"Shut the horrible man off," somebody was yelling, in competition with the hypnotic scream of the speaker. The trouble was, they couldn't. They could turn off the screen, but Zaspar Makann would go on screaming, and millions all over the planet would still hear him. Bentrik twiddled the selector. The voice stuttered briefly, and then came echoing out of the speaker, but this time the pickup was somewhere several hundred feet above a great open park. It was densely packed with people, most of them wearing clothes a farm tramp on Gram wouldn't be found dead in, but here and there among them were blocks of men in what was almost but not quite military uniform, each with a short and thick swagger-stick with a knobbed head. Across the park, in the distance, the head and shoulders of Zaspar Makann loomed a hundred feet high in a huge screen. Whenever he stopped for breath, a shout would go up, beginning with the blocks of uniformed men: "_Makann! Makann! Makann the Leader! Makann to Power!_" "You even let him have a private army?" he asked the Crown Prince. "Oh, those silly buffoons and their musical-comedy uniforms," the Crown Prince shrugged. "They aren't armed." "Not visibly," he granted. "Not yet." "I don't know where they'd get arms." "No, Your Highness," Prince Bentrik said. "Neither do I. That's what I'm worried about." XXII He succeeded, the next morning, in convincing everybody that he wanted to be alone for a while, and was sitting in a garden, watching the rainbows in the midst of a big waterfall across the valley. Elaine would have liked that, but she wasn't with him, now. Then he realized that somebody was speaking to him, in a small, bashful voice. He turned, and saw a little girl in shorts and a sleeveless jacket, holding in her arms a long-haired blond puppy with big ears and appealing eyes. "Hello, both of you," he said. The puppy wriggled and tried to lick the girl's face. "Don't, Mopsy. We want to talk to this gentleman," she said. "Are you really and truly the Space Viking?" "Really and truly. And who are you two?" "I'm Myrna. And this is Mopsy." "Hello, Myrna. Hello, Mopsy." Hearing his name, the puppy wriggled again and dropped from the child's arms; after a brief hesitation, he came over and jumped onto Trask's lap, licking his face. While he petted the dog, the girl came over and sat on the bench beside him. [Illustration] "Mopsy likes you," she said. After a moment, she added: "I like you, too." "And I like you," he said. "Would you want to be my girl? You know, a Space Viking has to have a girl on every planet. How would you like to be my girl on Marduk?" Myrna thought that over carefully. "I'd like to, but I couldn't. You see, I'm going to have to be Queen, some day." "Oh?"