that was going to happen to us was
that we'd freeze to death?"
     "We'll be all right," Starbuck insisted. "Don't throw in the towel
now, Zee."
     "What towel? Oh, you always use those strange expressions, Rogers.
But I do have a little cheering news, I think."
     "I could sure use some," Starbuck sighed. "What is it, computer old
pal?"
     "It isn't you that they're after.  Those Ovions, I mean."
     "What?" Starbuck said, astonished.
     "Well, I suppose they could make some use of you." Zee murmured
something softly to his drone and Boxey raised a metallic arm and prodded
Starbuck appraisingly in the side.  The quad squeaked something to the
computer. 'Yes," Zee continued, "I agree with Boxey.  You're still young
enough to be tender, Starbuck.  Several trifles too muscular to make
really choice merchandise, but at least you're not too old like Dr. Salik
would be.  He'd never be worth a plugged nickel on the black market.  But
you'd draw a fair price, yes." He flashed his lights for a while.
     "Those bugs are maneaters?"
     "Not exactly, Starbuck.  If they catch you, they'll probably feed
you to their young.  Ovion larvae do not so much 'eat' you as slowly suck
the nutrients out of your body to help their infants slowly gestate in
their cocoons. By the way, you'll be consumed while you're fully
conscious and awake."
     "Oh, brother!"
     "But, as I was saying, they're not really interested in you. 
They're much more interested in Boxey. And---I blush to say
this---myself."  At the expression about blushing, Zee's lights glowed an
embarrassed crimson.
     "They want you?" Starbuck stared at the little quad and the computer
around his neck. "For what?  Advice?"
     "Now, don't be slick!" the computer answered petulantly. "The fact
is, many of my circuits contain precious metals.  Gold, iridium,
platinum.  To me they're precious because I do my thinking and
calculations with them.  But to them," and he emphasized the word with a
scornful tone, "they're just precious metals that they can sell, or
barter for food or tools."
     Starbuck nodded and said, "Ah, hah!"
     "As for Boxey," Dr. Zee went on. "I hate to tell you the purposes
they would have for him.  Poor thing.  You know, quads don't have
anywhere near the grade of computer-brain that we Councilors have. 
They're designed to be docile little servants, and they're very good at
that, but that doesn't mean they're just things."
     Boxey squealed.
     "No, of course you're not just a thing," Zee said soothingly. "You
have a mind and you have your feelings, Boxey, as I was just explaining
to Starbuck here.  Everyone knows that, Boxey."
     The quad squealed again, a more modified sound than his previous
complaining tone.
     "And if those Ovions should ever get hold of poor Boxey," Zee
rambled on.  Suddenly, he stopped.  He'd become so engrossed in his own
monolog and in the quad's reactions to it that he had failed to notice
when Starbuck disappeared.
     Zee murmured frantically to Boxey.  The drone scuttered out of their
protective doorway, into the middle of the street, twisting and scanning
the street, using his mechanical joints to direct his optical sensing
devices one way and then another, until he located Starbuck at last.
     Boxey gave a squeal of relief.  Starbuck was only a moderate
distance away from them, standing before a half-demolished building and
staringa t the lettering carved into its concrete.
     "How do you like that?" Zee grumbled, "I confide our predicament to
the man-from-the-past, and instead of trying to help us escape he drops
us like a hot rock."
     Boxey squealed indignantly in agreement.
     "Well, you're absolutely right, my dear drone," Zee resumed.  "He
got us into this, not we him.  And he'll just have to devise a way of
getting us out of it."
     With Dr. Zee still hanging around his neck, Boxey scuttered across
the shattered pavement after Starbuck.  From behind the astronaut, the
computer and the drone could see the lettering on the building that
Starbuck was staring at.
     It was simply an old street marker, designed to let people know the
name of the thoroughfare that ran in front of the building.  It said,
42nd Street.
     Boxey moved around in front of Starbuck and looked up at the man.
From around the drone's neck, the computer-brain spoke. "I don't mean to
impugn your strategy, Starbuck---but standing in the middle of the street
is hardly wise under the circumstances, don't you think?
     As if he hadn't heard a syllable of the computer's words, Starbuck
strode distractedly around the corner of the building to look at it and
the cross-street from another angle. Curiously, Boxey and Dr. Zee
followed.
     More to himself than to the others, Starbuck mumbled, "I can't
believe it. I just can't believe it."
     The lettering on this side of the old concrete cornerstone said,
Times Square.
     Starbuck swung around, faced the others and commanded, "Come on!"
     To the astonishment of Boxey and Zee, Starbuck sprang away at a dead
run.  The five-hundred-year layoff had not softened his tendons or cut
into his wind.  He set a fast but steady pace that the little quad was
hard-pressed to match, even with the power and speed of his mechanical
undercarriage to give him the advantage.
     "Saints preserve us," Zee exclaimed, "He's found a way out of
Inferno!"
     Starbuck pounded up one street and down another, obviously on
familiar territory.  If the truth be known, he was indeed on familiar
territory.  Although he had not set foot on these streets for half a
millennium, he knew them as thoroughly as a blind man knows the inside of
his own house.  He could have made his way through this maze of
thoroughfares blindfolded without missing a strife---and that was for the
best, for it was a blackly overcast night, and whatever level of
artificial illumination the city had once boasted had long since
disappeared, leaving (some of) the inhabitants to fend for themselves at
night, by torchlight, campfire, or simple darkness.
     Finally Starbuck pushed his way through the shrubbery of an ancient,
overgrown archway.  He patted his flight-suit, now growing dirty and
tattered from his excursion through the ruined city, and pulled an old
lighter from one flap-sealed pocket.  He flicked it, and despite its age
it lit, having been hermetically sealed and perfectly preserved during
its five-hundred-year tumble through space in its owner's pocket.
     Starbuck held the lighter before him, illuminating the base of an
ancient statue, broken off centuries before at the ankles and serving now
as merely a trellis for some rank and noisome ivy.
     FIORELLO HENRY LaGUARDIA the pedestal of the ancient statue had
carved upon it, [1882-1947.  Starbuck nodded in recollection of the man
who was widely regarded as one of the best mayors in New York City
history, whose tenure redefined the office, long, long before Starbuck
Rogers was born, over five hundred years ago.
     He scrambled around through the undergrowth near the pedestal. 
After a while he found what he was looking for, completely hidden beneath
a thick growth of ivy and hardy bushes.  It was the statue of Mayor
LaGuardia, missing its feet. Of course, Starbuck nodded to himself, they
were still up on the pedestal.  Somebody had smashed the face of the
statue, Starbuck noted.
     Starbuck nodded and muttered something to himself. He snapped off
the flame of his lighter and restored it to his pocket, then set off
again at a run, Boxey following him faithfully, Zee bouncing from his
harness around the neck of the little quad.
     The pace of Starbuck's progress and the darkness of the ruined city
made it hard for the drone and the computer-brain to follow him.  At one
point they lost Starbuck completely, then, as Boxey stood, rotating his
body and his optical sensors in hope of picking up the man again, Zee
exclaimed, "There he is!  That way, Boxey!  Don't let us get lost again!"
     Boxey squealed and looked around once again.  He and Zee could see
monstrous forms gathering behind them, most of them hiding in doorways,
clinging close to the walls of ruined buildings at the edges of the
street, a few of the bolder ones standing in a group in the middle of the
street, their number growing with every passing second as the drone and
the computer seemed almost visibly to tremble with fear.  
     Boxey squealed frantically and Zee replied, his usually soothing
voice somewhat higher and less steady than before. "I know, Boxey," Zee
said. "I see them, too!  Let's just keep going on after Starbuck.  He
knows what he's doing. He's our leader, and I'm sure he has a very good
plan to get us out of this scrape."
     The drone brought up short before a rustling iron fence broken by a
pair of massive stone pillars and a scroll-like gate that hung from
hinges broken centuries before and rusted shut.  Boxey and Zee read the
ornate, scroll-like lettering that surmounted the gateway.
     "Oh, my goodness. Oh, my merciful heavens, this is simply too much,
simply too much for my circuits.  I think I'm going to blow a fuse if
this goes on much longer."
     The quad squeaked again.
     "Of course I'll tell you what it says," Zee placated the frantic
drone. "I do wish they'd build literacy circuits into you quads, it's
such a nuisance having to read to you all the time.
     Squeak!
     "Oh, I know it's not your fault, Boxey.  You're an absolutely
splendid quad and I wouldn't trade you for any other, no matter how new
and shiny he was, and no matter how many special circuits he had built
into his central proceesing unit."
     Squeak!
     "Oh, you still want to know what it says up there, do you.  I was
rather hoping you'd forget about that, Boxey my friend. Well, I guess
there's nothing for it but to tell the truth. It says, Cemetery."
     Boxey rotated his optical sensors and squealed in terror.  A group
of the horrifying insect-like Ovions was growing larger and larger behind
them.  Some of the more daring of the Ovions were feinting moves toward
the drone and his computer-friend.
     "Come on, Boxey!"  Zee urged. "I know you'r scared of graveyards,
but we have a lot more to be frightened of from the living than we do
from the dead!"
     The drone scuttered forwad on his short metallic legs, scuttling
over the threshold of the cemetery and into the frightening,
centuries-haunted domain of the departed.  Here the rank growth of sickly
plant-life that filled so much of Inferno had gone stark raving mad.  The
ancient hemlocks and oleanders that stood throughout the necropolis had
grown to enormous height and thickness, so that even by daylight the
cemetery existed in a kind of perpetual twilight.
     And now it was night, the sky was overcast, and the heavy
vegetateion made for a stygian blackness.  Rank grasses had grown up, so
the drone had to struggle constantly, not merely to make progress through
the stifling growth, but even to raise his optical sensing devices above
the level of the grass.
     Ancient tombstones that had not fallen completely to the ground with
the passing of years, stood crazily angled, ready to catch on the footpad
of any unwarying passing quad.  Old graves had fallen in, leaving the
ground surface uneven beneath the tall, rank grasses.  Because of this,
Boxey quickly learned, any step might plunge him into an old grave,
taking Dr. Zee helplessly with him.
     Mausoleums, constructed to stand until Gabriel sounded the Last
Trumpet on the Day of Judgment had yielded to the ravages of time.  Some
had been smashed flat by the terrible blast of the Final Destruction that
had created Inferno.  Others had fallen prey to the plunderers and
looters who came in the wake of the explosion, and still others had
simply fallen in, collapsing in reseponse to the slowly eroding forces of
nature, the freezes of winter, the snows and ice of the cold season, the
thaws and rains of spring, the hot baking suns of summer and the new,
contracting coolness of each of five hundred autumns.
     Panic-stricken, Boxey plunged from gravestone to mausoleum,
squealing with each tumble that he took, scuttling away from each little
echo of sound, almost shrieking with fright at the sounds of the Ovion
band beating the grasses in search of himself and Zee and the complex
circuits and rare, precious metals that they hoped to salvage from the
two machines.
     Suddenly, Boxey's metal foot cauth on the hidden edge of a fallen
gravestone and he found himself tumbling not onto the grassy turf of the
cemetery, but the prostrate, grieving form of Starbuck Rogers.
     Boxey squeaked.
     Dr. Zee, his lights blinking and glowing in a virtual kaleidoscope
of forms and colors, exclaimed, "Starbuck!  Thank God we've found you!"
     The only light was the eerie shifting array of colors provided by
the facelike display pattern in Dr. Zee's control panel.  Even in this
pale and shifting illumination the two machine-people could see that
Starbuck's back was heaving, not with injury or exertion, but with the
strength of the emotion that he felt.
     Boxey managed to right himself, and as he did so the lights of Dr.
Zee's facelike panel illuminated the gravestone upon which Starbuck had
flung himself.
     In the pale, eerie light, Zee scanned the inscription.  Boxey
squealed his impatience and the computer-brain read aloud the words
carved upon the marble:

EDNA AND JAMES ROGERS
THEIR SON FRANK AND
DAUGHTER MARILYN
APRIL.

     There was no date or year. If they had ever been inscribed on the
marble headstone, they had long ago been lost to the ravages of some
violent act.
     As Boxey and Zee stood silently, Starbuck Rogers slowly rose from
the stone. He held his lighter in his hand---obviously he'd used it to
read the headstone before Boxey arrived with Dr. Zee to give
illumination.  There were tears in Starbuck Rogers's eyes.  He recognized
the two metallic beings and nodded to them in acknowledgement of their
presence.
     "At least I know part of it," Starbuck said. "My parents, my brother
and sister...of course there were others.  What's happened to them is
still unknown."
     He breathed deeply, getting better control of himself. "Of course,
if all of that was five hundred years ago, I don't suppose it matters any
more.  Did they know what happened to me before they died? Did they live
on for five more years---or fifty? Well," he shrugged, "at least I've
seen their grave. For whatever that may be worth."
     "Starbuck," Zee said soothingly. "I don't mean to intrude on your
hour of grief."
     Starbuck gazed down at the computer-brain hanging from the neck of
the drone.
     "But we can't really stay here," Zee resumed. "We, ah---the Ovions
followed us here.  Boxey and me.  It would be very dangerous for us to
stay here. Ah, maybe even fatal, Starbuck."    
     Starbuck was still caught up in his grief.  It was as if he were
divorced from the reality of the moment and had been thrown back through
time to unravel the mystery of the fate of his family and friends.
     "What happened to them?" he asked. "Why isn't there any date on the
marker?  There's only one marker for Mother and Dad and Marilyn and
Frank.  What could have happened to them?  And the others?"
     "Only the few fortunate were buried at all," Zee supplied. "It
happened to them so fast, Starbuck. Families were buried together.  Dates
became irrelevant when all the systems of civilization broke down.
     "There were no newspapers or television anymore.  People lost track.
Living was strictly day-by-day. At first it was thought that the first
few millions who died in the Final Destruction were the end of the
horror.  But the war went on, and more died. More war, more killing, more
war, more killing. 
     "Finally, the fighting stopped only because there were no more
armies left to fight.  There were only the tattered survivors, struggling
to survive in the face of starvation, contamination, radiation, and
then---plague. Other life forms mutated, became hideous creatures.  The
Ovions are one such species."
     Starbuck knelt once again and pressed his forehead to the cold
stone. "God bless 'em," he whispered. "I'd go back there and die at their
side if I had my way."
     "But you can't, Starbuck. The past is gone." All of the agitation,
all of the past hours' part-serious, part-mocking terror and banter was
gone from Zee's voice.  He was as serious now as ever he had been, and
Starbuck understood the real concern that he heard in Zee's statement.
     For the first time he had a full understanding of a strange fact
concerning the computer-brain.
     Back in Starbuck's own time there had been long and heated debate as
to whether computers could really think and/or feel.  Engineers and
programmers at the great university computing laboratories and at the
research centers of the huge electronics companies had been able to build
and program machines that could convincingly simulate both emotion and
intelligence.
     But---were these merely simulations, or were the machines really
thinking?  Were they really feeling?  What was thought?  What was
emotion?
     One early and clever experiment had involved placing a series of
volunteer subjects on one end of a telephone line, the other end of which
might be connected to a trained conversational specialist...or to a
computer.  Sometimes it was one, sometimes the other.
     After a series of dry runs that were used to refine the computer
program, the sponsors of the experiment began keeping records of the
volunteers' judgments.  They discovered that the rate of correct
identifications was equally high, whether the second conversationalist
was a person or a machine.
     But that didn't convince anyone!
     Those who had believed, before the experiment, that machines could
really think and feel, claimed that their position had been vindicated!
     As an astronaut, Starbuck was expected to become thoroughly familiar
with the programming and performance and even, to a certain degree, the
circuitry of advanced computing machinery. He had wound up a skeptic on
the big question---not quite fully convinced, but heavily inclined to
think that computers only simulated human thought and feeling. 
     But now, with Dr. Zee offering his solace and his counsel in the
hour of Starbuck's grief, the astronaut felt himself convinced at last
that the computer-brain was not merely simulating human characteristics. 
Starbuck decided that Zee was truly thinking and truly feeling the
emotions that he expressed. 
     And in that moment it became clear to Starbuck for the first time
that his whole strange experience was also real.  The twentieth century
and all of its people were dead and gone.  This bizarre new world of the
twenty-fifth century with its quads and computer-brains, its magnificent
domed Island Cities and its seething, rubble-filled Infernos, its Defense
Squadron and space bandits and Hydran Empire, were all very, very real. 
And if he wanted to live, he would have to close his mind to the world of
his boyhood and learn to live in this brave new world, faulted and
imperfect though it was!
     He started to express his thanks to Dr. Zee but he was startled by
the frantic squealing of Boxey.  Startled, Starbuck peered into the gloom
beyond the drone.  A chorus of clicks, chirps and screeches were echoing
from the far corners of the graveyard.
     "You can't save your past," Dr. Zee murmured softly to Starbuck,
"but you can help us survive in the present and the future, Starbuck...if
there is any future!"
     Even in the murkiness of the cemetery, Starbuck was able to see that
a virtual wall of the horrifying Ovions was moving slowly but
relentlessly forward, threatening at moments to break into a final fatal
attack upon himself and Zee and Boxey.
     "Get behind me, quick!" Starbuck snapped at the quad. With Zee
firmly hung about his neck, Boxey scuttled behind the astronaut.
     Starbuck knelt for a moment, not in renewed meditation or final,
this-is-the-hour-of-our-eadth type of prayer, but in order to snatch up a
handful of the tall, dry, parched weeds that grew rankly throughout the
cemetery.  With one hand he held the weeds before him; with the other, he
flicked his lighter into life, its tiny butane flame flaring luridly
against the murk.
     The weeds smouldered for a second. They were dry, but not entirely
dry.  The night was far advanced, dew had already settled throughout the
burying ground, and the dry weeds had been redampened by atmospheric
condensation. Acrid smoke rose from the weeds.  Starbuck didn't know how
much more fuel his lighter held, nor how much longer the Ovions would
delay their charge.  At the moment they seemed to have been halted more
by curiosity than by any other motive.
     With a high screech the apparently leader of the Ovion band signed
that he had had enough of this strange show. It was time to launch the
final attack!
     The Ovions sprang just at the moment that the weeds glowed for a
moment, then sprang into their bright, flaring flame.
     The leading Ovion tumbled forward, landed almost in Starbuck's arms. 
His massive head smashed into Starbuck as the horrifying insect-man
screeched with pain and terror as his greasy, slimy body was bathed in
the searing flames. He leaped backwards, ran screaming across the uneven
earth of the burial ground.
     Some of the other Ovions followed in his wake, but the remainder of
the raider-band merely backed away, frightened, clearly, of the flame,
yet not so frightened as to give up the prospect of this little group of
potential victims.
     Starbuck took a step forward, gathering more weeds to add to his
makeshift torch.  Step by step the Ovions retreated before him, but so
numerous were they that their band closed in again behind Starbuck and
the others.  Now, saved though they were for the briefest of moments,
they found themselves trapped again, completely surrounded by the
raiders!
     "C'mon!" Starbuck commanded Boxey and Dr. Zee, "hop onto my back! 
No discussion! Move!"
     They obeyed as quickly as Starbuck had spoken. Grapsing Dr. Zee
firmly in one hand so he wouldn't swing loose at the jump, little Boxey
squealed once and launched himself with surprising strength and accuracy,
if no great amount of grace, into the air.  He landed on Starbuck's tall
shoulders, grabbed the astronaut with his free hand, settled Dr. Zee with
the other, then clutched firmly at Starbuck Rogers's neck and shoulders.
     "Hang on tight," Starbuck gritted, "'cause here we go!"
     He bent and started a row-fire from the flaming weeds in his hands,
skipping along, bending and setting fires, advancing a short distance and
setting some more, extending the line he had created, slowly drawing a
solid wall of flame between himself and his two machine-passengers on one
side, and the Ovions on the other.
     Painfully but steadily they may their way across the graveyard in
that fashion, Starbuck having to replenish his handheld torch every few
dozen yards, while he watched the Ovions dancing in impotent hatred on
the other side of the row of flames that he raised.  Starbuck made a
final flying leap, rolled onto the roadway outside, carefully dislodging
Boxey as he did so.  In a matter of seconds, they were standing side by
side, turning back for a final glimpse of the cemetery as the engraged
Ovions poured from its mouth, setting off in hot pursuit of their
escaping victim.
     Over his shoulder, Starbuck could see the leader of the Ovion band
run to an old lamp post and seize a broken metal pipe from the gutter. 
He hefted the iron implement and began smashing it against the metal lamp
post, sending up a resounding series of almost deafening clangs.  The
horrid insect-man kept up the deafening clanging for a time. Then
Starbuck could hear a similar clamor resounding from across the city.
     For an instant Starbuck thought it was an actual echo of the pipe
being wielded against the lamp post. Then he detected a difference in
tone.  Soon a third clamor joined the two, and another, and another,
until the chill night air was filled with a deafening arrhythmic
cacophony that set Starbuck's teeth on edge and made the hairs at the
back of his neck rise in shuddering sympathy.
     He ran, Boxey and Zee at his side, for block after ancient city
block, but no matter how he dodged or turned or sped across the cracked
pavement, the cacophonous clanging stayed with him and Zee and Boxey. 
Finally, he stopped, his breath rasping in and out of his aching lungs in
great, desperate gasps.
     "What..." he tried to ask.
     "What...is it?" he managed to get the question out.
     Zee had no problem with breath, of course.  "It's a rather primitive
communication system amongst the Ovions," he explained in a calm,
professorial tone.
     "The poor devils," his lights glowed sympathetically, "they stick
together when they think they've found valuable prey. Rather than lose
important salvage and loot, they are willing to share all with each
other."
     "Who're you worried about?" Starbuck asked, his breathing now back
nearly to normal, "the Ovions---or us?"
     Boxey squealed and Starbuck glanced around.
     At the nearest intersection, a group of Ovions were moving into the
roadway to block the path that Starbuck and Boxey and Zee would normally
have taken.  Starbuck and Bocxey turned around, ready to make their way
out of the other end of the city block.
     But this too was closed off by a band of insect-men!
     Starbuck and Boxey turned back the way they had been facing.  This
was their original group of foes, the mutant raiders who had almost
succeeded in capturing and "salvaging" them in the weed-choked cemetery. 
The mob had been advancing rapidly behind the backs of their intended
victims; in the full sight of their faces they slowed their pace to a
walk, to little more than a creep.
     Still, slowly they advanced, step by step reducing the distance
between themselves and the astronaut and his mechanical companions.
     It was as if they were savoring the tension and the anticipation of
the kil, like a sadistic hunter hoving over a trapped wolf in the Alaskan
wild, eager to make his kill, yet hesitant to end the pleasure of leading
up to it.
     "Thanks, Starbuck," the astronaut heard Zee's voice.  "Thanks for
making a good try of it.  You gave your best."
     "It's not over yet, Zee!" Starbuck exclaimed.  "Boxey, this is going
to be a one-shot. We'll make it on the first try, or we're done for."
     The quad squealed.
     "For once you don't have to translate, Zee," Starbuck said. "On my
back again, Boxey!"
     The little robot jumped, clasped Starbuck just as Starbuck ran for
the sidewalk, charged across it to the nearest building and leaped into
the air.  His fingertips barely scraped the bottom rung of a rusted,
ancient fire-escape ladder.
     Starbuck would never know how he did it, but somehow he managed to
cling to that old iron rung for the few precious seconds that he had to. 
As the man hung there, panting with effort, the little robot clinging to
his shoulders and the computer brain wedged precariously between them,
the fire-escsape ladder slowly slid downward, its hinges screaming with
the accumulated rust of five hundred years of weather and disuse.
     As soon as the ladder was down Starbuck released his grip on the
bottom rung, scampered up the ladder, leaped onto the first story
platform of the old tenement house and tugged with all his strength to
pull the ladder back up, just as the bravest of the attacking Ovions
reached the ladder and reached for the iron, hoping to duplicate
Starbuck's astonishing feat.
     The Ovion missed by fractions where Starbuck had succeeded by a
similarly narrow margin.
     Frustrated again as they had been by Starbuck's clever maneuver in
the cemetery, the Ovions and their newly-arrived allies set up a keening
wail of fury and grief.
     "What can we do now?" Zee quavered.  "You've saved us twice,
Starbuck, but each time only temporarily.  I don't want you to think I'm
unappreciative of your efforts, but aren't we still as good as doomed? 
If they can't get this ladder down and climb up after us, and if they
can't just wait to starve us out...won't they somehow make their way
through this old building and come at us through the windows?"
     "I don't know," Starbuck conceded.
     "Then we're doomed," the computer mourned.
     "I didn't say that," Starbuck disagreed.  "I just don't know the
solution yet.  But we can work on one!  And I'll tell you one thing, you
old box of transistors."
     "What?" Zee asked.
     "If we have to sit tight and figure our a solution, I'd sure as hell
rather situ up here and do it," Starbuck pointed at the fire escape where
they huddled, "than be down there in the middle of those walking bugs
trying to find a way to escape!"
     'You're right, of course," Zee said. "I've got to learn that you
never give up, Captain Rogers, and that as long s you keep searching for
a solution, there's always a chance you may just find one!
     Starbuck grunted and tried to concentrate on the situation, but the
dancing, screeching monsters beneath them suddenly changed their
behavior.  From a great distance Starbuck could hear a clanging again,
the sound of iron pipes being pounded on derilect lamp posts but there
was a subtle difference to the rhythm and pattern of the strokes.  It was
like the famous jungle telegrapho of Africa back in the days of the
nineteenth century. Long before Europeans arrived and set up their
so-called modern communications systems, the old civilizations had
evolved their own methods of sending messages for hundreds or even
thousands of miles by setting up series of repeater-stations of drummers,
like the booster circuits on long-distance telephone lines.
     And these Ovions, despite the fact that they were horrible
half-human, half-insect creatures, had reinvented the jungle telegraph,
sending messages from end to end of the great wrecked city of Inferno by
pounding out different rhythmes with iron pipes on rusting, ancient lamp
posts!
     Starbuck looked down into the street where the Ovion mob had
gathered and, and saw its members lumbering off in all directions,
obviously bent on some mission far more urgent than trying to coax one
ancient astronaut and two modern mechanical creatures down from the
rusted fire escape of a ruined building!
     Suddenly, Boxey showed that he understood the situation's newest
twist, even more rapidly than either Starbuck Rogers or Dr. Zee had.  The
little drone began to leap up and down on the rusted platform, squeaking
joyously and hugging Starbuck with both metallic arms.
     Zee's lights burst into an astonishing semblance of a grand happy
grin.  "I agree with Boxey," he said in his again-mellow voice.  "Very
good, Starbuck.  Bravo, bravo!  How in the world did you manage that?"
     "Manage what?" Starbuck answered in puzzlement.  
     Before the computer could answer the air was split by a sound of a
siren, a new and utterly unique sound here in the ruined city of Inferno. 
Realization dawned in Starbuck's brain. "Oh, ho!" he said. "I see!  We
can give credit for the sudden dispersion of the mutants to whoever is
sounding that siren."
     "That's right," Zee added. "I've never heard of such a thing,
Starbuck.  They surely wouldn't do that for a coupole of machines, eh,
Boxey?  You must be one important fellow, Captain, for the Island City to
react as they have."
     "But how have they reacted?" Starbuck demanded. "I'm new in town,
remember? What does that siren mean?"
     "It means they've sent a force into Inferno," Zee said. "That siren
is the Island City force approaching, and they just don't do that. As far
as the Island City is concerned, Inferno is quarantined. They exile their
criminals here, but they never let them back in, and nobody from the
Island City ever comes here voluntarily!"
     Boxey began to jump up and down, squealing shrilly with excitement. 
Starbuck and Zee both stared down into the now-deserted thoroughfare. 
The bulk of the fleeing mutants had all left by one end of the street,
and from the other there now came first the sound, then the sight of a
heavily armored vehicle, equipped with weapons as well as shielding
against both radiation and missle attack.
     Six armored troopers leaped from the vehicle and set up an immediate
defense perimeter around its metallic bulk.  A seventh uniformed officer
climbed from the vehicle, studied the situation and advanced to take
command of the party.  One of the six heavily armed troopers addressed
the commanding officer.
     "Colonel!"
     The single word was used to attract the commander's attention.  The
trooper pointed up toward the fire-escape balcony where Starbuck still
watched along with Zee and Boxey.
     The commander followed the trooper's pointed finger.  From the
escape balcony Starbuck could make out clearly the face of the military
leader.
     It was Colonel Giana Fairshare of the Intercept Squadron!
     "Good evening, Captain," Giana called up from the street.  "I wonder
if I could interest you in a proposition."
     Starbuck smiled down from the balcony with gratitude and a sense of
admiration that bordered on something far warmer and more personal. 
Without saying a word, he and Zee and Boxey started to climb down the
fire escape.

