ain. They both stopped in the doorway
of Trask's suite, and the boy saluted smartly.

"Permission to come aboard, sir?" he asked.

"Welcome aboard, count; captain. Belay the ceremony and find seats;
you're just in time for second breakfast."

As they sat down, he aimed his ultraviolet light-pencil at a serving
robot. Unlike Mardukan robots, which looked like surrealist
conceptions of Pre-Atomic armored knights, it was a smooth ovoid
floating a few inches from the floor on its own contragravity; as it
approached, its top opened like a bursting beetle shell and hinged
trays of food swung out. The boy looked at it in fascination.

"Is that a Sword-World robot, sir, or did you capture it somewhere?"

"It's one of our own." He was pardonably proud; it had been built on
Tanith a year before. "Has an ultrasonic dishwasher underneath, and
it does some cooking on top, at the back."

The elderly captain was, if anything, even more impressed than his
young charge. He knew what went into it, and he had some conception
of the society that would develop things like that.

"I take it you don't use many human servants, with robots like
that," he said.

"Not many. We're all low-population planets, and nobody wants to
be a servant."

"We have too many people on Marduk, and all of them want soft jobs
as nobles' servants," the captain said. "Those that want any kind
of jobs."

"You need all your people for fighting men, don't you?" the boy
count asked.

"Well, we need a good many. The smallest of our ships will carry
five hundred men; most of them around eight hundred."

The captain lifted an eyebrow. The complement of the _Victrix_ had
been three hundred, and she'd been a big ship. Then he nodded.

"Of course. Most of them are ground-fighters."

That started Count Steven off. Questions, about battles and raids
and booty and the planets Trask had seen.

"I wish I were a Space Viking!"

"Well, you can't be, Count Ravary. You're an officer of the Royal
Navy. You're supposed to fight Space Vikings."

"I won't fight you."

"You'd have to, if the King commanded," the old captain told him.

"No. Prince Trask is my friend. He saved my father's life."

"And I won't fight you, either, count. We'll make a lot of
fireworks, and then we'll each go home and claim victory. How would
that be?"

"I've heard of things like that," the captain said. "We had a war
with Odin, seventy years ago, that was mostly that sort of battles."