Free Dramocles: An Intergalactic Soap Opera by Robert Sheckley Page A

contribue.
    Dramocles often worked late if a particularly difficult battle was under way. At first he rode back and forth between his bedrooms and the War Room on the palace transportation system, just like everyone else. Max finally convinced him that waiting for a crowded Palace Express was not the best use of his time, so he kept a corridor car ready at all times. His son Samizat did most of the driving, and still managed to get his homework done. Samizat was really enjoying the war.
    Week after week the affair of Lekk dragged on, swallowing up robots and costly equipment, and, as the struggle grew more intense, the lives of human beings. Dramocles tried several times to contact John and Snint, but they never answered his telegrams.
    Rufus returned at last to Druth, mobilized his troops, and awaited Dramocles’ instructions. Dramocles had intended to send Prince Chuch with Rufus to act as military liaison. It was an empty but prestigious post that might keep the boy out of mischief. But Chuch was no longer on Glorm. No one knew where he was. Dramocles feared the worst.

 
    19
    It was the last night of the full moons that circled the planet Vanir. The moons stood low on the horizon, casting their cold yellow light upon the rocky plain of Hrothmund, and illuminating the salt pastures of Viragoland to the south, where Haldemar, the high king, kept his court during molting season.
    Falf, the night guard at this quiet border post, yawned and leaned heavily upon his ray spear. A widower of three days, a recent draft choice of the all-star Minnekoshka ax hockey team, and a newly published poet, Falf had a great deal to think about. He did so with the direct and childlike simplicity of the true barbarian, and so never heard the muffled noises behind him until some dim presentiment caused him to turn his head an instant before something or someone made a noise as of a man clearing his throat.
    “Who goes there?” Falf cried, every hair standing on end.
    “Ho!” cried someone from the shadows.
    “What do you mean, ‘ho’?” Falf asked.
    “Ho, ho!”
    “One more ‘ho’ and I’m going to put a period to your sentence,” Falf said, setting the selector on his ray spear to “broil” and pointing it toward where he thought the voice had come.
    Then a man stepped out of the darkness behind Falf’s shoulder, causing the widowed poet-athlete to jump back, tripping over his ray spear and almost falling, only to be saved by the stranger’s hand at his elbow.
    “My name is Vitello,” the stranger said. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I’m an emissary.”
    “A what?”
    “An emissary.”
    “I don’t think I know that word,” Falf said.
    “It means that my king has sent me here to have a talk with your king.”
    “Yes, now I remember,” Falf said. He thought for a while, then asked, “How do I know that you’re really an emissary?”
    “I can show identification,” Vitello said.
    “What I want to know is, if you’re an emissary from some other king, where’s your spaceship?”
    “Just over there,” Vitello said, pointing to a clump of trees a hundred yards away. Falf illuminated the trees with a searchlight, and sure enough, there was a ship.
    “You must have come down very quietly,” Falf said. “Now our ships, you can hear them landing from ten miles away. It has something to do with the lapstraking, I believe. Of course, the sound strikes terror into the hearts of our enemies, or so we are told, so who is to say which way is best?”
    “Indeed,” said Vitello.
    “Well,” Falf said, “I guess I’d better report this, though it isn’t going to make me look very good.” He unclipped the walkie-talkie from his sword belt and dialed a number. “Guard post? Sergeant Urnuth? This is Falf at Outpost 12. I have a foreign emissary here who wants to speak to the King. That’s right. … No, it means messenger. … Sure he’s got a spaceship, it’s parked about a hundred yards from here. … Yeah,