*****           

Six

     The squadron of Starfighters streaked away from their launching pads
and lanced into the deep blue heavens above the Island City.  At the
astonishing power and rate-of-climb ratings of these ultramodern combat
craft, they quickly rose above the Earth's atmosphere and the blue
refracted sunlight was replaced by the black of cislunar space, a velvety
black sprinkled with glittering stars like shimmering diamond chips even
in bright daylight hours.
     Each Starfighter was a sleek object that might well have stood, in
classical times, as a work of some genius sculptor.  Their curvers were
graceful yet strong, their skins showed a smooth sheen that cold have
been designed as much for its ability to please the observer's eye as it
was to protect their internal components and their pilots from the
radiation of space, the heat of atmospheric resistance on launching and
reentry, or the impact of enemy lasers or missile blasts.
     The entire Intercept Squadron had left its launching pads. This was
no combat mission---it was a routine training and shakedown cruise for
all the pilots save one, but even the most veteran of Starfighter pilots
was expected to fly regular training missions in order to stay at the
razor's edge of keen skill and combat readiness.
     If ever Earth faced invasion from the starlanes, the Intercept
Squadron was not only her first line of defense, but in a sense her last
as well.  For an alien starship force, smashing down the barriers of
Earth's extended defense line, would be free to blast away at surface
installations until the planet lay prostrate and helpless before the
hobnailed boots of an army of invasion and occupation.
     It was up to the Intercept Squadron to prevent that from ever
happening.
     And today a new pilot was training with the squadron.  He was by far
the oldest aviator ever to take a ship up from the surface of the planet
Earth.  He was more than five hundred years old. Captain Starbuck Rogers.
      Inside Starbuck's sleek Starfighter, the intercom hummed softly
with a carrier wave, and the voice of the squadron commander, Colonel
Giana Fairshare, spoke into Starbuck's ear.  "Stay close on my wing,
Captain. We'll keep the maneuvers nice and simple." This was not the
warm, feminine Giana Fairshare whom Starbuck had crushed in hhis arms for
one swift embrace in the middle of Inferno's rubble-strewn street. This
was Colonel Fairshare, all military prowess and cold efficiency.
     "Stay on AutoFlight," Colonel Fairshare continued. "You won't be
expected to run anything but the throttle on this mission."
     Starbuck felt a rush of hot, angry blood to his cheeks.  He'd been a
top Air Force fighter-jockey in the earliest years of his aerial career. 
Then, with the advent of the last, uneasy peace the preceded the Final
Destruction, he had become a crack test pilot and astronaut.
     And now this wisecracking, overconfident woman, this hotshot colonel
who hadn't been born when he was a fully-rated space exploration pilot,
was telling him not to touch anything on his own ship except for the
throttle!  "Thanks a lot, colonel," he gritted resentfully, "is it all
right if I look out the window once in a while, or am I supposed to sit
here and study the operator's manual while I fly?"
     "This is no time for humor!" Giana snapped back. Her eyes showed an
angry annoyance at the new pilot's insubordinate attitude.
     "We've lost nearly a third of our ships in this vector to bandits,"
she told him.  "When they hit, they hit fast.  You can't outfly a
computer.  Your reflexes just aren't as fast as its are.  So let the ship
take care of any necessary evasive action to avoid those training
missiles.  If you get in the way of one you'll cost us an expensive ship,
as well as the trouble of training a replacement for yourself.  And the
Island City tax rates are high enough now!"
     "I appreciate your concern," Starbuck told her. "I just wish I'd
brought along a copy of Thrilling Wonder Stories to read."
     Giana Fairshare started to respond, then halted.  Her eyes snapped
wide.  She opened a chanel to the entire squadron.  "Commanding officer
here. I make a target on vector four zero one."
     Another pilot responded. "Roger, Colonel. I have visual on a target
just to starboard."
     "Check range," Giana instructed the pilot.  "Good God!  If you have
visual at this apparent distance, it must be gigantic!"
     Through the window of his own sleek Starfigher, Starbuck Rogers had
sighted in on the flying behemoth. "You've never seen anything like this,
lady, I'll bet on that!  Not even in the twenty-fifth century!"

*****

     From the Hydran flagship, long-range space telescopes kept the
Terran Intercept Squadron carefully in view from the moment its gleaming
needle-nosed ships poked their snouts above Earth's seething atmosphere
to the instant they arrived in deep space and commenced to swarm around
the Hydran behemoth like a horde of frantic bumblebees swooping and
dancing in the air around a grizzly.
     The Princess Koji had received word of the first sighting of the
Intercept Squadron's blastoff.  From that moment onward, at her stern
command, she was kept informed by the lookout bridge of every move, every
significant maneuver, of the tiny, swarming, streamlined interceptors.
     Ortega had assumed personal command of the lookout bridge, and
maintained constant electronic contact with the princess, but now he
turned over command of the bridge to a Hydran subordinate of unquestioned
competence and loyalty, and trotted anxiously through the corridors and
companionways of the ship to the princess's personal stateroom in order
to apprise her, face-to-face, of the startling message received on the
bridge from the Earth ships.
     When she heard the request, Princess Koji's face assumed an
expression of astonishment.
     "Permission to come aboard," she repeated the Earth ships' request. 
"For what purpose, Ortega?"
     "They say they're escorting a special envoy, Koji.  Beyond that,
they say nothing more."
     "But that's not according to protocol!" The princess paced uneasily,
the lines of a puzzled frown marring her normally flawless physiognomy. 
     "I don't like this, Ortega," she grumbled petulantly.  "I don't like
this even one little bit.  What could they possibly be up to?"
     "I don't know," Ortega replied. "But if we refuse them permission to
come aboard, we'll rouse their suspicions."
     "And if we let them come aboard, Ortega, then we'll confirm their
suspicions. We're in a gorgeous double-bind, an absolutely gorgeous
double-bind!"
     She stopped pacing and glared at him, the superior conferring with a
subordinate. "I want your recommendation, Ortega.  You're always patting
yourself on the back and claiming you're such a grand strategist. Let's
hear a plan from you!"
     "Of course, my princess, of course." Ortega's previously gruff
manner was replaced by an oily confidence, as if Koji's demand for a plan
from him was exactly what he'd been maneuevering for. "We're not in a
double-bind at all, Koji.  We've had plenty of warning.  As soon as the
bridge sighted the Earth interceptors I ordered preparations aboard the
ship.  They can come aboard and wander around to their heart's delight,
and they'll find nothing whatever to make them suspicious."
     Koji smiled in relief.  "Well, that changes things, Ortega.  You do
have a brain after all.  Issue commands for the communications bridge to
message the Earth squadron that they'll be most cordially welcomed
aboard.  Have the flight deck prepare to receive the landing party."  She
laughed a low, sinister laugh that raised the hairs on the back of even
Ortega's bull-neck.  "And send word that I will personally receive the
special envoy who's coming up to see us."
     The princess disappeared behind a dressing screen and continued her
conversation with the oily mannered Ortega.  When she reappeared from
behind the screen she had exchanged her satiny lounging costume for a
more elaborate but highly provocative court outfit.  "Do I look fit to
receive Earth's special envoy?" the princess asked Ortega.
     He nodded and grunted his approval, not trusting himself to utter a
word to the splendidly voluptuous princess.
     With Jaguar-Man, Koji's fierce, huge bodyguard, hovering behind her,
the princess and Ortega advanced across the great ship's flight deck to
greet the newcomers.  Colonel Giana Fairshare and Captain Starbuck Rogers
led the Earth party, followed by three other veteran pilots.
     Ortega spoke the first ceremonial words:
     "Welcome aboard the flagship Galactica, representing the Emperor
Toom, Conqueror of Space, Warlord of Asleer, and Supreme Ruler of the
Hydran Realm. I present to you the Princess Koji, daughter of our king." 
   
