The six hundred hour trip to Marduk passed pleasantly enough. The Mardukan officers were good company, and found their Space Viking opposite numbers equally so. The two crews had become used to working together on Audhumla, and mingled amicably off watch, interesting themselves in each other's hobbies and listening avidly to tales of each other's home planets. The Space Vikings were surprised and disappointed at the somewhat lower intellectual level of the Mardukans. They couldn't understand that; Marduk was supposed to be a civilized planet, wasn't it? The Mardukans were just as surprised, and inclined to be resentful, that the Space Vikings all acted and talked like officers. Hearing of it, Prince Bentrik was also puzzled. Fo'c'sle hands on a Mardukan ship belonged definitely to the lower orders. "There's still too much free land and free opportunity on the Sword-Worlds," Trask explained. "Nobody does much bowing and scraping to the class above him; he's too busy trying to shove himself up into it. And the men who ship out as Space Vikings are the least class-conscious of the lot. Think my men may have trouble on Marduk about that? They'll all insist on doing their drinking in the swankiest places in town." [Illustration] "No. I don't think so. Everybody will be so amazed that Space Vikings aren't twelve feet tall, with three horns like a Zarathustra damnthing and a spiked tail like a Fafnir mantichore that they won't even notice anything less. Might do some good, in the long run. Crown Prince Edvard will like your Space Vikings. He's much opposed to class distinctions and caste prejudices. Says they have to be eliminated before we can make democracy really work." The Mardukans talked a lot about democracy. They thought well of it; their government was a representative democracy. It was also a hereditary monarchy, if that made any kind of sense. Trask's efforts to explain the political and social structure of the Sword-Worlds met the same incomprehension from Bentrik. "Why, it sounds like feudalism to me!" "That's right; that's what it is. A king owes his position to the support of his great nobles; they owe theirs to their barons and landholding knights; they owe theirs to their people. There are limits beyond which none of them can go; after that, their vassals turn on them." "Well, suppose the people of some barony rebel? Won't the king send troops to support the baron?" "What troops? Outside a personal guard and enough men to police the royal city and hold the crown lands, the king has no troops. If he wants troops, he has to get them from his great nobles; they have to get them from their vassal barons, who raise them by calling out their people." That was another source of dissatisfaction with King Angus of Gram; he had been augmenting his forces by hiring off-planet mercenaries. "And the people won't help some other baron oppress his people; it might be their turn next." * * * * *