     The princess greeted the Earth party graciously. "I am most
delighted to receive you.  This pleasure is an unexpected one.  We were
hardly prepared to greet you with proper circumstance."
     "Your presence alone, your highness, is far more than adequate
greeting," Giana Fairshare replied with like ceremony.  "I am Colonel
Fairshare, Commander of the Third Force of the Earth Directorate.  With
me are my senior officers. And I believe you have already met Captain
Rogers."
     Starbuck stepped forward, a grin on his face. He bowed slightly,
reached for the princesse's hand and planted a kiss on it.
     "A most promising foretaste of what to expect on Earth, I'm sure."
She looked straight into Giana's eyes. "But no, I'm sure that if I'd ever
met so dashing a young captain, it would not be an event I would easily
forget."
     Starbuck shot a quick glance at the princess, found her gazing at
him.  "I can't say that I've had the pleasure," she remarked.
     Starbuck received a wilting glance from Giana, ignored it, turned a
charming smile on the princess.  "I think you're mistaken, princess,"
Starbuck muttered.  "I never forget a knuckle."
     "Captain," Giana interrupted.
     Starbuck became more businesslike.  "Listen, we came a long way to
get to the bottom of things. Would you like me to describe some of the
inner sections of this ship, to prove I've been here before?"
     'Please, Captain Rogers. Stop!"
     Koji's curiosity was aroused. 'What inner sections?"
     "Just the sections of his mind," Giana replied, drily.
     "Aw, now, that's hitting above the belt," Starbuck complained.  "I
may not be memorable to the princess, but I'll never forget her.  I
especially love that dress with the peacock feathers. They set off your
neck so beautifully!"
     Giana turned to another officer. "Major, please guide Captain Rogers
and the rest of our pilots to their ships."
     "But we haven't told the princess why we came, yet," Starbuck
complained. "The bandit forces are at their worst in this sector. We
brought our ships up to escort the princess's ship and assure its safe
arrival."
     "That's very reassuring, Captain," Ortega commented smoothly.
     Giana attempted again to shut off the conversation.  "Captain
Rogers!" she repeated. 
     "As a matter of fact," Starbuck went on, "if you would like us to
attach a squadron directly on board you ship...just to be on hand in case
of attack, you see..."
     "Most generous of you," Ortega said. "Most generous,
Captain...Colonel Fairshare.  But I'm sure that your mere presence in
this vector will assure our security."
     "And it is the strict interpretation of our mutual treaty," Princess
Koji added, "that this ship not bear arms of any kind. I would interpret
that to mean...arms...from either side."
     'I had a feeling you were going to interpret it that way," Starbuck
commented.
     From Giana Fairshare's point of view, the conversation had been an
unmitigated disaster, starting with Starbuck's kissing that terrible
space vamp's hand and ending with the quarrel over the neutrality treaty.
The best she could do was to end it as fast as possible.  "To your
gracious majesty," she said, "our thanks and our prayers for a safe
arrival.  I wish you good day."
     "Good day," Koji replied, smiling smugly.  She started to turn away.
     Suddenly---a resounding shock rocked the ship.
     "What in Toom's name!" Koji exclaimed.
     Ortega reacted instantly, shoving Jaguar-man forward to guard the
princess.  "Protect her!  Attention! Alert all stations!  Secure ship!"
     A voice echoed through the deck, coming from the bridge above. 
"Hostile aircraft approaching.  Battlestar under attack!"
     "Is this how you bid us safe conduct?" Ortega snarled at Giana. 
"Are you going to do something?  Or do you and your fellow traitors plan
to die with us!"
     Giana Fairshare ignored the insulting questions, turning instead
toward her own party. "Man your ships---now!"
     Along with the others, Starbuck forgot all about the just-ended
confrontation and put all his attention on the emergency.  He scanned the
deck, looking for the source of the explosions.  He took a final quick
glance at Ortega before running for his interceptor ship, and found
himself met with a glare of unspoken hatred.
     "Okay, pal," Starbuck shot out, "we'll meet again!"
     The pilots scampered out to reach their ships.  Just as Starbuck
jumped for the entry hatch of his, he saw Giana standing and glaring at
him. "You are under arrest, Captain," the colonel snapped.
     "Sure," Starbuck answered. "You gonna slap the cuffs on me now, or
can I use both hands to fly this contraption?"
     "You are disqualified for all combat operations, Captain Rogers! 
You will return to Earth and land there, under arrest!"
     But Starbuck didn't hear the words. He was already inside his ship,
busily dogging the hatch and the pilot's canopy.
     Meanwhile the sky around the Hydran flagship was filled with
swarming, gaudily painted bandit ships.  A marauder decorated with
extravagant multi-headed hydras screamed across the sky, making a pass at
the Galactica.  The raider sent a cluster of fireballs blasting at the
battlestar.
     The Galactica's early-warning net had functioned in time, and the
Earth interceptors made their escape from the great ship, swarming away
from its monstrous bulk to counterattack the dancing, lethal bandit
craft.  Starbuck Rogers, handling his interceptor with an ease and
familiarity learned in hundreds of mission-hours half a millennium
before, shoved the Starfighter through a sudden snap-roll, righted the
ship, found a pirate craft angling at him from an insanely high angle.
     Starbuck wheeled away, saw the marauder flash by over his shoulder. 
The one major difference between combat in space and in the air was that
aircraft, even though operating in three dimensions, had a constant
reference point of the Earth. Up and down were relative concepts, but
always relative to the planet's surface.  Here in deep space the same
dimensions obtained, but there was no up, no down.  He was fighting
within a completely free-form medium.
     A second marauder craft streaked in, following the lead of the
first.  Starbuck was in the clear, at lest momentarily, but the second
marauder swerved to attack another Starfighter.  "Heads up, major?"
Starbuck shouted.  "Enemy craft on your tail.  Hit a roll, I'll pick him
up!"
     The second Starfighter rolled, turned, snapping through the
maneuvers that were programmed into its ship's computers.  The enemy
craft stayed dangerously close behind, matching the Starfighter's
maneuvers move for move.
     "No, not that way!" Starbuck radio'd, "you're rolling right into his
power!"
     The marauder craft fired its lasers, the Starfighter tried to move
out of the path of the deadly weapons but the marauder craft seemed to
anticipate its every move.  There was a horrendous blooming of flame and
flying, white-hot fragments as the Starfighter, caught fully by the laser
blast, exploded through space.
     Starbuck clutched the controls of his Starfighter, his fine-tuned
instincts guiding the spacecraft through its maneuvers while his mind
recoiled in horror from the sight he had just beheld.
     Nearby in her own craft, Giana Fairshare shared similar emotions. 
She scanned the blackness around her, picking out the maneuvering
marauders and Starfighters.  Spotting Starbuck's Starfighter she switched
on her radio and snapped a command to the captain.  "Rogers---I orderd
you back to Earth!"
     "Colonel Fairshare, you need all the help you can get," Starbuck
replied.  Before he could say anything more, he spotted another
Starfighter in dire peril.  "Look out, Bonds," Starbuck cried. "He's on
you!"
     The young pilot Starbuck had warned swung around in panic.  He
spotted a marauder on his tail, about to fire its deadly lasers at his
Starfighter.
     "Pull up," Starbuck shouted. "I can cut him off!"
     Bonds pushed the automatic evasion button in his cockpit. It was the
same button that had led the major to destruction minutes earlier.  The
Starfighter rolled away, the marauder craft holding course with it, move
for move, turn for turn. After two quick rolls, the marauder fired its
lasers.
     Bonds' Starfighter blossomed into a second of the deadly fireballs,
flames rolling away from the destroyed fuselage, white-hot fragments
flying in all directions.
     "You asshole!" Starbuck despaired.
     Giana choked back a criy of horror as she saw Bonds's ship blossom
into flame.  Suddenly she found the sky on fire around her own
Starfighter.  She whirled frantically in her pilot's seat, saw a marauder
streaking after her.  Desperately she pressed the red flashing evade
button.
     Her Starfighter went into its automatically programmed maneuevers,
rolling across the sky.  The marauder craft followed, matching move for
move.
     Starbuck watched in shock, flicked on his radio, shouted at Giana,
"Take it down, Colonel!  Straight down!  Don't roll!  Throw on your
spaceflaps!"
     "I can't!" Giana cried in response.  "It's against all the
principles of modern aerial combat!"
     And the sky began to explode all around her.
     Starbuck shook hie head, muttering half to himself. "Where'd you
guys learn to fly?  Yo'ud never have made it past basic aero in my day,
no less got certified for space combat."  Starbuck pressed a button on
his control board.  A yellow light flashed on the indicator panel. 
Etched lettering on it read Manual override. Starbuck reached for a
control lever, took a firm hold on it and swung it hard over.
     He brought his craft in behind another Starfighter under heavy
marauder attack. The marauder as usual was able to match its course
perfectly with the Starfighter's.  As the heavy attack came within laser
range it seemed inevitable that still another Starfighter was shortly to
blossom into flame and flying fragments.
     Instead, Starbuck's ship flashed across the sky, streaking to a
point above and beside the maneuvering pair.  Starbuck dived, swung
through a difficult Immelmann, streaked toward the marauder from nine
o'clock and pressed his firing stud once, twice.  
     This time it was the marauder rather than the Starfighter that
blossomed into flame.  For once Starbuck was able to grin...as was the
pilot of the rescued Starfighter, Colonel Giana Fairshare!
     Starbuck pulled his Starfigher alongside Giana's, tossed her an
old-fashioned thumbs-up salute and a grin, then streaked away, leaving
the colonel to reexamine her notions of military doctrine---and her
feelings about Captain Dirk "Starbuck" Rogers!
     While aboard the Galactica, Princess Koji stood watching the aerial
combat ending in the vacuum above her observation bridge.  The marauder
craft streaked away, abandoning their attack on the flagship, leaving the
surviving Starfighters to circle triumphantly over the broad decks of the
Galactica.
     Princess Koji spoke aloud, knowing that radio pickups would capture
her voice and carry it to Giana Fairshare and the rest of her Intercept
Squadron.  "The people of Hydra thank you for your brave support,
Colonel," Koji intoned, "and also bereave your losses.  May our Father's
light guide you to safety.  And may our impending arrival on your planet
be equally blessed.  Please inform your Council that the peace mission is
arriving and ask them to proceed with the proper ceremonies."
     Back in space, Giana watched Starbuck's ship streak away.  She
switched on her radio and said, "Now, Captain---let's go home."  She
watched Starbuck's ship and the few other survivors drop away from the
battlestar Galactica and into their re-entry orbits.  Then she threw her
own Starfighter into a wingover and dropped back toward Earth.
     At the Intercept Squadron hangar, Starbuck Rogers walked
deliberately away from his ship.  Giana had landed shortly behind him and
ran from her own Starfighter to catch up with Starbuck.  "Captain
Rogers," she called. Starbuck halted, waited for help to speak.  "I know
you expect undying gratitude for what you did up there," Giana said, "and
I suppose you did save my life."
     "I was saving a Starfighter," Starbuck answered bitterly.  "You told
me there was a shortage of them, and I can see why now."
     "Your approval of our flying skills is inconsequential," Giana
Fairshare snapped. "You will not be flying with us again!"
     "None of you'll be flying for long, if you don't get rid of
whoever's programming your defense tactics!"
     "I designed our tactis, Captain Rogers. They have seen us through a
nearly endless war and have kept us in command of the skies throughout
its duration."
     "It didn't look so great up there to me," Starbuck said mockingly.
     Giana conceded, "We have suffered casualties unusually high since
encountering those pirates. I don't know why..."
     "I do," Starbuck bounced back. "They know every move you're going to
make before you make it!"
     "Impossible!"
     "I know what I saw, Colonel.  Believe me, if I hadn't shut off my
flight computer and gone into manual, neither you nor I would be here
now.  You've got a spy, all right, but it's not me." He turneda way and
again started to walk toward the headquarters shack.
     "Halt!" Giana cried. "Captain Rogers, the princess denied your
story.  I have no choice but to arrest you, pending a renewed proceeding
in your case."  He kept on walking. "Captain Rogers! Don't make me shoot
you again!"
     Starbuck turned back and saw Giana's hand resting on the holster
that held her laser pistol. "Giana," Starbuck said, "where can I go?  The
only home that I know isn't just miles away, it's separated from us by
centuries!  There's no place for me to hide. So just forget this silly
arrest stuff and get your act together."
     As he had before, Starbuck simply turned his back and walked away. 
But this time he heard no count, nor did Giana unholster her laser. 
Instead she stood confused, watching Starbuck Rogers's form diminish as
he crossed the landing pad.  She muttered under her breath, whispering
angry curses that would have curled the hair of a longshoreman in
Starbuck Rogers's time, yet fighting to keep the tears in her eyes from
spilling over onto her softly rounded cheeks.  Her mood held for a few
seconds, then was broken by a mellow, soothing voice.
     "Colonel Fairshare, have you seen Captain Rogers?" It was none other
than Dr. Zee, his plastic case cleaned and polished to show no sign of
his ordeal in Inferno.  He hung from the neck of his drone Boxey, also
cleaned up, refurbished, and restored to perfect condition.
     "That man Rogers is a primitive barbarian," Giana grumbled.
     Zee said simply, "I hadn't noticed."
     "And also," Giana continued, "a lying bastard!"
     "Oh, dear," Zee said, "I am sorry to hear that. It's going to make
matters very, very awkward that you feel that way."
     "Sending Captain Rogers back to Inferno will not be awkward. And
this time there will be no rescue expedition!"
     "But I'm afraid...that there is."  Zee paused, his lights flashing
in confused patterns.  "You see, Giana, my dear, our Council has had a
formal request from her highness, the Princess Koji."
     "What's that got to do with Starbuck Rogers?" Giana demanded.
     "Everything," Zee said. "They wish to decorate him for valor. With
the Hydran Order of Merit or some such award.  The princess says that he
single-handedly saved her unarmed battlestar from attack by the renegade
bandits."
     "Did you say single-handedly?"
     "Apparently, even your command ship was nearly destroyed, Giana. 
Were it not for Captain Rogers's inordinate skills and quick thinking,
the princess feels that..."
     "I'm not interested in what the princess feels," Giana cut him off
agitatedly. "I know what happened.  I was there."
     She turned away and began to cross the feield, anger and resentment
visible in every line of her trim body.  "And what's more," she called
back at Zee, "if Captain Rogers is to remain out of custody, then I am
personally going to see that you are held responsible for him.  Wherever
he goes, whatever he does!  And whatever the consequences!  Good day,
Doctor!"
     She disappeared, and now it was Zee's turn to grumble in distress. 
"Dear me, dear me, did you hear that, Boxey?  If the captain does
anything wrong, we're all going to end up back in Inferno again!"
     Boxey stood still for a moment, for all the wolrd as if he was
concentrating on Zee's prediction. Then he began to scuttle across the
landing pad, zigging and sagging like a broken-field runner.  "Boxey,"
Zee cried, "stop this!  Where do you think we're going?  This is no time
to get hysterical.  Boxey, please, come to your senses at once!"
     Giana Fairshare by now had reached the office of her friend and
mentor, the aged scientist Dr. Salik.  She entered to find him with his
back to the entryway, his hands clasped in the small of his waist, gazing
abstractly from the window.  Before him stretched the magnificent vista
of the Island City, its gleaming spires reaching nearly to touch the
inner surface of the great arching dome that held the city in, held the
poisoned air and vicious monsters of Inferno without.
     Salik turned as Giana entered and listened patiently as she poured
our her concern over the situation with the bandits, the dogfight, and
her distressing relationship with Captain Starbuck Rogers. When she
finished, Salik said, "I'm inclined to think that the bandits and
Starbuck are the least of our worries.  The Council was too quick to
accept this treaty with the Hydrans.  They took them at face value, and I
fear that was a mistake."
     "It was understandable," Giana said. "We need that trade!  If Earth
doesn't have an assured, steady flow of food coming in, we face either
another holocaust or a long, slowly slide toward barbarism."
      "Still," Salik persisted, "my apprehension remains unrelieved. "
     "Maybe I can help a little," Giana volunteered. Dr. Salik stood,
listening closely. "Our visit to the Hydran spacecraft may have proved
Captain Rogers to be a liar," Giana said, "but it also proved that the
Hydran ship is unarmed, and our scanners picked up no other warcraft
within range. The only other ships within striking range were the pirate
marauders that attacked while we were up."
     "Then you believe it's safe to allow the Galactica to penetrate our
shield?"
     "I believe we can admit the Galactica inot the Island City itself. 
They have no attack craft with enough range to have arrived since we
checked out the Galactica."
     "You don't know how much better you've made me feel," Salik said
gratefully.
     Aboard the Galactica, the Princess Koji posed and preened before her
mirror. At a knock on her door and the princess's command of "Enter,"
Jaguar-Man stepped aside and admitted Ortega to the royal chamber. 
Ortega had donned his own fanciest and most elaborate dress uniform, and
he advanced to stand behind the preening princess so she could see him as
well as herself in her boudoir mirror.
     "You are ravishing tonight, my princess," Ortega lipped coolly.
     "Your princess?" Koji asked suspiciously. "That has the ring of
possession to it, Ortega."
     The uniformed man reached with his arms and folded them around the
magnificently outfitted princess.  He bent and placed a kiss on the back
of her neck.  "I was thinking more of a partnership than of possession,"
he explained.
     "Do you truly desire me, Ortega?" the princess asked. "Or is it
merely my throne that draws you to me?" She disengaged herself from his
arms and turned on her dressing-seat to gaze up at him and receive her
answer.
     "It is your desires I serve," Ortega said."I will see to it that one
day you will sit on your father's throne as the queen of all the empire." 
With these words, Ortega bent and kissed the princess directly on the
mouth.  She permitted him the liberty, then slowly drew away as his
demands became greater.
     "Conserve your strength, Ortega," she commanded. "I'll need your
help soon enough.  Tomorrow, we make our move---the conquest of Earth!"
     As she broke away from him, Ortega said, "Tomorrow, we conquer
Earth!  You could never have reached this point without me, Koji."
     "You truly believe that, don't you, Ortega?" The princess's voice
was contemptuous of her courtier.
     "It is a fact," Ortega asserted. "Save for having me at your side,
your father would have given this plum to one of your sisters and their
warlord husbands. A woman alone, with no husband---to conquer Earth, the
greatest prize in all the empire?  Never!"
     Koji sneered. "Your ego is your most unattractive feature, Ortega,
do you know that?  There are some things about you that I do admire, but
when you start bragging you make me think of sending you to the calcusite
mines of Tenetaroia."
     "Learn to love my ego, princess. Don't despise self-appreciation.  I
will lead you to greatness!"  He paused, then resumed. "Now let us go on. 
Our friends on Earth await their new princess---whether they know it or
not!" And he burst into great, ringing peals of strangely frightening
laughter.

*****

Seven

     On the Earth of the twenty-fifth century, there were the island
cities and then there was The Island City. Within the Island City there
were chambers and halls, reception rooms and splendid conference parlors
and magnificent public buildings of every sort and descrption. But none
could compare with the Palace of Mirrors.
     Within the Palace of Mirrors there were splendid chambers and halls
of every purpose and sort, each more magnificent and sumptuous than the
next, for all of the surviving wealth and all of the surviving glory of
Earth was represented here. And even so, even within the Palace of
Mirrors, there was no chamber to compare even remotely, in dazzling
magnificence, with the Grand Ballroom.
     The room presented a dazzling vista of immense chandeliers,
glorious, dazzling coruscations of panspectral light that gave the
impression that the entire ceiling was a single, gargantuan, multifaceted
lens whose display of ever-shifting illumination never ceased to vary and
delight the eye of the beholder.
     The walls of the Ballroom were themselves totally mirrored, and the
floor was of a material so smooth and reflective and so perfectly
finished and polished that it, too, reflected like a single giant mirror.
     The effect of being in the room was thus one of being wholly
surrounded by, bathed in, permeated and all but absorbed into a
supernatural solution of pure light and tone.
     Cascades of heraldic banners added slashes of unexpected pattern and
tint to the room.
     The oval floor drew one's attention tto a double-pointed ellipse; at
one node of the ellipse stood a raised dias surmounted by a simple,
scroll-shaped bench, while at the other stood a similar dias surmounted
by the ornately regal throne of the Hydran Realm.
     Now there echoed through the great mirrored ballroom the glissandoed
cascading notes of heraldic trumpets tuned to a harmony octaves apart.
This new Earth of the twenty-fifth century divided its attention,
Janus-like, facing to the future and the past at once.  Its space-fleets,
its ultramodern, domed island cities, its interstellar trading
agreements, and supercomputerized technology faced to the future.  Its
pomp, its heraldry, its ceremony, reminded one and all of the rich
heritage of Earth's historic past.
     Behind the marching heralds advanced a row of colorfully garbed
pages, each carrying a tall, polished standard from which there floated
gauzy streamers in heraldic colors.  Drummers marched at their flanks,
sounding a stately, martial cadence. 
     Once the heralds, pages, and drummers had completed their ceremonial
entry into the ballroom, the official party followed.
     Dr. Salik entered first.  For once he was not garbed in the informal
laboratory tunic that he habitually wore in the performance of his
scientific researches. Instead, he adopted a severe, dark-colored outfit
of simple line and spartan cut.  He ascended the steps of the dias to the
plain, scroll-shaped bench.
     Now entered Colonel Giana Fairshar of the Intercept Squadron,
Earth's first and final line of defense.  Accompanied by an honor guard
of her fellow officers, she had arrayed herself in the full formal dress
uniform of a flight colonel of the Third Forces.  The effect was
stunning: at once efficient, military, almost as spartan as the plain
dark tunic of Dr. Salik---and yet, through some subtle trick of the
tailor's art, through cut, color, fit, texture, and form, she managed to
present an appearance, dazzlingly feminine, graceful, soft, even in a
subtle way erotic.  She was the ultimate female warrior, wholly a
warrior, yet at the same time wholly female.
     A respetctful murmur had circled the ballroom at the entrance of Dr.
Salik; at that of Colonel Fairshare, a universal gasp which she chose to
acknowledge in no way.
     In the foyer of the Grand Ballroom, Starbuck Rogers stood carefully
checking his own appearance before a full-length mirror.  He too had
arrayed himself in full-dress uniform of captain's rank, but for Starbuck
the pomp and ceremony of the Palace of Mirrors was something to be taken
in stride, a mere incident in the progress of the ongoing drama of the
Central Directorate of Earth, the Hydran Empire, and the menacing,
enigmatic space bandits.
     As Starbuck adjusted the accoutrements of his dress uniform he was
observed admiringly by Boxey and Dr. Zee.  The computer-brain glistened
with his own flashing lights and brightly polished exterior.  The little
drone had been outfitted with a military tunic and stiff collar.
     "You look magnificent, Starbuck," Dr. Zee intoned. "But you seem
dissatisfied. Is something bothering you?"
     "Why did they invite me to this bloody shindig?" Starbuck grumbled.
"Nobody believes me, anyway."
     'You saved Colonel Fairshare's life today," Zee said. "Not to
mention single-handedly fighting off the bandit raid on Princess Koji's
ship.  The princess wants to thank you personally, Starbuck, aside from
everything else."
     "Huh!" Starbuck snorted. "I'd like to have a word or two with the
princess, myself. Alone!"
     "Too bad," Zee's syrupy voice sounded commiseratingly. "I'm afraid
that won't be permitted.  After all, she's a princess and you're only a
low-rated military officer.  Even your captaincy is slightly
questionable, Starbuck. What does a United States Air Force commission
mean to the Third Force Intercept Squadron?"
     Starbuck ignored Zee's words, standing instead deep in thought,
hardly even seeing his own image or those of Boxey and Zee in the tall
mirror.  Finally, he said, irrelevantly, "Doc, what do you have for a
headache. Anything to help?"
     "A headache?" Zee echoed concernedly. "Are you ill, Starbuck?"
     'I guess I'm still not quite recovered from my long trip," Starbuck
replied, deliberately ambiguous as to which long trip he meant.
     "Why didn't you say something, Starbuck?  Boxey will get you a
relaxant.  You know, most headaches originate with a tension of the neck
muscles.  But come, it's time to enter the ballroom.  We don't want to
keep Princess Koji and her party waiting for us."
     Starbuck straightened his shoulders and marched into the ballroom,
Boxey trailing at his heels, zee hanging from the drone's tunic-collared
neck.
     As Starbuck entered the Grand Ballroom, Giana Fairshare reacted with
a curt, silent, but approving nod.  Starbuck bowed formally to her, his
movement mirrored by the like-tunicked Boxey.
     "That's more like it, Captain," Giana lipped softly. "Now you look
like an officer---and a gentleman."
     "Doesn't everybody?" Starbuck replied, eyeing Giana's costume.
     Upon the dias of the scroll-shaped couch, Dr. Salik stood, the focus
of a coruscating array of flashing lights.  His old-fashioned spectacles
reflected the lights but he ignored the effect and held his hand up for
silence.  Then he began his formal pronouncements of the ceremony.
     "Citizens of the Island City." He gazed around, the focus of all
eyes. "At this profound moment in our history, we see hovering in the
skies above us an alien vessel.  A military spacecraft, a ship of war. As
designated spokesman of the Earth Directorate, I have ordered our
defenses lowered and our portal opened wide to welcome this awesome
visitor, for this is not an invader of Earth!
     "This great war machine has come to us stripped of all weaponry. 
She is completely unarmed---a shining symbol of peace!  Lasting
peace---and great goodwill---between the peoples of Earth and of the
Hydran Realm."
     He looked about him, his lean, drably garbed form suddenly invested
with a majesty and strength no glittering uniform could have lent.  "We
welcome now the Hydran Trade Delegation under the leadership of the crown
heir of the Hydran Realm, her royal highness, the Princess Koji."
     Again the trumpet fanfares with their vibrating glissandos and the
stirring rolls of kettle and snare drums filled the air.  From concealed
receptacles behind glittering mirrors a shower of fragrant rose petals
swirled down.  There was a stir in the ornate entryway of the Grand
Ballroom, and the assembled throng turned as one person to greet the
entrance of the royal entourage.
     Now Koji, flanked by Ortega and the ministers of her father's realm,
adavanced into the ballroom.  She was garbed in a stunning, barbarically
splendid gown of brocade trimmed with the fur of lynx.  She wore a crown
of precious metals, trimmed with black glistening fur and encrusted with
glittering precious gems of every color.  The shape of the crown was that
of the ancient Tartar Cap of Monokhash.
     The anachronistic combination of barbarism and regal modernity gave
her an air like that of a daughter of the great Genghis Khan mixed with
that of the Empress Catherine the Great; equally imperious, exotic,
breathtakingly beautiful, hot-blooded, passionate---and deadly!  She awas
a smoldering beauty who might at any moment burst into flames of
consuming passion!
     She swept past aisles of dazzled admirers, climbed unaided to the
glittering throne that surmounted the ellipse-node opposite that where
Dr. Salik stood, and whirled regally to address the assemblage.
     "I bring you greetings on this historic occasion," her throaty,
passionate voice rang out.  "This occasiona which sweeps aside all
barriers and opens between us a glorious era of commerce and of peace."
     She paused and the assembled dignitaries applauded enthusiastically,
silencing themselves only to hear her further comments.
     "As proof of his dedication to this pact of commerce and
demilitarization, my father the Emperor Toom has sent me to Earth with a
glorious surprise for you!"

***** 

     At the very moment that the Princess Koji was addressing the
assembled dignitaries in the Grand Ballroom of the Palace of Mirrors in
Earth's Inner City, her immense Hydran battlestar was hovering silently
above the city's glistening dome.
     In the communications room of the Galactica the duty officer had
been carefully monitoring the ceremony below, receiving every word spoken
by means of a small transmitter carried by one of Koji's courtiers.  At
the prearranged signal he issued a command to his subordinates:  "Stand
by to transmit PersonImage---Now!"
     A crew of technicians cut in a carefully coordinated set of switches
and controls.
     In the ballroom below, the Princess Koji had paused. Now she resumed
her speech: "Speaking to you across the immense distances which separate
us---I present to you a direct, live PersonImage broadcast from my
father, Toom the Conqueror of Space, Warlord of Asleer, Ruler of the
Hydran Realm.!"
     Koji had delivered her address while standing beside the ornate
Hydran throne that had been set up at the node of the elipse.  Now, as
the air crackled electrically, a holographic image of Toom the Conqueror
appeared on the throne itself.  The imperial warlord was being seen for
the first time by the dignitaries and functionaries of the Central
Directorate of Earth.  He was a great, fat, barbaric tyrant in the grand
manner of Henry VIII or Genghis Khan.  His voice was deep and
rough-textured despite all of the electronic filtering to which it was
subjected.
     The assembly was taken aback for a moment, then politely applaudged
not the gross and menacing figure that had appeared before them, but the
power and the authority that it represented.
     "Greetings," Toom intoned sententiously. "I now address you in
person to show you the importance, people of Earth, that I, great Toom,
place upon our interplanetary pact."
     Toom went on, making grandiose claims and condescendingly generous
offers to the people of Earth.  While the PersonImage spoke to the
assembled audience, Ortega whispered softly in the ear of the Princess
Koji. "There are two things your father enjoys most," Ortega whispered,
"spellbinding a crowd and conquering new words.  This is a rare
opportunity for him---to do both at once!"
     Koji's eyes flashed covertly at Ortega. "Not Toom," she whispered
back, "but I, Koji, shall conquer Earth!"
     "With your father's help," Ortega grinned wolfishly. "And with
mine!" He glanced around the room at the spellbound assemblage. "I wonder
what those poor souls would say if they knew the overstuffed ogre in
front of them is a recording and that your father is actually halfway
here with his great attack armada!"
     While Ortega and Koji carried on their whispered conversation, the
PersonImage of the Emperor Toom continued to harangue the attentive
crowd.  "Here at home in my realm," Toom intoned, "I can only manage the
outpouring of good will from the people of Earth to the citizens of the
Hydran Empire.  Our differences are all behind us now.  Before us lies a
vista of unending commerce, mutually beneficial trade, cultural exchange
and counter-enrichment...and eternal peace!"
     The fleshy, bejeweled hand seemed to reach into thin air as the
living Toom had reached off-camera to receive a document from a
bystanding courtier.  The hand of the PersonImage reappeared holding an
ornately beribboned scroll.  "I will now proclaim my royal edict," Toom
said. He unrolled the document, held it before him and read portentiously
from it.
     "By my royal command the unarmed battlestar Galactica will descend
to the lower atmosphere above the central district of the Island City.  A
display of the most sophisticated Hydran technology will be opened to all
citizens of Earth's Island City, and will be known henceforth as the
Museum of Interstellar Culture.  I do hereby give as my personal gift, to
the peaceful peoples of the planet Earth, this undying symbol of peace.
     "Thus signed and sealed," the emperor looked up from the document,
"by my own hand. Toom, Imperator. Until we meet, then, I bid you
farewell."
     His jowly face broke into a beaming grin.  He waved and nodded at
the crowd as if he were actually present and seeing them as they saw him. 
The crowd cheered in return as trumpet calls and drum rolls sounded.
     When the uproar had quieted enough for him to be heard, the dark
tunicked Dr. Salik replied to Princess Koji as representative of her
father the emperor.  "On behalf of the Directorate, we accept with thanks
this great gift from your father the emperor." The old man bowed low to
the smiling princess while the audience again resumed its applause and
cheers.
     "Let the celebration begin!" Dr. Salik proclaimed loudly.
     And now the crowd separated itself into strictly dictated court
formations as the music of trumpets and drums was replaced by stately,
formal orchestral harmonies.  The court formation was that of the formal
ceremonial dances of the twenty-fifth century.  It was a mixture, like
the rest of Earth's culture in this era, of the forward-looking and the
nostalgic, the futuristic and the antique. It combined mixtures of the
minuet and the quadrille, the formal ballet and the free-form expressive
dance.
     The partners met, bowed, curtsied, circled, separated and
reassembled in stately formality. A new touch was the passing of
delicately lighted globes of the most fragile glass from hand to hand
among the dancers.  Within each swayed a delicate candle, and when the
great chandeliers were dimmed at the climax of the dance, the Grand
Ballroom was transformed into a fairyland where multicolored fireflies
floated on graceful, rhythmic breezes that wafted invisibly through
midnight glades.
     At the apex of the parade of the fairylamps the Princess Koji stood,
a figure of breathtaking barbaric beauty, a new Titania receiving the
chaste, formal kisses of fealty from the dignitaries who moved in stately
rhythm past the throne of Hydra.
     Yet even as Koji received the formal tribue of the waiting
dignitaries, her eye probed the ballroom before her.
     And at the opposite end of the ballroom, observing with a keen
appreciation of the symbolism as well as the immediate beauty of the
spectacle, stood Starbuck Rogers.
     For an instant Koji's eye caught that of Starbuck's.  She seemed to
transmit a jolt of human electricity across the ballroom to the Earthman,
and in return he nodded to her, smiling seriously.  The princess caught
the expression, returned it with the subtle hint of some added
ingredient.
     The line continued to move past the princess, while Starbuck's
attention was caught by an insistent tapping at his leg.  He looked down
and saw Boxey and Dr. Zee standing, the drone holding something toward
him in one metallic hand.  "We brought you a quantity of Soma, Starbuck,"
Dr. Zee said.
     "Eh?" Starbuck expressed complete puzzlement.
     "For your headache," Zee explained. "Soma is a very strong relaxant.
You take a single capsule, that should relieve any tension that is
causing your headache.  More than one would make you very woozy, though,
so be careful with the medicine."
     "Thanks," Starbuck said. He took the little bottle of capsules and
tucked it into his tunic. "One more thing, guys. I need a rose."
     "Please verify:  a rose?" Zee said.
     "A rose. A red rose."
     "I don't understand, Starbuck. Why do you need a rose?"
     "Never mind, Zee, Boxey. Just get me one, please, quickly!"
     'Just a minute, Boxey." Dr. Zee spoke authoritatively, stopping the
quad in its tracks.  "Starbuck is getting us involved in something here,
and before we commit ourselves I'd like to find out just what he's
planned."
     Boxey squealed characteristically and began to move again.
     "Wait, wait," Zee's voice rose with agitation, "where are you taking
me, Boxey?"
     As the two mechanical beings departed, Giana Fairshare approached
Starbuck Rogers, her appearance of restrained poise and trim
attractiveness a telling contrast to the overwhelmingly barbaric beauty
of Princess Koji. "How did you like the presentation, Captain Rogers?"
Giana asked Starbuck.
     "Impressive," Starbuck commented. "Did that lightshow come all the
way from her daddy's kingdom?"
     "I don't understand your terms of almost contemptuous familiarity,
Captain," Giana frowned sternly, then continued.  "I would suggest a more
respectful form of reference than daddy. The Emperor Toom may well be the
greatest leader that this galaxy has ever known."
     "He is impressive," Starbuck conceded. But the expression on his
face and the gesture he made with his hands, indicating King Toom's
imposing girth, suggested that Starbuck was still not taking the leader
with total seriousness---or at any rate, was far from awed by the
imperial Hydran presence.
     Before Giana could reply, Starbuck continued, "I wonder why Toom
didn't come in person. Do peaceful conquests bore him to tears?"
     "Conquests?  You'd better get your understanding of this treaty
squared away, Captain Rogers. This is a mutual trade pact concluded
between equals."
     "Uh-huh!" Starbuck grunted ironically. "And the princess up there
and her boyfriend Ortega are just a couple of down-home folks doin' their
jobs and ekin' out a livin.' Is that it?"
     "I think we all know why you resent their presence," Giana replied
coldly. "It spells the end of you and your bandit pals, Rogers!"
     "A word of advice, Colonel," Starbuck replied with equal remoteness.
"Beware of Greeks bearing gifts."
     A look of genuine puzzlement crossed Giana's face. "Greeks?" she
repeated. "What are Greeks?"
     "I guess it's pretty far back now," Starbuck explained. "You folks
have apparently lost most of Earth's history. Do you remember the story
of the Trojan Horse?"
     "Is that some kind of sign of the zodiac?" Giana asked.
     "Never mind." Starbuck shook his head hopelessly. "Forget all about
it. I guess I come from a time that was hoplelessly paranoid.  See ya
around."
     He started to walk away just as Zee and Boxey returned from the
mission upon which he had sent them.  Boxey carefully balanced a satin
pillow in his arms. A perfect red rose with tiny dew drops sparkling on
its petals reposed on the pillow.
     As the drone scuttered up, Giana said sternly, "I thought I told you
to stay with him. There's something definitely not right with that man,
and I want to find out what it is!"
     "He isn't feeling well tonight, Giana dear," Zee intoned.
     "He looks like he feels all right to me. Hmph!" She stood with her
fists balled on her hips as she looked into the distant crowd where
Starbuck had disappeared.  Finally she turned her eyes back to the
mechanicals and noticed the pillow and rose for the first time. "What's
that for?" Giana demanded.  
     "We don't know," Zee replied. "It's just something that Starbuck
asked for.  He seems to be up to---Boxey, stop!" As the drone scuttered
away again Zee called back to Giana, "I don't know what's got into Boxey
tonight.  He seems to have developed amind of his own all of a sudden!"
Zee blinked his lights furiously.  "Boxey, you're at it again.  Boxey,
stop, where are you going this time? We can't run away from Giana like
this, Boxey!"
     But Boxey was scuttling determinedly toward the reception line where
Starbuck Rogers was standing in place, impatiently awaiting his turn to
be presented to the princesss.  The little quad scuttled up to Starbuck
and lifted the satin pillow towad him, presenting the red rose for his
approval.
     "What kept you, Boxey?" Starbuck asked. "Here, let me have that."
     Dr. Zee flashed his lights. "Starbuck no one else is giving flowers
to the princess. You're going to make everyone else in the hall look..."
     "Stick close, fellas," Starbuck interrupted. "Wer'e in the on-deck
circle." He waited while the man ahead of him in line, a pompous,
middle-aged bureaucrat with a twittering overweight wife on his elbow,
was presented to Princess Koji.
     Then it was Starbuck's turn.
     He drew back his shoulders and stepped into position before the
princess.  Koji responded to Starbuck's splendid appearance and to the
force of personality that she felt radiating from him.  Her lovely,
subtly tilted eyes---what the poet-bard of an earlier age would have
poesied as her downwards-slanting eyes---glowed under long, curved lashes
that were both delicate---and cruel.
     Koji extended her hand in formal greeting.  At the same time she
spoke to Starbuck. "Congratulations to you, Captain Rogers. And may I
offer my imperial thanks.  We are grateful to you for saving the
Galactica from plunder by those horrible desperados."
     "Not too loudly, princess," Starbuck answered.  "Around here, they
seem to think that I'm a desperado myself.  Thanks to you!"
     "Thanks to me?" the princess asked in surprise. Starbuck tried
without success to tell whether her expression represented mockery or
real astonishment, or a hybrid of the two. "I hope I didn't cause you any
embarrassment," the princess continued. "You aren't angry with me, are
you?"
     "Does this look like I'm angry?" Starbuck snaped his fingers at the
robot by his side. Boxey raised the rose-bearing pillow to Koji as Zee
intoned in his syrupy tones, "On behalf of the people and the government
of..."
     Starbuck took the rose from its satin repository and handed it to
Koji. "From me to you," he said simply.
     Beside the mirrored wall of the ballroom, Giana angrily observed
Starbuck's intimacy with the royal guest of honor.  Giana's heart was a
seething cauldron of mixed emotions:  attraction to Starbuck, jealousy of
Koji, anger with the man for paying attention to the princess rather than
to herself.  She was realizing that her own feelings were complex and
difficult---and that the difficulty swirled maddeningly around the vortex
of Dirk Rogers!
     Giana saw Koji take the rose greedily from Starbuck, clearly aware
that it was not merely a beautiful flower but a symbol of triumph in the
contest for his attention.  She lifted the rose to her nostrils and
sniffed eagerly.  Ortega at her side snarled silently.  The princess
glanced down at the robot and the brain.
     "And who is your charming little friend," Koji asked Starbuck.
     "His name is Boxey," Dr. Zee volunteered.  
     "And that thing around his neck," Starbuck added, "is Dr. Zee,
former member of the Island City Council of Computers."
     Boxey bowed, Zee dangling from his tunic.
     "Your majesty," Zee intoned.
     "May I have the honor of the next dance?" Starbuck asked Koji.
     Jealously, Ortega put in, "The princess does not..."
     "Does not mind if she does," Koji interrupted him.  She reached for
Starbuck's arm, took in and descended at his side, from the
throne-bearing dias to the gleamily polished dance floor.  The crowd
parted to permit them room as Starbuck and Koji made their way to a
position near the orchestra.  At a signal from Starbuck, given over the
shapely shoulder of Princess Koji, the orchestra began to play once more.
     Giana Fairshare, watching this show, frowned angrily.  No, for all
that she had virtually dismissed Starbuck from her presence, grading him
as a boor at best and a traitor at worst, she was not in the least
pleased to see him moving on intimate terms with the Princess Koji.
     While Starbuck carried on his odd triangular relationship with Koji
and Giana, Dr. Salik and Ortega had left the Grand Ballroom and were
conferring on serious matters outside.  Their setting was a beautiful
balcony, beneath which the vista of the Island City presented a
breathtaking view.  But neither Salik nor Ortega was interested in the
right.  Both were concerned with what information they could obtain---and
what information or misinformation, they might be called upon to provide
to the other.
     "I must say that I owe you a debt of gratitude, Ortega," Dr. Salik
said in his dry, fat man's voice. "Or perhaps more accurately, I should
say that this entire planet owes you a debt.  You know, there are those
who consider you a traitor to the world of your birth for giving up your
Earth citizenship and becoming a subject of the Emperor Toom."
     "Me? A traitor?" Ortega burst into raucous laughter.  "You can't be
serious!"
     "I definitely am.  But they must all see by now that you have been
our friend at court.  It was your efforts that made this treaty possible
for Earth and Hydra."
     "We have all workd, Dr. Salik. It's been hard, I'll admit."
     "If the Council were so to honor you, Ortega, would you consider
resuming your Earth citizenship?"
     "I would like nothing better!  I must say that I've missed the
Island City.  Hydra has its splendors, but you know, Docotr, once you
grow up in a place..." Ortega pointed across the vista before them." 
That building over there......it was the Communications Center when I was
a boy.  I wonder, is it still?"
     Salik nodded. "And the Department of Water and Power is now in the
copper tower over to the left." He raised a dark-tunicked sleeve and
pointed.
     Ortega grunted. "It's been so long, Doc, so long.  Sometimes I can't
even remember.  For instance, the central security barracks and the
Intercept Squadron launching bays---they used to be concealed on the
north side. A least I think I recall that. Are they still over there?"
     Salik hesitated, smiling a secret smile. "That's classified
information, Ortega.  Not that I distrust you personally, of course.  I'm
sure you'll understand."
     Ortega smiled back, showing rows of massive, grinning teeth.  The
two men resembled a black bearr and a pink flamingo as they stood side by
side.  But he knew that Salik's power lay in his brilliant brain, not his
spare body, just as Salik knew that Ortega's strength laly not in his
massively muscled bulk, powerful though that body was, but in his
influence with the Princess Koji and through her the mighty empire that
her father Toom ruled.
     "Sure," Ortega laughed at last, "I understand.  Besides, what
difference does it make where a few troopers keep their foot-lockers, eh,
Doc?  Besides," and he smiled again, less menacingly than the last time,
"I'll always be an Earthling at heart, regardless of what my citizenship
papers say.  Maybe I'll just stay on Eath this time, permanently."
     "I do hope so," Salik agreed.
     They shared a glance at the city's vista, then returned to the Grand
Ballroom where the orchestra was still performing its courtly,
formalized, modern-archaic dance-music.
     "Is this the way they dance where you come from?" Starbuck asked
Koji as she swayed formally in his arms.
     "With slight variations," she replied. "The universal culture of
this space age, you know."
     "Whaaaaaat?!  You'll have to forgive me then, Koji.  My dancing's
about five hundred years out of date."
     "If you've another preference," the princess replied, "you know,
this is my party."
     Starbuck turned to the orchestra's leader and snapped his fingers to
get the muscian's attention.  When he had dones so he continued to pop
his knuckles, setting up a rocking rhythm that he'd learned in the remote
era of the twentieth century.  He moved like a famous disco dancer of the
ancient past.  The orchestra leader, the musicians, the dancer, and not
least by any means, the Princess Koji, gaped as Starbuck demonstrated a
sexy boogie step of the late 1980s.
     "What in the name of the Space Gods are you doing, Starbuck?" Koji
asked at last.
     "Getting' down," Starbuck answered. "It's from before your time,
princess.  Hope it doesn't frighten you."
     "Frighten me?" she answered sharply. "Nothing frightens me!"
     "Glad to hear it," Starbuck encouraged her. "C'mon, give it a try. 
Nothin' too it, honey, just get down and boogie."
     Princess Koji joined Starbuck in the boogie step, at first
hesitantly, then with more confidence, finally with a barbaric abandon
that brought an admiring gleam to his hazel eyes.  He even began to hum a
familiar tune along with the orchestra's beat.  "Start spreading the
news......"
     The onlookers stood in awe.  Giana had come to the edge of the crowd
and stood watching Starbuck and Koji.  Her face showed that she was
utterly appalled by the abandon of the public performance.  Zee and Boxey
stood beside Giana.
     "It's expressive," Zee declared, his lights flashing in time to the
emphatic rhythm.
     "It's obscene!" Giana sneered.
     "Primeval," Zee said.
     "I disapprove," Giana said, adopting a regal tone more appropriate
to the wildly dancing Koji.
     All the while the Starbuck and Koji had been dancing, Boxey had
watched and listened, his mechanical circuits and relays clicking over in
time to the music.  Now he tried a few steps of his own in imitation of
Captain Rogers.
     "Boxey!  Cease and desist at once! There are people watching!" Zee
scolded.
     Instead of stopping, Boxey squealed his pleasure and increased the
vigor of his steps.
     Meanwhile, Starbuck and Koji carried on a breathless conversation
while they danced before the hard working orchestra.
     "What happened when the dancers bumped together?" Koji asked.
     "They automatically became man and wife," Starbuck replied
sardonically.
     "You're quite a man, Captain Rogers," Koji replied. She shifted her
position to move closer to him as she continued her steps.  "I suppose
the Earthlings believe your incredible fairy tale about being frozen for
five hundred years."
     "Not on your life!" Starbuck denied. "They think I'm a spy!"
     "A spy?" Koji laughed wildly, her head thrown back and her lush,
dark hair cascading down her sensous shoulders and down her smooth
graceful back. "A spy!" she repeated. "One of mine?"
     "They aren't sure," Starbuck said. "Yours---or the bandits."
     "How would you like to join up?" Koji asked. "You might as well be
hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, Captain!"
     "Who do I see to make my move?" Starbuck asked.
     The princess moved even closer to him, raised her painted lips to
Starbuck's ear and hissed a single syllable. "Me!"
     Beside Zee and Boxey, Giana watched in fury and confusion. "Is
something wrong?" the computer-brain asked. "You look upset, Giana, my
dear."
     "I ordered you to keep Captain Rogers out of trouble," Giana told
the computer angrily.
     "I'm sorry, Giana," Zee's lights blinked a blushing crimson, "he
just seems to have a way of getting into things before we can get him
out."
     "Obviously!" Giana snapped.
     As Giana turned her back and stalked angrily from the room, Starbuck
caught a glimpse of her over Koji's shoulder.  He said nothing of the
incident to Koji, but his thoughts, like Giana's, were confused. 
Starbuck saw Giana pass Ortega on her way from the hall.  Ortega
proceeded across the dance floor, ignoring the powerful rhythm of the
music and striding determinedly up to the dancing couple.
     "Your highness," Ortega demanded.
     Koji, still caught up in the power of the dance, but tossing a
glance back to Ortega, said, "What is it?"
     "Your highness---some of the ministers would like a few minutes of
your time. It's important, your highness."
     "It will have to wait, Ortega," Koji returned her full attention to
the music and to Starbuck.
     "Business of the realm cannot wait," Ortega insisted. "I'm sorry,
your highness, but your duty must outweigh trivial personal dalliances."
He cast a contemptuous sneer at Starbuck.  
     Koji whirled furiously toward Ortega. "Don't you order me around,
you bastard," she hissed in a hate-filled voice.
     Ortega leaned forward, spoke in a low tone but with an urgency that
compelled even the arrogant Koji to pay attention. "Your father expects
you to serve the best interests of the realm, Koji!  You'd better
remember, if you fail, Toom has twenty-nine other daughters that will
succeed!"
     Koji made a low, animal growl in her throat.  Her eyes flashed and
she raised her long, talonlike fingernails as if she intended to rake
Ortega's face with them.  She had actually started toward him, claws
extended, when she felt Starbuck Rogers's hand on her wrist.  She turned,
snarling, toward Starbuck, then got control of herself and pulled back
from Ortega.
     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 Koji had clawed his face he
would not have dared retaliate here in the Grand Ballroom before the
assembled dignitaries of Earth and of Hydra.  He would have no choice but
to submit to a public scourging and then withdraw in shame.
     Instead, Koji turned toward Starbuck and repeated a polite formula
through angry, clenched. "It's been a great pleasure, Captain Rogers. But
it seems that we both have our duty cut ouf for us."
     She extended her hand, those deadly talons now turned harmlessly
down.  Starbuck Rogers took the extended hand, courteously kissed it,
murmured sotto voce, "Later, perhaps, Koji?"
     "I depart aboard my private launch at midnight, to return to the
Galactica."  Her eyes met those of the dashing Earthling, full of
unspoken promise.
     The princess turned, took Ortega's arm demandingly and ascended to
rejoin her ministers who awaited her beside her throne. Her bodyguard,
Jaguar-Man, watched all of this, the thoughts behind those inscrutable
slitted eyes a mystery to all but himself.
     Starbuck Rogers snapped a brittle wisecrack at Jaguar-Man and strode
away from the ellipse, headed toward the balcony outside the ballroom
where Ortega and Salik had conducted their earlier exchange.  This time
Starbuck found Giana Fairshare standing there, alone, her eyes gazing
sadly out over the beautiful, gleaming spires and shafts of the Island
City.
     Starbuck approached Giana from behind and spoke softly. "It's a very
beautiful sight, in its own way.  We had city skylines in my era, Giana,
some of them breathtaking to behold. But the Island City is unique."
     Giana's reply was 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."
     Starbuck heard his name accompanied by a little sound, a sound that
Giana nearly, but not quite, managed to suppress.  That sound might have
been a gasp---or a sob.
     "Okay," Starbuck said. "I'm sorry. So long." He turned away and
started back toward the Grand Ballroom."
     "Wait!" Giana cried. Starbuck stopped in his tracks, waiting for
Giana.  "I'm sorry," she echoed in Starbuck'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 cheer me up, please.  I've behaved very badly. It's
just that I'm so mixed up." She raised one hand to her brow.  As she did
so, Starbuck couldn't help noticing the contrast between Giana'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 Hydran princess.
     Starbuck shook his head. "I'm not quite myself, either."
     "At least you have an excuse," Giana said. "That is, you do, if
you're---if you're..."
     "Telling the truth?" he supplied.
     "You see?" Giana 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, Starbuck, I'm only making it worse." She stopped again,
clutched one hand with the other and forced herself to breathe deeply. 
"This is very difficult, Captain Rogers," she resumed. "I am a commander.
I'm not in the habit of explaining my---my---emotions."
     "Take your time," Starbuck offered.
     Giana drew herself up, inhaled deeply and began.  "It may not really
help, Starbuck.  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 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."
     Starbuck checked his watched unobtrusively.  Koji's launch would be
taking off for its return flight to the Galactica soon.
     "I'll try to be brief," Giana said. She looked up into Starbuck's
hazel-eyed, blonde-haired countenance, then turned slowly to lean on the
parapet and gaze out over the Island City as she spoke. "Ive never
experienced feelings like this in my entire career, Starbuck. 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 now I know that I was wrong."
     She took her hands from the parapet, turned and looked up at
Starbuck, 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 Starbuck was astonished.  Before he could respond in
any way, Giana had reached up and drawn his face d own to her own, and
kissed him tenderly on the mouth.  After a little bit she drew back and
asked, "Did you...like that?"
     Starbuck blinked. "It was first class," he said.
     "Then I did it correctly?" Giana asked.
     "Really outstanding."
     "Thank you," she said softly.
     "You're welcome as all get out," Starbuck told her. 
     "Then why don't we go someplace," Giana said. "The Palace of Mirrors
is so...public."
     Starbuck checked his watch again. "I'd really love to, Giana, 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 said, "So I
think I'd better go easy on reentry."
     He leaned over and kissed her softly on the cheek.
     "You're leaving!" Giana 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.
     Giana stared after him unbelievingly.  For a few seconds her
expression was one of deep hurt.  Then the hurt was transformed into
supernova-strength anger.

*****

Eight

     Princess Koji gazed around the Grand Ballroom, still filled with
swirling dancers, swaying musicians, glittering courtiers and dignitaries
of the Hydran Empire and the Central 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 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 portly Dr. Salik, ascended Princess Koji's dias
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 Jaguar-Man, Salik raised his hand halfway.
Jaguar-Man 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. Salik mumbled. "Or, ah, good hunting.  Catch a mousie or
whatever one wishes a, ah, creature of your sort."
     Jaguar-Man raised one murderously clawed paw.
     Dr. Salik gingerly pressed his meaty hand against the creature's
rasping pads, then withdrew.
     The Princess Koji cast a final glance around the ballroom, hoping to
spot Starbuck 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 dias, her
richly-trimmed cloak drawn about her, Jaguar-Man at her elbow, her
ministers and courtiers trailing behind in an order rigidly determined by
official protocol.  Prominent among them, jealous of his place in the
line and eager as ever to move forward to the princess's side, was the
oily Ortega.
     They made their way, accompanied by an Intercept Squadron honor
guard, to the princess's private launch. As soon as they had boarded
safely and found their proper positions, the launch streaked upward,
headed from Earth's glittering Island City to the Emperor Toom's great
battlestar Galactica.
     Inside the cabin of the launch, Koji 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 Hydra,
studded with sparkling gems of every color.  And it was a safety belt.
     Above the princess's head twin tiny speakers hung on wires so fine
as to be invisible, providing musical distraction for her highness during
the tedium of flight.  Koji gazed from the launch, watching the stars of
the earthly sky, moving her head slightly in time with the music as if
relieving 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 Hydra.
     Suddenly, the pleasant, soothing music was interrupted.  Koji
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.
     "Start spreading the news...I am leaving today," the voice sang
merrily.
     Koji 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 Starbuck Rogers entered the room.  He was singing his old-fashioned
song, carrying a tray in both hands with a bottle of Ambrosa on it and
two elaborate goblets.
     Jaguar-Man leaped to his feet, snarling, placing himself between
Princess Koji and the Earthling Starbuck Rogers.
     "It's all right," Koji soothed Jaguar-Man. He cropped his menace
from a snarl to a low, rumbling growl but continued slowly to advance
toward Starbuck.
     "Listen to her, fella," Starbuck urged. "She's making sense.  Take
it easy.  It really is okay."
     "I invited Captain Rogers to join me," Koji said.
     Jaguar-Man 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 Earthling was an invited, if
unexpected, guest, then it must be so.
     He returned to his place beside the royal launch-couch and curled up
on the floor, for all the world like a thousand-pouned housecat curled up
by his mistress's easy chair.
     "This is state business," Princess Koji 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," Starbuck agreed. "In the corridor.  Outside the
princess's door."
     Jaguar-Man lifted one tawny eyebrow and glared at Starbuck from out
of one yellow slittle 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. Zee's soothing low voice said. "Boxey,
where are 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
Starbuck and keep him out of trouble. He may need us at any time.  So
back into the cupboard, let's go.  Boxey, I'm speaking to you!"
     The quad shook his head and squealed.
     "Oh, I know there are refrigeration coils in that cupboard," Zee
said. "It can't be helped.  After all, that's how the Hydrans preserve
their food."
     Boxey 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," Zee said. "It's too bad there isn't room for us in that
cupboard.  But a little Ambrosa 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, please."
     Boxey eged back into the refrigerated cupboard, shivering, Zee
around his neck, the Ambrosa bottle in his metal hand.
     While the royal launch arrowed upward from Earth, a brief
conversation took place in the Island City. Its participants were Colonel
Giana Fairshare of the Third Force Intercept Squadron and the portly Dr.
Salik, chairman of the Earth Directorate.
     "Any word?" Giana Fairshare fretted, hoping that Salik would have
some information for her. 
     "I'm afraid not," Salik replied. "We've searched the entire
Intercept Squadron base and all adjacent sectors of the Island City.
Captain Rogers is simply nowhere to be found!"
     "Oh, what did I expect?" Giana 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 Final Destruction even took place?"
     "Don't blame yourself, child," Salik said. "I shall go and see if
there's any word at all." Salik left the room.
     Alone, Giana paced the room, fuming.  Finally, she picked up a
miniature statue that stood on a little pedestal all its own and hurled
it furiously into what appeared to be a roaring fireplace.  The fire and
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, Starbuck Rogers!" Giana almost shouted.  "You were
never anything but a double agent, and I know exactly where you've gone
to now!"
     Suddenly Giana began to sob in a most un-colonel-like manner.
     And aboard the battlestar Galactica the royal launch had docked with
absolute precision and its occupants debarked into the spacious landing
back of the great starship.
     The Princess Koji and Captain Starbuck Rogers made their way through
corridors, past bowing guards and Hydran centurions, to the princess's
royal stateroom.  They entered, accompanied by Koji's guardian
Jaguar-Man.  The princess turned and commanded Jaguar-Man with a single
sharp word: "Out!"
     The giant bodyguard growled menacingly at Starbuck but obeyed.  Koji
reached and slammed the door behind him.  She clicked a latch into place. 
"There. Now we will be undisturbed," she gloated.     Starbuck looked
around him.  The magnificent stateroom glowed with indirect lighting. 
The sumptuous, semibarbaric style of the Hydran 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 Picchu.
     "I bet that Jaguar-Man wold make a better pet if you'd get him
neutered," Starbuck wisecracked.
     Koji registered a smirk at the jibe, then moved behind her privacy
screen.  In a moment, Starbuck saw the royal cloak flung over the top of
the screen.
     "Pour yourself a drink while I slip into something more
comfortable," Koji's voice came from the other side of the screen.
     "Nothing has changed," Starbuck muttered. "Five hundred and four
years and they're still slipping into something more comfortable. Oh
well..."
     He located the Ambrosa in an ornate side-cabinet near the princess's
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 Zee and Boxey had feteched 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 Ambrosa, blossomed into a miniature fountain
of bubbles and foam, then subsided, leaing the Ambrosa appearing exactly
as it had before.  
     "Boy, are you in for a big surprise, Koji," Starbuck said.
     From behind the screen Koji called back, "You mustn't peek now,
Captain."
     "Bear with me, Princess," Starbuck replied. "You know, it's been
over five hundre years."
     "I hope I disappoint then, all the more," Koji said. She swept from
behind the screen wearing a boudoir gown the likes of which Starbuck had
never even imagined.  Her dress possessed the outward appearance of
thoughtless casualness that Starbuck in his inner recesses knew must
actually be the most studied purposefulness.
     While he appreciated the effect of the gown, Starbuck 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 Koji to drink the
doctored Ambrosa before things got out of hand.  Starbuck decided to play
as straight as he could.
     He gasped.
     "Have you nothing to say?" Koji demanded.
     Starbuck made his voice sound as if he was profoundly touched by the
performance.  "I---uh. Princess Koji, 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," Koji crooned.
     Koji 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. " Koji'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 want's a man who
is---more manly.  Like you.  You're arrogant. You flagrantly disregard
orders, from me as well as from anyone else."
     Starbuck was sitting on the edge of Koji's bed, not by his own
choice but because there was nowhere else to sit in the room.  At that
moment Starbuck felt sorry for the princess.  Though young and beautiful,
the awful power to which she was heiress made her a sad, lonely figure in
this drama of interstellar politics and intrigue.
     Koji came and knelt in the exotic animal-fur rug beside the bed,
placing her hands on his uniformed legs.  She looked up into his face,
emotion filling her features.  "Starbuck Rogers," she whispered
passionately, "you are the kind of man who could depose my father.  You
could place yourself on the throne of Hydra, with me at your side as
Empress of the Realm. "
     "You may not believe this," Starbuck said, "but your father's seat
is the farthest thing from my mind, Koji."
     "I brought you here for a reason," the princess breathed.
     "I was counting on it," Starbuck countered.
     "I want you at my side, Starbuck Rogers!"
     Starbuck said nothing, stunned for a moment by her brazen
declaration of intent.
     "Consider it," Koji said seriously. "You don't know what it's like
to be the daughter of Toom the Conqueror---with twenty-nine sisters
nipping at your heels.  With weasling courtiers like that pig Ortega
clawing at you for power.
     "But with a real man like you, Starbuck Rogers, I could sweep aside
Ortega and the others.  I could defy my father, lead my own life. And
think of our children!  What a magnificent dynasty we would found!"
     "Children? Dynasty? Aren't we getting a little ahead of ourselves,"
Starbuck asked.
     "There isn't much time," Koji said.
     Starbuck's brow wrinkled with concentration at that.  Koji, clearly,
was on the verge of making an important revelation of some sort.  He
prompted her to continue.
     Koji removed one of her hands from Starbuck's shoulders and reached
for a glass of Ambrosa.  Perhaps she felt the need of a drink, perhaps it
was some new pose, perhaps the gesture was just a play for time while she
planned out her next move and her next sentence.  Whatever the case, her
move gave Starbuck the opportunity he'd awaited.
     Starbuck held a glass toward the princess, carefully ascertaining
that it was the one containing the Ambrosa he had doctored with the
tablets from the little bottle in his tunic.
     "We have to be very careful," Koji said.
     "We do?" Starbuck echoed. "Why?  Careful of what?"
     Koji sipped carefully from her glass. "Our timing is not what I
would have preferred."
     Starbuck grinned wryly. "Like I said, nothing ever changes."
     Koji leaned forward, pressing her lips warmly onto Starbuck's.  "Why
couldn't I have met you sooner?" she asked passionately.
     Starbuck shook his head. "We have plenty of time left, don't we?"
     She pressed forward, kissed him again, more fervently than before. 
She struggled to her feet, drained her glass at a single breath and threw
it across the room against the wall where it shattered with a crash and
fell to the floor in a pile of tinkling fragments.
     She whirled and stumbled back to the bed. She tumbled onto the
massed furs there, sprawling face-down amidst the deep-piled luxurious
pelts.  "What...what am I doing?" she asked drunkenly.
     "Never mind that," Starbuck soothed her. "You're doing everything
just fine.  Believe me, I'd tell you if you weren't."
     She lifted her head, turned to face Starbuck. He watched her with
calm detachment. Her movements were slower, less perfectly coordinated,
as she tried to encircle him in her arms.
     "I barely know you," Koji crooned, "how could I have become so
desperate? So..."
     Starbuck interrupted her, leaning over and pushing her gently but
firmly back down onto the bed.
     Koji looked blearily at Starbuck.  Her eyes were glazed, her breath
coming in short gasps.  She struggled to speak.  "Starbuck, I feel so...I
don't know.  It's pleasant, too, but---but..."
     "That's funny," Starbuck said. "I feel bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed."
     "You're not used to this bed," Koji said.
     "It's a very nice bed," Starbuck returned. "But not so unusual that
I can see."
     "No, you don't understand," Koji went on. "It's computerized. It has
an electronic mattress.  It has sensors that attune its firmness to every
contour of the body."
     "Back in the old days, machines knew their places," Starbuck
commented sardonically.
     "No, our way is more efficient," Koji quarreled.
     "Such things require a human touch," Starbuck insisted.
     Koji tried to push herself upright, slipped back.  "Oh, Starbuck,
I'm so drowsy. Won't you turn off the lights so I can rest."
     Starbuck reached for a control switch and darkened the stateroom. 
He reached for Koji and she responded in a half-awake, half-asleep
languor. "Starbuck, Starbuck," she breathed.
     "Yes?"
     "If you're a spy, Starbuck, you know I'll have to have you killed.
I'd hate to do that.  You're so nice, Starbuck.  But I will have you
killed if you're a spy."
     "Now that," commented Starbuck as he rolled over in the great
fur-covered bed, "is some of the nicest pillowtalk I've ever heard,
Koji."
     He reached for her once more and in the darkness he could feel her
going limp and slack.  The doctored Ambrosa had taken its toll.  Princess
Koji lay sound asleep across the great fur-covered mattress.  Even though
she was far beyond awakening by a mere sound, Starbuck instinctively
moved with a minimum of noise or disturbance as he climbed quickly from
the bed.
     And in another section of the Galactica Ortega sat in the command
seat gazing down at the Island City of Earth.  The Galactica was in
synchronus orbit above the shimmering dome, revolving freely over the
Earth, falling freely in a sense, yet moving so that its twenty-four-hour
revolution about the Earth matched the planet's twenty-four-hour period
of rotation.  The effect was as if the ship were anchored in space
directly above the Island City.
     "Look at them down there. Sleeping!  The fools will never know what
hit them."
     The Island City itself, beneath its shimmering protective dome,
resembled a sea of diamonds laid out on a jeweler's cloth of blackest
velvet.
     In the battlestar, a technician addressed himself to Ortega.  "Stand
by to receive classified transmission from the armada," the technician
stated.  "Carrier wave is activated and preliminary image pattern is
forming, sir."
     Ortega jumped from the command seat as if it had suddenly grown
white hot.  In the seat he had vacated, the gross form of the Emperor
Toom, resplendent in the decorated uniform of the Supreme Commander of
the Hydran Realm Armed Forces, shimmered into being.
     "And not a moment too soon, Ortega," Toom started speaking without
preliminary. "If you'd stayed in my chair two seconds longer I'd have
flattened you right now the same way I'm going to flatten the Island City
by dawn tomorrow." The gross emperor burst forth with peals of wild,
disgusting laughter.  The sound echoed wildly through the spartan command
bridge of the Galactica, freezing the blood of every crewman and
centurion on duty.
     Ortega was the first to recover his composure. Toom may have been an
effective ruler, but he did not gain the submission of his subjects by
charming them to his side. No by any means.
     With an obsequious bow to the image of the Emperor Toom, Ortega
managed his customary well-oiled delievery of words.  "We are honored by
your majesty. Your decision to grant us the great pleasure of your
presence flatters us beyond words."
     "Sure it does, you scum!" Again the gross emperor burst into peals
of rolling laughter, holdling his flabby sides as if the sheer energy of
his mirth would burst them open.  "Now, what is the battle plan that
you've worked out?  And where is my sweet little pigeon of a darling, the
Princess Koji?"
     "Her highness, the Princess Koji, has retired for the evening, your
Majesty."
     "Really, now has she?" Toom's expression grew wary. "Ortega, I find
that rather strange."
     "Strange, your Majesty?"
     "Indeed." The gross image in the command chair leaned forward.  "For
one thing, Ortega, I should think that Koji would be most eager to
observe the preparations for what must be the greatest planetary conquest
in the history of space. To observe and to supervise, I should say."
     "I have been delegated to oversee the preparations, your Majesty. 
The Princess Koji resides her fullest confidence in my ability to command
the preparations."
     "Does she, now?" the emperor queried suspiciously.
     "Why, yes, your Majesty," Ortega said in his oiliest manner, bowing
and scraping before the gross image in the command seat.
     "The other reason for my unease," the emperor continued, ignoring
Ortega's explanations as if they had never been spoken, "has to do with
your own ambitions, Ortega."
     "My only ambition, your Majesty, is to serve the Hydran realm to the
best of my humble ability."  Again, the swarthy-complexioned Ortega bowed
low before the immaterial image.
     "Ortega," Toom said with an impatient wave of one fat hand, "the
only thing that befirts you worse than your arrogant manner is your
humble one.  At least the first is sincere, obnoxious though it is.  But
when you try to act modest, you turn my royal guts inside out."
     "My greatest pleasure, your Majesty," Ortega bowed again.
     "Oh, hohohohoho," Toom roared, "oh, hohoho!!!  That's more like it. 
That's the boy, Ortega.  Now, you listen to me." Once more he leaned
forward, pointing an admonitory finger at the courtier.
     "I know you've got your eye on the Princess Koji, and I completely
understand.  Even a father can spot a piece of choice female flesh when
he lays eyes upon it, even if it is his own daughter.  But you've got to
prove yourself a worthy son-in-law for me, and a worthy consort for the
future Empress of Hydra.  You know, Ortega, I have twenty-nine other
daughters and twenty-nine sons-in-law, and never a worse conglomeration
of weaklings, social-climbers and fops have ever disgraced a royal family
tree.
     "Koji is my last, best hope for a posterity worthy of the name. 
That's why I've had my eye on you, Earthling!" He leaned back in the
chair, scanning Ortega appraisingly.
     "I can handle the princess, my emperor, trust me for that," Ortega
said grimly.
     "I doubt it, Ortega. I could never do anything with her, and I'm her
own father!" Toom gave another peal of laughter.  "Well, let's see if
your other efforts warrant keeping you alive, Earthling!"
     Ortega swallowed visibly and beads of sweat appeared on his brow. 
"I---I think my efforts will speak for themselves, your Majest.  We are
well within the Earth's defense shield...the Galactica is at this very
minute closer to the surface of Earth than any other ship of the realm
has ever succeeded in getting, and that with the acquiescence of the
Earthlings themselves."
     "But what about your warcraft?" Toom demanded. "The battlestar is
useless without her armament---just a giant ocean-liner of the spaceways
unless her weapons are operational."
     Ortega smiled broadly.  He knew, now, that he was on stronger ground
than he had been in discussing the situation with regard to the Princess
Koji.  He preened and approached the realistic image of the emperor. 
"All the warcraft are on board, your Majesty.  All are in combat-ready
condition, armed and prepared to strike in"---he checked the time by the
command bridge's ship's chronometer---"exactly four hours.  That will be
at dawn, local time, below in the Island City."
     "Ahhhh!" Toom's exclamation was a long, drawn-out expression of
pleasure, surprise, and satisfaction. "That's very good, Ortega, that's
the kind of intelligence I like to receive.  Well, I think you'll stay
alive and out of the calcusite mines for a while longer at least. I may
even grant my daughter an interview and make note of some of your more
attractive features in our discussion.
     "Er---that reminds me---you do have some attractive featurs, Ortega,
do you not?"
     The courtier smirked. "Your Majesty would know, of course. I would
not deign to promote my own virtue in such a manner, it would hardly be
seemly or modest, now would it, your majesty?"
     "Hardly, Ortega, hardly. But tell me something."  The emperor had
plucked a thread from his regal robe and was twiddling it, spinning it
into a corkscrew one way, then the other, back and forth, over and over
again.
     "Whatever your majesty wishes," Ortega cooed.
     "How is that you tell me that our attack forces are aboard the
Galactica, combat ready and all prepared to strike at the Island City at
dawn," Toom said.
     "Yes, your majesty."
     "While my intelligence sources within the Earth Directorate tell me
that the Island City Intercept Squadron boarded your starship only a few
watches ago."
     "Why, they did, your majesty."
     "They boarded you?  How did that come about?"
     "It was an obvioius ruse, Toom.  I let them think they had tricked
us into letting them board, so they could surreptitiously check for
armaments. They went away convinced that we carried none."
     "You were hiding an attack fleet in your pockets, I suppose."
     "We misled them successfully, Majesty. If I may respectfully suggest
something to the emperor, full operational reports will be forthcoming in
due course.  Rather than dwell on what is already done, should we not
direct our attention to what remains before us?  In less than four hours
we shall be attacking the Island City and initiating the complete and
final conquest of Earth!"
     "You're right, Ortega.  Score one for you, eh?  All right, let me
have the details of your plan. You're presently in orbit above the Island
City. In a few hours the sun will rise.  Then---?"
     "Then, my emperor..." Ortega moved away from the throne and its
three-dimensional Person-Image.  He picked up a pointer and began a
formal briefing.  The war-map he used was itself a projection, in three
dimensiosn and full color, of the sector of space enclosed in a globular
configuration centered upon the Earth and extending as far as the Moon. 
The battlestar Galactica showed in the map as a brilliant point of
glowing white light.
     The pointer which Ortega held contained in its handle an array of
microminiaturized control circuitry and a closed-beam transmitter
controlled by Ortega himself.  Simply by manipulating the handle of the
pointer he could alter the scale of the map, drawing back to present
greater vistas or moving inward to magnify some section or feature of the
map for closer examination.  He could also change the center of the map,
so that its focuse radiated from the Galactica, the domed Island City of
Earth, or any other point of his selection.
     "At the first light of dawn, we launch our ships to attack all of
Earth's principal defenses, with particular attention, of course,
directed to the Island City. Our primary target will be the power source
of the defense shield itself."
     As Ortega spoke, he manipulated the controls in the pointer-handle,
using the long silvery rod to direct Toom's attention---and that of
everyone else on the command bridge of the Galactica---to particular
features of the map.
     Before Ortega's pointer and Toom's approving eyes, the planned
attack was simulated in miniature on the map.  The focus became that of
the Galactica as she hoverd in orbit directly above the Island City.  The
Earth below was bathed in darkness, save for the diamondlike, glittering
lights of the Island City.
     The Earth turned as always, but its rotation was imperceptible from
the Galactica---even the simulated Galactica of the star-map---because of
the battlestar's synchronous orbit.
     Gradually a faint suggestion of rose coloration suffused the eastern
horizon of the simulated Earth.  Simultaneously there appeared in the
star-map a swarm of tiny lights, each as brilliant as that representing
the Galactica, but infinitely smaller.  They hovered nearby for a brief
interval.  Then the map was bathed in a pure yellowish light as the
corona and then the first arc of the photosphere of the sun appeared over
the simulated horizon.  The rays of the map-sun glittered on the dome of
the Island City, turning it into a dazzling vision of modernity, grace,
and streamlined, efficient design.
     Simultaneously the swarm of tiny lights dived earthward.  Their
formation was that of a delta-winged fighter, needle nose foremost.  The
delta-shaped formation swooped toward the domed Island City.  A
simulation of Earth's Starfighters swarmed upward to meet them, each
craft of Colonel Fairshare's famous Intercept Squadron represented by a
gleaming point of vermillion red.
     As the two fleets approached each other it became obvious that the
diamondlike attackers vastly outnumbered the vermillion defenders.  The
Starfighters roared into their familiar fire-and-evade maneuvers but the
diamond attackers matched them to the last degree, firing their own laser
weapons until the vermillion defenders blossomed into orange and black
puff of smoke, then disappeared from the map.
     When all of the Starfighters had been eliminated, the diamond
attackers turned their fire upon the Island City itself, pouring laser
flares into the shimmering dome until it literally melted away, leaving
the Island City a helpless hulk.  Now the Galactica itself swung lower
until, escorted by the glittering diamond attack-craft, it settled its
massive bulk onto the main landing pad of the Island City's central
spaceport.
     The Island City was defeated.
     Earth was conquered.
     The Hydran Empire had added not merely another slave-planet to its
holdings, but a wide-open gateway to the galaxies beyond.  Vistas opened
before Ortega and Toom of new conquests, an infinite and unending string
of conquesgts, stretching as far into the future as the imagination could
foresee.
     The crewmen, technicians and centurions posted around the control
bridge of the Galactica burst into spontaneous applause as Ortega
manipulated the handle of his pointer and the star-map with its projected
war simulation faded back to a neutral gray.
     Grinning ingratiatingly Ortega bowed before the PersonImage of Toom
seated on the throne.  "Very pretty, Ortega," the emperor said. "I hope
that the actuality is as pleasant to participate in as your simulation
was to observe."
     Ortega bowed before the image. "Such is my intention, your majesty. 
It has been calculated to the ninth decimal position.  We cannot fail."
     "Cannot fail, eh?" Toom rubbed his greasy chin.  "Those famous last
words have preceded many a disaster, Ortega.  For example, I notice that
you have our attack fleet approaching the Island City en masse, then
blasting their Starfighters out of the sky by virtue of their superior
numbers.  But what if we have to thread a narrow attack corridor?  We
would then be prey to their anti-warship batteries."
     "Believe me, your majesty, that has all been accounted for.  I have
followed the standard Hydran tactic of boring from within until the
enemy's defensive strength is completely neutralized. Earth will hardly
need to be conquered---it will fall into our hands like a rotten apple
falling from its limb!" He matched his words with a two-handed gesture,
holding his fleshy palms upward as if to catch a tumbling piece of fruit.
     "For the sake of the realm, Ortega, let us hope that you are right,"
Toom responded.  "And alos, I might add, for your own sake.  If you have
misled me as to the effectiveness of your plan, you'll yearn for the ease
and comfort of the calcusite mines of Tenetaroia long before I grant you
the boon of final oblivion."
     "Our plan will not fail, my Emperor."
     "We shall see." Toom shifted back on his throne, placing his
luxuriously shod feet on a footstool invisible to the occupants of the
Galactica.  "We shall see," Toom repeated.  "In the meanwhile, please
extend my congratulations to the Princess Koji as soon as she arises.  I
wouldn't want her to miss the show this morning.  My pretty little
pidgeon-princess.  Oh, hohohohohoho!!!!"
     "I will deliver the imperial message," Ortega bowed low.
     With a sudden heave of his bulk, Toom rose to his feet, lifting his
massive body from the throne where he had sat.  For the moment his gross
form and disgusting, self-indulgent mannerisms were gone.  This man had
not reached the absolute rule of the greatest empire the galaxy had ever
known by being a fat and luxury-loving sybarite.  That represented one
side of his nature, true enough.
     But within that flabby body there dwelled also a man of boundless
energy, brilliant cunning, and unbedeable will.
     Suddenly that man stood before his throne, his PersonImage projected
with holographic perfection to the control bridge of the Galactica.
Suddenly that dominating, imperious figure raised one hand in the ancient
symbol of conquest, the upright clenched fist.
     Ortega fell away from the PersonImage almost as if he had been
struck a physical blow.  The others scattered around the bridge gasped in
surprise and awe.
     "Voromzeo!" the image of Toom roared, naming one of Toom's great
military triumphs.
     "Voromzeo!" the occupants of the bridge repeated, their voices
rising in a crashing chorus that echoed off the sleek steel bulkheads of
the flagship.
     "Maldakivka!"the magnificent Emperor Toom roared.
     "Maldakivka!" the crewmen and guardsmen repeated.
     "And---Earth!" Toom shouted.
     "Earth!" the others echoed. "Earth! Earth! Earth!"
     As the word echoed and re-echoed through the steel-walled control
bridge of the Galactica the PersonImage of the emperor slowly faded into
invisibility.
     As soon as the emperor's form was fully gone, Ortega pranced
triumphantly back to the control chair whose image had been transformed
into the imperial throne by Toom's holographic projection.  The oily
courtier threw himself into the chair, a triumphant grin spreading across
his face.
     "That, my fellow Hydrans," he chortled, is but a small indication of
the favor which I hold with the Emperor Toom. And but a small sign of the
authority I command in executing the invasion of Earth!  Tomrrow at dawn
I shall lead you to the beginnings of the greatest rise in the history of
the empire.  And you will all be with me!"
     Like a mirror image of the absent Toom, Ortega stood before the
control chair, his clenched fist raised in the air.  Like an echo of the
emperor's words, he shouted, "Voromzeo! Maldakivka! Earth!"
     The others echoed Ortega.
     "Dispatch the armament crews," he commanded. "Alert all warships for
the attack!  On my personal command---three-two-one---execute!"
     With a final rising cheer, the Hydran centurions sprang to initiate
the final and total conquest of unsuspecting Earth!

*****

Nine

     An inconspicuous cargo hatch aboard the Galactica popped open. Two
faces peered cautioiuslyl into the corridor where young Hydran
technicians, crewmen and troopers were pounding by, intent upon their
assigned military tasks.
     "This is no good, Boxey," the owner of one of the faces complained
to the other.  "There are centurions everywhere.  And we don't even know
where to look for Captain Rogers."
     The other of the pair squeaked his reply.
     "Of course not, Boxey. I don't want to get caught, either," Zee
agreed.  "But there's something terribly wrong here, I'm afraid.  Those
men are wearing battle gear.  Helmets and armor.  And carrying weapons. 
I thought the Galactia was an unarmed ship of commerce.  We've got to
find us what's going on. Come on, now, Boxey, come on."

*****     

     In the royal stateroom of the Princess Koji, Starbuck Rogers had
crept from the barbarically furnished bed and stood silently looking down
at its remaining occupant.  The Princess Koji slept soundly, her negligee
still clinging to her in disarray.  She was almost bathed in luxurious,
exotic furs that she used for bed furnishings.  A smile of blissful
satisfaction was on her heavy sensual lips as she slept the sleep of one
drugged by doctored Ambrosa.
     Starbuck reached out with one hand and caressed her long, gleaming
tresses.  He breathed a sigh of fatalistic yearning, then drew back his
hand and moved away from the bed, crossing the room to the door and
stealthily drawing it open by the merest crack.
     Outside the stateroom Starbuck saw Koji's Jaguar-Man bodyguard.  The
giant mutated creature stood faithfully on guard, his back to the door,
his arms folded impassively.  From his great throat there emerged a low
rumbling sound that might have been composed half of a subliminal growl,
half of a pleased, abstracted purr.  Starbuck would never have wanted to
face that guardian when Jaguar-Man was alert for his attack.  But
Jaguar-man was guarding the stateroom now against intruders from
outside---not protecting himself from attack within the stateroom!
     Starbuck reached forward, cautiously lifted Jaguar-Man's turbo-laser
gun from its holster.  Jaguar-Man remained blissfully unaware of
Starbuck's presence. The Earthman examined the laser, set its dial for
stun, raised it again and carefully squeezed the trigger.  The giant
bodyguard stiffened in his tracks, then toppled massively backward into
Starbuck's waiting arms.  Starbuck dragged the huge, still form into the
darkened stateroom and tiptoed back into the corridor, drawing the
stateroom door silently shut behind him.
     Starbuck moved stealthily along the corridor, opened a well-marked
hatch and descended a circular ramp.  As he passed the levels of the
Galactica he carefully observed the level designations marked on
successive bulkheads in brilliant incandescent orange and black symbols. 
Beside each Hydran symbol was lettered the official designation of the
flagship section located on that particular level of the ship.
     With a jolt, Starbuck halted before the designation he had been
seeking.  The symbol was a sinister one; the lettering said Fightercraft
Launch Deck, Magazine Section Red (1). Starbuck carefully sliped through
the open hatchway onto the fighter launch deck, concealing himself in the
shadows behind a pile of equipment crates.  He peered out at the activity
taking place on the deck.
     The deck itself was chiefly in darkness, but a large number of
overhead-mounted spotlights picked out a veritable beehive of busy
activity.  Crewmen in varicolored jumpsuits, each suit keyed to its
wearer's assigned duty, swarmed over a full squadron of fighters,
preparing them for combat launch.
     Carrier-carts loaded with laser weapons and explosive missiles
trundled by Starbuck's hiding-place; the Earthling was able to see every
feature of the cart-driver's intent face.  The driver might have seen
Starbuck lurking in the shadows had he turned at the right moment, but he
rolled intently by, thereby saving himself from the quick stun-blast that
Starbuck was prepard to deliver to prevent premature discovery.
     The ships themselves were arrayed in mathematically precise
echelon-rows.  The crewmen who swarmed around them wore Hydran gear. 
Hydran uniforms marked with Hydran insignia.  Each battle-jacked bore a
large reproduction of the familiar Hydran coat-of-arms stitched
colorfully upon its back.
     But the ships themselves were not Hydran!
     With a gasp, Starbuck recognized the fightercraft being prepared in
the Hydran battlestar for combat duty.  They were bandit marauder ships! 
The ancient emblem of banditry, a grinning white death's-head, was
blazoned large on the snout of each of the bandit ships.
     And the livid red and black stripes in which the fuselages were
decked, gave the strange impression, here in the shadowy light of the
launching deck, or an ancient symbol of death and destruction and sheer,
malevolent evil, that Starbuck remembered learning about in his history
classes back in the early 1980s.
     They were formed like the evil, broken-limbed cross, the ancient
Nazi swastika!
     Suddenly Starbuck's attention was drawn away from the fighter craft
by the approach of footsteps and the sound of voices engaged in low
conversation broken by the nervous laughter of fighting men preparing to
go into combat.  Two helmeted Hydran troopers appeared near Starbuck.
They were unaware of him, merely passing by the equipment crates behind
which he was concealed.  They stopped almost within arm's reach of
Starbuck, exchanged a few final words, then separated.
     One returned across the launch deck.
     The other looked toward the hatchway, moved in that direction as if
to mount the spiral staircase to another deck---but that was a mistake
for him!  Soundlessly, Starbuck leaped from his shadowy station, threw an
arm around the throat of the trooper and dragged him in an instant back
into the shadows......
     Things were moving quickly now, toward a climax.
     In another part of the Galactica, Ortega, a grimly determined
expression on his face, moved silently along one of the ship's main
corridors.  Crewmen whom he passed recoiled in fear.  They knew Ortega,
and they knew that he was in no mood to be crossed.
     And in still another area of the battlestar a stranger pair of
beings scuttered briskly along, one of them on his short, mechanical
legs; the other, hanging from the neck of the first. The two of them
reached a key intersection of corridors just as the impressive form of
Ortega, his face showing his deep concentration on his own thoughts,
entered the intersection from the other corridor.
     Boxey and Zee ducked back into an access way, barely in time to
avoid a collision with one of Ortega's heavily booted feet. "Look at
that!" Zee exclaimed in a low voice.  "Ortega himself!  Brrr!" His lights
flashed faster than usual.  "You mark my words, Boxey," the
computer-brain went on, "If anything improper is going on aboard this
ship, that traitor to everything decent is at the bottom of it.  I don't
like that Ortega!  I think we'd better follow him."
     Boxey squealed.
     "Of course you're frightened," Zee replied. "Who wouldn't be? 
But---we must follow Ortega.  It's our duty!"
     Boxey revolved one hundred eighty degrees and scuttled off as fast
as he could go, completely in the opposite direction Ortega had taken.
     "Boxey," Zee murmured furiously, "if the Hydrans don't get us, and
we make it back to Earth, I'm going to report you as an even bigger
traitor than Ortega.  Do you know what they do to drones who betray the
Earth?"
     Boxey stopped in his tracks, cocked his head to one side as if deep
in thought.  After several seconds of utter silence he squeaked loudly,
whirled around one hundred eighty degrees and scuttled off after Ortega.
     "I knew it," Zee said smugly. "I knew that once you'd given due
consideration to duty and morality, Boxey, that your innate sense of
patriotic obligation would prevail."

*****          

     Behind the equipment crate where he had dragged the unconscious body
of the Hydran centurion, Starbuck stripped off his clothing and donned
that of the helpless man.  He adjusted the trooper's helmet, fitting it
carefully over his own head, then drew its curved polarizing
filter-shield down over his face.  Indistinguishable now from any of the
Hydran centurions moving among the deck crew of the flagship, Starbuck
stepped out briskly onto the flight deck with its frantic but purposeful
activity still in progress.
     On the spiral ramp from which Starbuck had emerged onto the deck,
the diminutive metal form of Boxey clattered downward, Zee attached to
his neck.  The drone halted in the shadowy portal and watched the
activity on the deck.  The two mechanical beings had arrived just in time
to see Starbuck pulling on his Hydran helmet and adjusting its facemask. 
He was thus unknown to any of the personnel on the Galactica's launching
deck---but he had been recognized by Zee and Boxey.
     The drone squeaked in distress.
     "I know," Zee answered in a low tone. "I know, Boxey, and I can
hardly believe it myself."  The computer-brain gave a despondent low
groan. "I wish I could deny it but I can't, it was definitely Starbuck,
and he's wearing the uniform of our enemy."
     Boxey squealed.
     "I don't care how valuable our people think the treaty between Earth
and Hydra is, Boxey.  Those are warcraft out there on that deck. That
means that the treaty is a cruel hoax."
     Boxey squealed.
     "Yes, I'm afraid we're finished, Boxey. I don't see how we can do
our duty and still get out of here alive. But we can still perform one
final service for our country, Boxey, for the people who built us."  The
flashing lights that made Zee's computer-face blazed into an expression
of anger and determination.  "We can still deal with Captain Rogers!"
     Only a few dozen yards from Zee and Boxey, a crew of armaments
technicians were busily withdrawing heavy laser torpedoes from ordnance
lockers and placing them on dollies to be transported to waiting bandit
marauder craft.  Each dolly had the following information stenciled on it
in glowing, incandescent words. Warning, Live Ammo.
     Disguised in his Hydran trooper's uniform and helmet, Starbuck
Rogers strode up to the crew and joined in their efforts.  They had
brought an ammunition cart up to the front of one of the swastika-shaped
fighter craft and were loading laser torpedoes into the forward firing
tubes of the fighter.  While the crewmen loaded torpedoes, Starbuck
unobtrusively made his way to the rear of the fighter they were working
on.
     He hefted one of the heavy torpedoes overhead and muscled it into
position in the focus-spot of the afterburner, secured it in place with a
molybdenum bracket-winch and tested it with the weight of his body.  No
question remained---the ravening force of the torpedo was pent up, ready
to be released at the crucial moment---but not at all in the way that the
treacherous Hydran warplan foresaw!
     His face hidden behind its tinted plexiglass helmet-shield, Starbuck
quick-marched from the tail of the marauder to the ammo cart and lifted
another torpedo from it.  On his way to the tail area of the next
marauder fighter, he passed a Hydran guard corporal.  The corporal,
standing stiffly at parade rest, nodded to Starbuck as Starbuck passed
him.  The Earthling returned the nod and continued his work.
     Zee and Boxey, in the meantime, were working their way carefully
along the wall of the launching deck, keeping to the shadows as much as
possible, avoiding the scrutiny of the Hydran centurions as well as
ship's personnel and fighter crews.  Zee was speaking to Boxey.
     "It's even worse than we suspected it was," the computer-brain
mourned, "those are warships of some peculiar sort.  I don't know exactly
what their markings mean, but they're obviously up to no good purpose. 
And now they're loading weapons and ammunition onto them!  They're going
to bomb the Island City, Boxey, that's what they're going to do!"
     The drone squealed shrilly.
     "No," Dr. Zee said, more mournfully than ever. "Starbuck is on the
Hydran's side. I don't know whether he was loyal to Earth before, and has
gone over to the other side for some reason---or whether he was a Hydran
agent from the start, Boxey, and had us all fooled until now. Oh, and I
don't know which solution is the more distressing.  Not that it all
really matters very much, anyway.
     "But that doesn't make any difference now, Boxey. Listen carefully."
Dr. Zee dropped his voice until he was almost whispering to the drone.
"I'm going to ask you to do the most dangerous thing you've ever done,
Boxey. Now stop it and hold still and listen to me, you can't run away
from this!  This is for our country and our planet, Boxey. There, now,
that's better...."
     Ortega, meanwhile, had been the object of Boxey's and Dr. Zee's
surveillance, but the wily Ortega, without even realizing he was being
followed, pursued his habitual devious pattern of conduct and
accidentally rid himself of his two unwanted followers.
     He moved, now, through the corridor that brought him to the royal
stateroom of the Princess Koji.  Outside the princess'es door he found a
Hydran centurion standing at rigid and attentive attention.
     "Centurion," Ortega snarled, "where is the princess's bodyguard,
Jaguar-Man?"
     'I don't know, sir," the centurion replied.
     "How long have you been at this post?" demanded Ortega.
     "Only a few minutes, sir. I was out in the enlisted men's lounge,
sir, off duty.  Then I was told to report here for a temporary special
assignment. Only the princess herself has the authority to relieve me
from my post.  And it is most important, sir.  As you know, the princess
is the only person aboard ship with the full authority to order the final
assault on Earth."
     "And you have not seen Jaguar-Man?"
     "Not all day, sir."
     "That's very odd, soldier," Ortega said accusingly. "You know the
princess relies on Jaguar-Man to protect her very life.  She told you to
guard her door?"
     "No, sir. I haven't seen the princess either.  A centurion corporal
brought me the message in the E.M's lounge. I didn't feel that it was my
place to disturb the princess's privacy, sir."
     "No," Ortega agreed for once, "it wasn't your place. It's mine! 
Something very queer is going on aboard the Galactica. Centurion, if you
don't want to be sent to the mines, you remain here on duty come hell or
high water!  Let no one enter this room---or leave it!  Not even Princess
Koji herself!  You're under my personal command, and I'll personally see
to your reward if you do a good job---or I'll nail your hide to the
bulkhead and feed your insides to a nest of Algolian bookreviewer worms
if you don't!"
     'Yes, sir, Mr. Ortega!" The centurion snapped to attention more
rigidly than ever as Ortega strode angrily away.
     Back on the fighter-launching deck, Starbuck went about his strange
business of bolding laser torpedoes into afterburners wile the Hydran
centurion who had nodded to him went about his own business of patrolling
the area.  The work of the mechanics and technicians filled the launching
deck with a constant clatter and din, so loud and so steady that the
sound of a drone's mechanical scuttering went unnoticed.
     Boxey lifted one deft mechanical hand toward the holster of the
guard and carefully removed the laser pistol from its place.  With the
precious gun in his possession, Boxey scuttered away from the guard
again. "Good work," Dr. Zee said softly to the drone.  "We may have to
sacrifice our own lives to do it, Boxey, but I think we may yet thwart
this treacherous betrayal of all that we hold dear."
     He paused, Boxey squealed, then Zee said, "Oh, it's your life that
you do hold dear. Well, my fine little quad, nobody lives forever.  Think
of it as a sacrifice made in a good cause. Oh, you want me to think of it
that way, while you leave.  Oh.  Well, I'm sorry, that just cannot be
arragned."
     While the two mechanicals conversed, Starbuck finished setting up
laser torpedoes in the last of the fighter craft's tailpipes.  He turned
to see Boxey and Zee standing directly before him.  The quad held a
Hydran laser pistol in his hand and was pointing it directly at
Starbuck's chest.
     "Don't move, Captain Rogers," Zee commanded.
     Starbuck froze.
     "This isn't going to be pleasant for any of us," Zee went on.  "We
saw you before you pulled that mask over your face, so we know who you
are.  Now don't make us shoot you, Rogers.  This weapon is not set to
stun---do you understand me?"
     Without answering the question, Starbuck gaped at the mechanicals.
"Zee? Boxey?  What are you guys doing here?  Get away from this area.
It's dangerous for you.  And I've still got work to do here!"
     "That we can see, Starbuck Rogers, you traitor!"
     "Traitor!" Starbuck exclaimed. "Traitor!  Oh!  Can't you see what's
happening, Zee?"
     "I can," Zee's lights flashed angrily. "I'd say that someone was
getting ready to bomb the Earth---and that that somebody included Captain
Starbuck Rogers on their team!"
     "Don't you recognize the ships?" Starbuck asked.
     "I don't see as that makes very much difference," Zee said coldly,
"although I'll admit that they look a little familiar to me."
     "It makes a great deal of difference," Starbuck insisted. "Look at
'em!" He pointed to the death's head insignia on the nearest marauder.
"They're bandit ships!"
     "Bandit ships!" Zee echoed, astounded. "Why in the cosmos should
there be bandit ships aboard the Hydran flagship? I'm sorry, Captain,
you'll have to do better than that.  Now, if you don't mind, we'll just
escort you from this area..."
     "No!" Starbuck interjected.  "You go ahead and shoot me if you must,
Dr. Zee. But I warn you, if you do, it spells the sure doom of the
Earth."
     "Oh, come now, Rogers. I suppose you're going to tell me that those
bombs you're loading onto the ships here are full of flowers and candy to
drop on the pretty girls and the little children of the Island City."
     "Look," Starbuck lashed out verbally, "you half-baked load of
electronic bullshit, I don't know what you think is going on.  I can't
expect you to know everything, of course, but have you ever heard of
loading bombs in the tailpipes of a rocket ship?"
     Boxey squeaked excitedly.
     "You hush up, Boxey," Zee scolded. "I'm getting confused enough by
Starbuck, without your helping do it too."
     "Well, maybe this will unconfused you," Starbuck said angrily.
"There are no bandit ships.  There never were any!"
     "What?"
     "You heard me right!  They're Hydran bombers, and have been all
along. Piloted by Hydran crews.  They've been specially marked to make us
think they were from some mysterious nest of raiders when they were from
Hydra all laong, working for the specific purpose of maneuvering Earth's
leaders into a treaty with Hydra!"
     Boxey squeaked.
     "Then---but---if---oh---!" Zee's lights flashed in a pattern of
confusion and disarray. After an astonishing display of lucent
disharmony, the computer-brain finally got his circuits back into proper
order.  "But if it's a good treaty we'd have signed anyway.  Why all the
effort, the cost in lives and spacecraft?"
     "Because it's not a good treaty, as Earth would have realized if the
fake bandits hadn't panicked the Council into singing!  The Hydran Empire
was stymied by Earth's defensive shield and the Intercept Squadron, and
the treaty is designed to get the imperial fleet past the shield and
squadron safely---as it is in the process of getting them right now!"
     "Of course!" Zee exclaimed, dazed. "Of course! Oh, Starbuck, what
fools we've been!"
     At that moment Ortega stormed through the portal onto the launching
deck.  His jaw set in grim and angry deterimination, he headed straight
for Starbuck and the others.
     "You've got ten seconds, Doc, to make up your mind," Starbuck said.
"Do you want to believe Ortega?  Or me?"
     "Some choice?" Zee said.
     "What about yourself," Starbuck went on. "Didn't your own logic
circuits tell you I was on the level?  What kind of computer do you call
yourself, anyway?"
     "As a matter of fact, Starbuck Rogers, my circuits are of the latest
and most reliable design.  And I must say, I think you're getting awfully
damned personal questioning me like this."  Zee's lights flashed angrily.
"But as a simle truth, yes, my circuits did tell me to trust you."
     "Then unless you want to consider yourself a box of spare parts for
the Hydrans' bridge engineers, you'd better go along with your original
instincts."
     Ortega stopped, addressed a couple of soldiers nearby, then raised
hie eyes and scanned the launching deck carefully.
     "All right," Zee said desperately. "But I'll only trust you on the
condition that you help us get to a communicator so we can warn the
Island City of this treachery."
     "You'll have to take care of that, old robot chum," Starbuck said.
"Because, on the chance that you don't get through, I'm going to have to
make sure that none of these ships are able to launch!"
     Zee's eyes flashed with alarm.  What he saw was Ortega running
toward the spiral ramp, a guard at his side, shouting and pointing with
excitement.  At the foot of the ramp Ortega saw two more guards crouching
over the bodyo of an unconscious trooper who lay trussed up with his own
underwear, his outer clothing taken!
     "Out of time," Starbuck rasped at Zee. "They just found the guard I
wiped out a while ago."
     Boxey squeaked frantically.
     "All right," Zee said. "I'm convinced. We'll do our part.  Good
luck, Starbuck Rogers.  I never doubted you for a minute, you know.  Take
the weapon---it won't do us any good, you're the one with the metabolism
subject to forceful interruption!"
     "None of us are going to make it out of this alive," Starbuck
answered.  "But there are millions of people down there who will, if we
do our jobs.  Now get going!"
     Boxey squeaked, spun rapidly in a half-circle, and scuttered away,
his metal feet scrabbling so fast across the metal deck that sparks
struck up at every step he took.
     Starbuck looked after the scuttering robots for a few seonds, then
shifted his attention back to the job at hand.
     Ortega, meanwhile, had miraculously managed to miss seeing the
earthling and his robot allies.  He rose from a quick inspection of the
trussed-up and unconscious guardsman, turned and stormed furiously up the
ramp to the higher decks.
     Starbuck Rogers, relieved at the departure of the courtier, resumed
his work of technological sabotage of the Hydran radiers that were
disguised as pirate marauder ships.
     Ortega charged up the corridor to the Princess Koji's stateroom.  He
pounded up to the door, ordered the guardsman standing there aside.
     "But sir," the young centurion protested, "my orders, sir..."
     Ortega shoved the centurion ruthlessly aside and slammed his hamlike
fist again and again against the clanging metal of the door. "Koji!"
Ortega shouted. "Get up!  Open the door!"
     Inside the stateroom Koji's eyes fluttered open at the racket.  She
flet in the furs beside her, murmuring in a half-sleeping voice, "Oh,
Starbuck, was I dreaming, or---Starbuck?  Starbuck, where did
you---Starbuck!"
     She sat up, alarmed, then fell back happily on the bed. "Oh, there
you are, my darling!" She leaned over and started to press her face
against the back of the head of the other occupant of the bed.  Instead
of ordinary hair she felt her cheek brush coarse, bristly fur.
     She leaped back in alarm and screamed as the other rolled over to
reveal slittle eyes, the fur-covered countenance, the pointed ears and
the terrible fangs of---Jaguar-Man!
     Outside the princess's stateroom the screaming from inside echoed
frighteningly off steel bulkheads, sending the hair crawling on the neck
of Ortega.  It wasn't that Ortega was so incredibly fond of the princess. 
She certainly was an appealing bundle of charms, but Ortega knew that
women's bodies were readily available to men in positions like his own. 
As an old Earth politician had once commented in a moment of
uncharacteristic candor, power is an aphrodisiac.
     But Koji was Ortega's means of access to the throne of Hydra! 
Without Koji, Ortega was just one more power-hungry climber, essentially
no different from a brigade of other politicians, bureaucrats and
military leaders.  His leadership of the Earth-conquering expedition was
a major point in his favor at Drocu's court, and for all of the emperor's
expressed scorn during his recent PersonImage appearance, Ortega knew
that he had scored high in the conqueror's estimation.
     But there were thirty princesses of the realm, each of them
ambitious to sit on the throne of empire once Drocu had gone to join
Ceaser and Genghis Khan, Napoleon and Attila the Hun, Adolf Hitler and
Charlegmagne and Stalin and all the other shades of the legendary
conquerors of history. And twenty-nine of those princesses, jealous of
her prospective power, had chosen for her prospective prince constort a
weakling whom she could manipulate to suit her whim.
     In the short run it made for smooth sailing in the households of the
twenty-nine princesses and their wimplike husbands.  But in the long run
it left the Emperor Drocu with no suitable heir and with the prospect of
a dynasty that would collapse into rubble almost the instant his own
strong hand was gone from the helm.
     Only Koji still had the promise of providing Drocu with a son-in-law
worthy to sit on the throne beside herself once Drocu was gone. And only
Koji's choice of a mate held the promise, to Drocu, of his living to see
a grandchild worthy of continuing his dynasty down through the ages.
     Ortega saw himself as Koji's husband, the thirtieth and sole worthy
son-in-law of the Emperor Drocu, the prospective prince consort of the
Hydran Realm, and ultimately, through his wife once she became empress,
the de facto tyrant of the greatest array of worlds ever brought beneath
the sway of a single ruler.
     If anything happened to Koij---anything to prevent Ortega from
marrying her and becoming prince consort---his plans were ruined.  The
crown would descend to one of the other princesses, one of the other
sons-in-law would become prince consort, and Ortega's whole elaborate
projection would lie in ruins.
     And now---scream after pealing scream came from the stateroom of the
Princess Koji.  Ortega didn't bother to send for the ship's locksmith to
open the resisting stateroom door.  One futile blow from his jackbooted
heel made the door shudder but failed to spring the lock.  Ortega waited
no longer to draw his laser pistol, adjust its beam to minimum diameter
and maximum intensity, and blast open the heavy-duty lock.
     Another vicious kick from Ortega's heavy boot and the door flew
open, crashing back against the bulkhead inside the stateroom and sending
a decorative coat-of-arms tumbling noisily to the floor.  Ortega and the
centurion pounded into the room, halting in shock at the sight that they
beheld.
     The Princess Koji was sitting bolt upright in her fur-covered bed. 
Her negligee was pulled halfway over her head, her long hair hung in
disarray around her face and she was screaming at the top of her lungs.
     Beside her in the bed, frantically struggling to escape the
entangling folds of satin sheets and thick fur comforters was the
princess's usual bodyguard, Jaguar-Man.  His catlike face held an
expression of confusion and alarm, and his throat was giving forth a
series of sounds that neither Ortega nor the soldier had ever heard
before, sounds that sounded like a combination whimper of fear and howl
of despair and confusion.
     "What..." Ortega exclaimed as he tried desperately to assimilate the
unprecedented scene before him.  The Princess Koji was not known in the
Hydran Realm for extreme social fastidiousness, but bedding down with
Jaguar-Man was something beyond even the reach of Hydra's court gossip.  
     "What's going on?" Ortega managed at the second attempt.  Then, as
he got a better grip on himself, he demaned, angrily, "Your
highness---are you out of your mind?  What of the legitimacy of the royal
bloodline?"
     "Take him away!" Koji screamed. "How dare you suggest that I---that
we---that a princess royal of Hydra would ever...!"
     "The facts, Koji..." Ortega shouted excitedly.
     "Execute that...that animal!" Koji ordered the centurion.  "Do it
right here and now!  Use your laser pistol!"
     "No," Ortega ordered the centurion coolly. "Place him under arrest
and hold him in solitary confinement until I can question him."
     "What?" Koji shrieked. "Ortega, you dare countermand my order?"
     "Under the circumstances, princess, yes, I dare!"
     Jaguar-Man, finally free of the entangling bedclothes, growled
angrily and lunged toward Ortega.
     Ortega raised his laser pistol and sent a single bolt of pure energy
surging across the narrow space that divided him from the mutated animal. 
The courtier stepped coolly aside as Jaguar-Man, stunned and paralyzed by
the force of the laser beam, clattered to the floor inches from the man's
heavy, polished boots.  With a laugh and a sneer, Ortega spurned
Jaguar-Man with the toe of one boot, turning the heavy body over onto its
back.
     "Drag this animal away," Ortega instruced the centurion.  "Put him
in irons. Let him communicate with no one, and don't bother to exert too
much effort on his happiness or comfot. I'll issue further instructions
later, as to what to do to expunge the stain he has placed on the royal
escutcheon of the House of Drocu!"
     The centurion saluted and stepped into the corridor to summon
several more uniformed troopers.   They dragged the body of the still
helpless Jaguar-Man away, and Ortega slammed the stateroom door shut
behind them.
     "Well, well, well," Ortega's words almost oozed from his mouth once
he and Koji were alone, "so the little princess has taken to playing with
pussycats in the royal bedroom. Or should I say, only tomcats need
apply?"
     "You've some explaining to do, Ortega!" the princess snapped
angrily.
     "I have?" Ortega echoed incredulously. "I have explaining to do? 
You are the one with the peculiar taste in bed partners, my princess. 
Besides, I've been busy tending to the business of his majesty, the
Emperor Drocu. And I can tell you that his majesty will be less than
delighted when he hears of the goings-on aboard the royal battlestar.
     "Aside from your highness's eccentric little love exploits, there's
been a traitor planted aboard this ship.  Two of my guards have been
assaulted, and with all due respect to your highness," and Ortega made a
mocking, exaggerated bow, "I am frankly more concerned over the presence
of a saboteur than over your highness's odd sexual appetite."
     "Traitor?  Saboteur?  What would I know of that?" Koji demanded.
     "I suppose nothing, Koji. You've obviously been otherwise occupied."
     "I'll deal with your insolence later, Ortega. This little scene has
not at all the meaning that your filthy little mind assigns to it.  I was
somehow tricked. Drugged, probably.  I passed out in my bed, and when I
awoke it was to find Jaguar-Man beside me, apparently as puzzled and
distressed by the whole matter as I was."
     "A very convincing tale," Ortega cooed.  "Of course, her highness's
word is above reproach, just like the virtue of Caesar's wife.  Hah!"
     "Meanwhile," Koji commanded Ortega, "you will give the order to
launch our attack on Earth.  At once!"
     "I think not," Ortega countered.  "We can't attack until your
father's forces arrive to support us."
     "Oh, Ortega, you're as much of a spineless weakling as any of my
twenty-nine sisters' weakling husbands.  Of course we don't need my
father.  We have overwhelming strength even without him, we have the
element of surprise, and we have our own influence boring from withn the
Island City to weaken their defenses."
     "It's too dangerous," Ortega shook his head, "too risky. Let's wait
for the emperor."
     "You gutless fool," Koji scorned him.  "Do you want to be conqueror
of Earth---or do you want to be an underling in the army of the
conqueror?  If we go ahead, you and I can be sitting together on the
throne of  Earth by the time Drocu heaves his fat carcass into view. We
can be, you and I, Ortega.
     "But if you don't have the nerve to come along in the attack, why,
I'll go ahead and do it myself. And sit alone on the throne of a
conquered world!"
     Pacing back and forth on the richly furred floor of Koji's chamber,
Ortegan frowned in concentration.  The strain he was under was obvious. 
His forehead burst into sweat.  His hands trembled and he clenched his
fists to make them stop.
     "All right!" he exclaimed. "All right, Koji!  I concede your point. 
We will attack."
     "At once," she pressed him.
     "Yes, very well.  At once."
     "A wise decision, Ortega." She rose to her imposing height, the
exposure of her body as ignored as if she were clad in full military
array instead of a filmy wisp of negligee.  "Now, get out of here and go
issue your commands.  I wish to be alone while I dress."

*****

Ten

     The communications bridge of the Galactica was bathed at all times
in an overwhelming, gloomy murk.  The darkness was no accident of poor
starship design or construction.  It was a deliberate and planned aspect
of the battlestar's architecture, for in this room the dim red lights of
dials and the green and yellow tracers of 'scope surfaces were monitored
constantly by some of the most highly trained communications engineers
and technicians of the Hydran realm.
     They needed the darkness to give maximum visibility to their screens
and dials and dimly flashing lights, and their skill was so highly prized
by the Hydran officer corps that they were required to undergo a special
hour-long period of accustomization to the darkness before the beginning
of each of their shifs, and a similar period of reacclimatization to
normal lighting at the end.
     The room beeped and hummed and chattered to itself as messsages came
from every part of the giant ship and from every remote spacecraft and
planet with which it was in contact, to be read out, translated,
processed, stored, manipulated, retrieved, recoded, and retransmitted to
its assigned destination.
     Communications shifts were long, and in exchange for their
sacrifices, commo crews were pampered by the ship's quartermaster.  No
other duty station recieved catered meals while at their assignments! 
The chief communications console operator sat with his eyes glued to a
red tracer screen, muffled earphones clapped to the sides of his head. 
An empty food tray stood forgotten on top of his console, nearly full
containers of condiments and spices resting among the emptied dishes of
roast Ymerian swamp hen and iced Ithobian slug-jell.
     The console operator's seat was located on one side of the big,
desklike contrivance.  The other side of the console was an area of
simple darkness and no particular purpose except to provide access to
service panels for maintenance work on the console when it was taken
offline.
     From this darkness, a small, metallic hand rose, felt silently and
unnoticed among the condiments and spices on the meal-service tray,
finally found the shaker of ground black pepper.  A small, rounded,
metallic head rose over the edge of the console.  A pair of artificial
optical sensing devices focussed on the console operator.
     The hand swiveled on an electronically powered and computer-circuit
guided arc, lifted the pepper shaker and sent a small cloud of
pepper-grounds, invisible in the murkily-lit communications room,
floating toward the operator.  The metallic hand silently placed the
pepper shaker back on the meal-service tray.  The head and the hand both
disappeared back into the shadows on the service-area side of the
communications console.
     The operator's concentration on his screens and the hums and carrier
tones in his earphones was interrupted.  He found his eyes beginning to
itch, then to burn and water.  The images of the screens and tracer beams
before him swam and wobbled through the tears.  His nose began to itch,
too, and a terrific sneeze drowned out the signals in his earphones.  He
sneezed again, then again.
     He pulled off his headset, rubbed his burning eyes with smooth
knuckles uncalloused by other than mental labor over the years.  He
scribbled a note on his log, jotting down the chronometer reading of the
moment, as best he could make it out through his running tears, wrote
next to it, in a disorganized scrawl, Temporary relief, personal needs,
and his initials.
     He headed for the nearest lavatory to get some running water and
rinse the mysterious irritant from his eyes and nose.
     As soon as the technician was out of range, Boxey scuttled around
the end of the console and hopped up onto the operator's stool.  At his
height of three feet, the quad was as tall as the operator was when
seated on the stool.
     "Quick now, as we planned," the rich voice of Dr. Zee sounded.  But
it sounded in a tone little above a whisper so it was inaudible to the
other technicians in the room over the hum and clicks and chatter of the
scientific instruments, and just as Boxey and Zee, protected by the murk
and gloom of the commo bridge, would be virtually invisible except to
someone approaching close to the temporarily vacated console.
     Boxey, using his astonishing defl and fast-moving mechanical hands,
began setting switches and adjusting tuner-knobs on the console.  Zee
said again, in his low tone, "Good work, Boxey.  Now set me down close to
the microphone so I won't have to talk any louder than this."
     The drone carefully removed Zee from around his neck and set the box
of flashing lights down on the console's surface.  He reached and
adjusted a directional microphone so that it was as close to Zee as he
could get it, and pointed directly at his voder-circuit.
     "Earth Directorate Emergency Channel," Zee said into the microphone. 
His voice was pitched low but its tone was incredibly urgent.  "Earth
Directorate Emergency Channel.  Top priority, Computer Council, Island
City---Rating A-A-A-Zero-One.  Urgent!"

*****

     A thousand miles below the battlestar Galactica's synchronous orbit,
the Earth Directorate Communications Center...by a cosmic irony, the
virtual duplicate of the commo bridge of the Galactica---was also kept in
24-hour operation.  Normal commercial and administrative messages could
wait for regular business hours, but the emergency channel was kept open
at all times, and the technicians monitoring it were on duty in unbroken
rotating shifts.
     The duty officer at the central communications console picked up the
covert transmission from the Galactica and responded to it at once. 
"Computer Councilman Zee and Quad Boxey, you are cleared for immediate
transmission on emergency channel. Please proceed." Turning aside to a
smartly uniformed cadet-orderly, the duty officer snapped, "Get on the
low-frequency local console.  Shoot off a message to Colonel Fairshare
and make it fast!" The cadet leaped to comply with his instructions.
     Even before Zee could initiate his message there was a beeping from
the low-frequency console and the cadet called to the duty officer,
"Colonel Fairshare on line, sir."
     "Dr. Zee, Colonel Fairshare," the commo officer said, "I'm patching
you both through now so you can exchange information via my console
without delays. On line!"
     He snapped a red toggle switch and the circuit hammered into life.
     "This is Dr. Zee, ex-officio representative of the Council of
Computers," the rich voices said softly.
     "Yes, doctor," Giana replied. "This is Colonel Fairshare.  Where are
you?  How did you get on the emergency channel?"
     'I'm on board the flagship Galactica. I followed Captain Rogers as
you ordered, Colonel.  Now hear this:  the Galactica is not---repeat, not
an unarmed vessel!  She's filled with bombers and she's about to launch a
full-scale attack on the Island City!"
     "But how...." Giana gasped.  "Where did they come from?  I was
there.  I personally inspected the landing bay and found it empty!"
     "There's no time to discuss it now, Colonel!  You've got to scramble
the Intercept Squadron---right now, at once!"
     "Yes, doctor, of course you're right.  Good luck to you!" Colonel
Fairshare clicked off the patched transmission and punched buttons on her
personal communicator control panel.  As soon as the new commo linkage
was established she spoke breathlessly into her minimike.  "Dr.
Salik---Permission to scramble fighter craft!  I was right about Starbuck
Rogers---that traitor!  The Hydrans are about to launch an attack!"
     She was entirely right, as the scene aboard the Galactica's command
bridge gave testimony.  Ortega was in full command, military chief of the
ship under imperial authority from the Princess Koji.  From his command
post he addressed the entire ship via electronic linkage.  "Battle
stations!  Marauders prepare to launch!  Stand by at my countdown. 
Five...four...three...two...attack!"
     The tiger-striped marauder craft shot forward from the battlestar,
each menacing shape jolting into the vacuum as its catapult launcher
delivered it the initial thrust that would start it into space with the
velocity required to start its rocket engines.  At one side of the
Galactica's launching deck Starbuck Rogers, still arrayed in imperial
uniform, smiled a grim, expectant smile.
     In the Galactica's commo center, Zee remained where Boxey had placed
him.  The console operator's earphones were now affixed incongruously to
the audio pickup circuits of the computer-brain.
     His lights flashing with grim urgency and dedication, Dr. Zee
whispered to his quad associate, relaying messages as they arrived
through his headphones.  "War is declared, Boxey," Zee said huskily.  The
drone nodded solemnly, indicating that he understood the gravity of the
situation.
     In the deeps of space two forces of sleek fighting craft sped on
collision course. One was the Intercept Squadron, launched from Earth's
Island City and rocketing at top speed for the Galactica and its deadly
parasites.  The other was the lurid red and black striped pirate
marauders launched by the Galactica's catapults.
     With imperial discipline the marauder pilots simultaneously clicked
on their rocket-fuel feedlines and tapped their engine starter controls.
     In the command ship of the Intercept Squadron, Colonel Giana
Fairshare radioed her pilots.  "This is Blue Flight Leader. Attack
bombers as they launch.  Then we'll go after the mother ship."
     She received a startling reply from her forward observer pilot. 
"There are no fighters to attack, Leader.  Take a look in your distance
scope!"
     "That doesn't make sense!" Giana exclaimed.  But she followed her
eff-oh's recommendation and snapped on her distance scope, just in time
to see the greatest fireworks display in the history of explosives.
     In perfect unison and in perfect formation, the entire fleet of
Hydran attack bombers disguised as pirate marauder craft, blossomed into
a precision array of orange and black puffballs, silently filling space
with their vaporized metal while shooting off showers of white-hot
fragments that were too massive and were blown away from the bombers too
rapidly to have time to vaporize.
     "They're dying of their own deceit," Giana whispered.  "I don't see
how, but somehow their entire force of bombers has blown itself to
smithereens!  All right!"  Suddenly she was no longer the wondering
observer but the crisply effective military commander.  "All Starfighters
regroup," she spoke over her radio link, "for attack arrays and prepare
to finish off the Hydran mothership."
     The Galactica, gigantic though she was, had endured considerable
damage from the force of the exploding marauders and the impact of a
sizeable number of heavy, high-velocity fragments that acted exactly like
shrapnel when they impacted.  The launching deck itself was the most
heavily effected area.  On it the forms of dead, wounded, or simply
trapped Hydran personnel lay pinned in the wreckage of the catapults and
service cranes.
     One of the bodies was not that of a Hydran, although it wore Hydran
garb.  It was Starbuck Rogers.  Starbuck moved a little, moaned once,
then was still.
     In the communications center, the console operator had failed to
return to his station, sidetracked by the violence and surprise of the
destruction of Drocu's pirate marauder squadron.  Instead of the regular
operator, Boxey and Zee continued to man the console. Zee was saying to
the drone, "Did you hear Giana, Boxey?  She'd kill Captain Rogers. We've
got to stop her!  Come in, Colonel Deering, come in!"
     He heard the pop of her line opening to receive his call.  "You
can't attack, Colonel," Zee pleaded. "You'll kill Captain Rogers!"
     "That would be no great loss, doctor!" Giana swung her Starfighter
into a surging, swooping bank.  The remainder of her Intercept Squadron
maintaining careful formation, Giana swept into a devastating laser run
against the great, lumbering hulk of the Galactica.
     Aboard the giant battlestar Princess Koji of the Hydran Realm stood
before the portal of her stateroom, gaping in shock at the ravening fury
of the explosions outside as her fleet of attack bombers, painted in
their bandit ship disguises, were utterly destroyed.  The door of the
stateroom swung open before the furiously booted kick of Ortega.
     "This is your doing, Koji!" Ortega snarled angrily.  "I ought to
leave you on the Galactica to be blown up by those accursed Starfighters,
but I'm going to keep you alive and drag you before your father so he'll
know who is responsible for this disaster!  I have an emergency escape
pod ready to launch. It can carry us far enough for your father's ships
to find us."
     "Never!" the princess gasped, white-faced with shock.
     "Oh, no!  You're not going to escape your medicine!  For once I'm
going to enjoy this," Ortega growled. In long, eager strides he crossed
the room and smashed the princess across the face with his fat,
open-palmed hand.  She staggered beneath the force of the brutal attack.
He grabbed her by her long, glossy tresses and dragged her, shrieking in
helpless fury, from the room.
     Meanwhile the attack on the Galactica was proceeding with all the
unleashed deadliness of the Intercept Squadron's Starfighters.  Starbuck
Rogers had recovered consciousness and struggled from beneath the rubble
on the launch deck.  Realizing that the Galactica was doomed, he began to
run, searching frantically for Boxey and Dr. Zee.
     An ammunition storage bunker on the flight deck exploded into a
thunderous cloud of smoke and flame.  Starbuck was knocked flat, again
unconscious.  Flight deck technicians scattered frantically; a damage
control officer clicked into the ship's loudspeaker system and cried,
"Clear flight deck immediately!  Burning bunker fire threatens to spread
to main ship's magazine!"
     Klaxons blared, sirens screamed, the few surviving Hydrans fled
frantically up and down the circular ramp, hoping to get away from the
main ammo dump before it went up.
     Ortega entered the main command bridge of the Galactica, still
dragging the Princess Koji, by now limp and almost unconscious, behind
him.  Ortega pulled himself together enough to demand a situation report
from the duty officer of the bridge.
     "I...I don't know what's happening, sir," the officer stammered. 
"Our ships---they launch perfectly---everything was going according to
plan.  Then suddenly---all at once---I don't know what happened,s ir. 
They all just---exploded.  All of them!"
     "That's impossible," Ortega grumbled in the face of the evidence. 
"All right, we'll look into that later. Right now, we've got to fight
with what we have left. Direct all batteries to engage those Starfighters
in direct anti-spacecraft fire." Ortega turned and headed for the command
seat.
     Before he could reach it a form materialized in the seat, the
functional shape of the furniture transforming itself into an ornate
imperial throne.  The figure was that of the Emperor Drocu, and he was
already in mid-bellow and full, red-faced wrath when he appeared.  "What
in the name of the realm is going on?" he demanded. He raved and smashed
his fists against the arms of the throne.  "I'm still five thousand miles
away and you've initiated the attack!  I demand and explanation at once!"
     Ortega stood trembling before the emperor.  "I---I..." he stammered. 
Then, in the midst of his confusion, an inspiration struck that might yet
get him off the hook and shift the blame for the day's debacle onto
another.  "I was just following orders, your majesty," he purred in
sudden self-composure.
     "You were following orders, Ortega?" The emperor roared. "You?  I
thought you were in charge of that ship. Top military administrator. 
Now, whose orders do you think you were following---the Earth
Directorate's?"
     "No, your worship. I was following the orders of the Imperial crown
representative on this ship, the Princess Koji."
     "The princess?" Drocu bellowed. "And did she order you to have all
my ships disintegrate before they could even get into the battle?  Do you
know what a marauder costs, Ortega?"
     "Your Majesty, I---that is, sire---" Ortega broke down, unable
longer to face the wrath of Drocu.
     "I'll tell you something, Ortega," Drocu hissed and somehow his hiss
was more terrifying than his shout. "You're going to get a taste of your
own medicine, Ortega.  If either you or the Princess Koji survive this
debacle, I want you before me, scourged and in chains, within twenty-four
hours.  Then we'll find out what fun really is!"
     And, roaring with bitter, raging laughter, Drocu faded slowly from
the bridge of the flagship.
     Giana Fairshare's Intercept Squadron had settled by now into a
steady pattern, circling the Galactia, blasting at the giant hulk that
quivered, now, without resistance, then banking away, zeroing in, and
making another pass at the Galactica.  Giana herself led the attack, and
from the cockpit of her Starfighter she saw a trail of flaming debris
streaming from the battered starship.
     Then there was a sudden opening where none had been before, a black
cavity in the side of the Galactica, a puff of launching material, and an
emergency pod streaked away from the battered hulk of the battlestar. 
Two tiny figures, far too small for Colonel Fairshare to make out from
her Starfighter, huddled in the pod, in mortal fear that they might never
be picked up by the minions of Drocu and in equal fear that they might be
found by those very forces.
     On the ruined launch deck of the starship Starbuck Rogers regained
consciousness a second time.  His uniform was shredded, his skin bruised
and bloodied, every muscle in his body seemed to be in agony and every
bone was bruised if not worse.  But he was alive, aware, and mobile.  He
struggled to shove aside the wreckage that kept him from escaping the
flight deck.
     Giana Fairshare turned back to the Galacica; the escape pod was too
small, too fast, and too far gone to warrant pursuit.  But the main
target was still at hand.
     "The ship's about ready to blow," a Starfigher pilot murmured
through the intercom, reaching Giana and all the others in their ships.
     "Withdraw from combat areas, all ships. I'm going in to try and find
Boxey and Dr. Zee."
     From the burning hulk a voice reached Giana's radiophones.  Even
through the roaring and the electronic crackle of space, Dr. Zee's rich,
mellow voice remained distinctive. "Forget us," Zee urged, "we're just
machines, anyhow. Try and find Starbuck!"
     "Starbuck!" Giana exclaimed. "After his treason to Earth, let him
die with his true friends, the Hydrans!"
     "Giana, he was no traitor to Earth!" Zee pleaded. "Starbuck was a
double, a triple agent.  He was the one who sabotaged the bandit
marauders! He single-handedlywon this battle for Earth!  And he was the
one who sent us to warn you, earlier!"
     Giana's face was anguished. "Zee---why didn't you tell me!  I'm
coming in onto the launch deck.  Somehow I'll get in, I don't know how! 
But I'll make it.  Get Boxey to bring you and meet me there." To the rest
of her squadron Giana directed, "Remain in parking orbits near Galactica.
I'm going in to attempt a rescue operation!"
     Boxey lifted Zee from the commo console and placed him around his
neck.  He scuttled for the circular ramp and onto the deck, manuevering
with astonishing skill through the heaps of smouldering rubble.  As he
passed each pile of wreckage he gave it a quick optical scan.  Finally he
found the pile that held Starbuck Rogers pinned.
     "Starbuck!" Zee exclaimed from Boxey's chest.  "Starbuck, old
friend, so pleased to find you alive and reasonably well."
     "Never mind that," Starbuck shouted. "The magazine's going to blow
any minute now!"
     "Don't worry, Starbuck, help is on the way." Boxey halted in his
tracks and began peeling girders and plates away from the place where
Starbuck was trapped.
     From his side, Starbuck pitched in, too, heaving and hauling at
wreckage to get it out of the way.  "What do you mean," he gasped between
exertions, "what help is on the way?"
     "Giana's going to bring her Starfighter in here and take us all out
of here."
     "But she can't!" Starbuck exclaimed. "Look at this deck! She'll
never land safely.  She'll be killed."
     There was a low rumble and the entire hulk of the Galactica lurched
and tumbled.
     "It's going now!" Starbuck shouted.
     Boxey clamped his metal hands on the last girder prisoning Starbuck
and hurled it aside with his superhuman strength.  Little clouds of smoke
curled from beneath his shell at the exertion he had made, but---Starbuck
Rogers was free!
     The three of them began to run at top speed through the smoke.
     Giana Fairshare brought her sleek Starfighter to the Galactica,
jockeying it through alleyways and openings hardly wider than its metal
wingspan.  There was only one way that that miraculous landing could have
been made.  No computer-controlled ship could have done it, no
preprogrammed procedure could have brought the Starfighter to its
perilous berth aboard Galactica.  The only way it could have been done
was the way it had been done:  Giana Fairshare had switched off her
Auto-Flite computer and piloted the Starfighter to its landing, flying,
to use an old aviator's expression, by the seat of her pants.
     The instant that the craft ground to a halt, Giana had thrown open
its hatch and was calling to the others.  "Boxey!  Zee!"
     The little drone scuttered to the side of the Starfighter and
scrambled to safety inside the cockpit.
     Starbuck Rogers stood beside the craft, looking straight into Giana
Fairshare's eyes.  Neither of them spoke for a long moment, then Giana,
with a sob, blurted, "Starbuck, I was wrong.  I was all wrong about you."
     "Who's complaining," Rogers answered. "We can talk about it later."
He put one hand on the Starfighter's wing and vaulted into the spacecraft
behind its beautiful pilot.
     "Hang on," Giana urged. She gunned the engine and the Starfighter
surged from the launch deck of the giant hulk.  The fighter craft zoomed
away from the Galactica, accelerating as it moved.  Suddenly the sky
behind the Starfighter was filled with a flash of horrible light, and a
shockwave crashed into the Starfighter, sending it tumbling through space
before Giana could manage to regain control and stabilize the orbit of
the craft.
     Over one shoulder she could see the Galactica.  Like a single huge
bomb the size of a middle-sized city it was erupting in a chain reaction
of smoke and flame and flashes of explosives.  Before Giana's very
eyes---and those of all the pilots of the Intercept Squadron as well as
Starbuck, Zee and Boxey---the Galactica disintegrated into a mass of hot,
smouldering rubble.
     "There goes the Trojan horse of space," Starbuck Rogers murmured.
     "This is Blue Leader," Giana snapped across the radio communicator.
"Target utterly destroyed.  Intercept Squadron, return to Earth base at
once."
     Starbuck slid his arm gently around Giana's shoulders, feeling for
the moment like a teenage boy headed home from a date with his favorite
sweetheart.
     Giana smiled, pressed her cheek for a moment against Starbuck
Rogers's shoulder, then sat upright again and concentrated on swinging
her Starfighter back into its place at the point of the squadron.
     The formation of sleek spacecraft arrowed downward to the Earth,
headed for a heroes' welcome by Dr. Salik and the rest of the Earth
Directorate.

*****

Epilogue

     The festivities had ended, the celebration was over.  Earth returned
to the business at hand:  the rebuilding of its wrecked civilization, the
restoration of its ruined ecology, the reclamation of lands and seas
poisoned by centuries of greedy exploitation and decades of deadly war.
     Within the Island City the Council of Computers was meeting in full,
formal session within the Palace of Mirrors.  The Draconian throne had
been removed from its place on the dais of honor and broken up for
firewood and silver and gold and precious gems.  In its place there was a
circle of benches, each bearing a crimson pillow, each pillow bearing the
shiny-surfaced box of a computer-brain, each brain ceremoniously flashing
its array of colored lights.
     Starbuck, Giana, and Dr. Salik clustered on the scroll-bench, while
the glistening hall was virtually filled with diplomats and ordinary
citizens wearing their most splendid outfits.  The drone Boxey, his
bearings replaced and gaskets refurbished after the astounding---and near
suicidal---exertion of saving Starbuck Rogers, trotted ceremoniously up
to Dr. Salik.  As usual, the quad was carrying Dr. Zee carefully around
his neck.
     "Dr. Zee will state the charges," Salik intoned ceremoniously.
     "When we were in the communications center aboard the Galactica,"
Zee intoned smoothly, "we discovered a direct tie-line.  It ran from the
Hydran command post to a direct radio-link to the traitor who was
smuggling out our secret Starfighter evasion tactic tapes to the pirates. 
The pirates whom we now realize were actually the Hydrans themselves!
     "This traitor was also highly instrumental in pushing through the
infamous false treaty with Hydra, that came within a hair's breadth of
costing Earth her pricous freedom and delivering her into Hydran
vassalage under the iron heel of Ortega and the Princess Koji."
     Dr. Salik considered the terrible charges long and seriously.  At
last he asked, "Is the traitor present in this assembly?"
     Zee said, "He is, sir."
     "Please point him out, Dr. Zee," Salik requested.
     Moving with ceremonial deliberation---and perhaps still feeling the
after effects of his near destruction aboard the dying enemy
battlestar---Boxey crossed to the ring of cushioned computer brains.
     "Members of the Council," Zee intoned solemnly, "I am saddened to
say, it was one of our own kind.  Yes, one of us who have been entrusted
with the wellbeing of the Island City and all of Earth and her peoples. 
A computer was programmed by the treacherous Ortega before he defected
from Earth to serve the Princess Koji and the Hydran Realm.
     "One of us, my brothers, was programmed to appear normal---but to
oppose our true best interests and to give away our most vital secrets."
     Boxey raised a gleaming metallic arm and pointed at one of the
computer brains.
     "The traitor," Zee announced solemnly, "is none other than my dear
colleague, Dr. Uri."
     A gasp went up through the hall.
     When order was restored, Dr. Salik intoned ceremoniously, "The
Council will pronounce sentence upon the traitor."
     Drone-pages resembling Boxey advanced from behind each of the
computer-brains and turned their cushions so they were all facing toward
the guilty Dr. Uri.
     "Now, let's not be hasty," Uri stammered. "I had no choice in this,
you know.  My actions were imposed on me.  That nasty Ortega twisted my
circuits so that I thought I was doing rightn when I was doing wrong.  He
corrupted my wiring, altered my perceptions, decoded my programming,
falsified my memory bank."
     His voice slowed down as the other computers glared at him.  Their
flashing lights seemed to radiate a force that was slowly sapping Uri's
energy and his will to continue.
     "My brothers," Uri resumed, "I am one of you.  I am a brother
computer.  What do we care about these puny humans?  Let them have their
treaties and their wars.  We are the heirs of intelligence."
     The others increased the intensity of their radiations.  Uri's voice
slowed, slurred, faltered. "Fellow computers.  Brothers.  Have mercy on
your own kind. Your own kind. Own kind. Kind. Kind. Kind."
     He continued repeating the final word like an idiot, slowly growing
slower and more slurred in his speech.  He seemed to gather his last
powers for a final appeal.  'I'll make it up to you. Please.  I didn't
mean.  I'm coming.  I'm....." The voice groned to a stop. A puff of black
smoke rose from Uri's chassis.  A drone lifted the charred remnants and
dropped them in a bucket, then scuttered out of sight carrying them with
him.
     There was silence in the hall, then Dr. Salik rose and said, "It is
over. Justice is done.  The traitor is destroyed."
     He glanced around the splendid assemblage beneath. "And now, it is
my proud honor to proclaim the hero of the hour. Captain Starbuck
Rogers---please step forward."
     Although Starbuck alone had been summoned by Dr. Salik, he took
Giana's hand with one of his, Boxey's with the other.  Together they all
stepped forward, Dr. Zee's lights flashing from his place on Boxey's
chest.
     "Tell us what reward you wish," Salik said to Starbuck. "Name it and
you shall have it."
     "I have it already," Starbuck replied, turning to clasp Giana
Fairshare to him.
     "Then let the ball begin," Dr. Salik called.
     A hidden orchestra struck up the strains of an ancient jazz melody. 
The elite corps of the Island City began to recieve lessons in ancient
boogie dancing from Starbuck Rogers and Giana Fairshare, as the grandest
orchestra of the year 2491 belted out the raucous notes of "Start
spreading the news....I am leaving today......!"

The End