The other yelled into a lobby, "Hey! On your toes! It's the kid and his moll!"

They were walking through a mob of men in black suits, and swarthy faces that had appeared from nowhere, apparently specially to get a look at her. She felt she was wearing everything backwards and was missing a slipper, for those eyes were very alert and appraising.

Then a whisper reached her, "Jesus, kid, where did you find HER? Cristo, is she a movie star or something?"

It made her feel a bit better, but at the top of the elevator, a booming voice was heard coming down the hall, "I don't give a (bleep), you (bleepard)! Tell those sons of (bleepches) in Chicago to throw their God (bleeped) drugs in Lake Michigan and begin running rum or I'll put a hundred hit men on their tails. Now get the hell out of here. I think I heard my kid!"

A very old Italian, beautifully dressed, lugging a briefcase, fled out of the room, almost collided with Jettero, looked at him in a cautionary way and said, "Take it easy in there. She's on fire!"

An old Sicilian in a white coat hurried up and gave Jettero a reassuring pat and ushered them into a salon of such elegance the Countess thought for an instant she was back on Voltar.

A middle-aged woman, very blond, was sitting on a sofa in a pose of elegance and decorum. She wore a gold-sequined gown and was idly thumbing through a fashion magazine. Then she looked up and smiled politely and said, in a cultured and modulated voice, "Ah, Jerome. How nice of you to drop in." She extended a hand for him to kiss and he did so.

"Mrs. Corleone," he said with his most courtly Fleet manners, "may I present my fiancee."

The woman languidly unfolded and stood. She was six foot six, over eight inches taller than Krak.

"Ah," she said, extending her hand, "You are the Countess, I presume."

Krak's head spun. What was coming off here? How did this woman know she was really the Countess Krak? No one else on Earth knew that!

The giantess was looking her up and down as though she was some kind of a horse. And then apparently, she couldn't keep the pose up any longer and she suddenly put her arms around Krak and hugged her and then held her off and looked at her and then hugged her again and said, "God (bleep) it, Jerome, this is the most beautiful lady I've seen in all my life!" She held her off again. "God (bleep) it, you're more gorgeous than a Roxy girl. You'd stop the show!" And she hugged her again and said, "God (bleep) it, yes, Jerome! For Christ's sake, marry her quick before she gets away!"

After a while, the giantess put her in a chair like Krak was some kind of porcelain and, gazing at her with admiration, offered her a silver box with Russian cigarettes-which of course Krak didn't smoke-and called for cookies and milk for Jerome.

And then she and Jettero began to discuss the details of the engagement party and decided on Madison Square Garden and that it would be a week after the coronation. They had a lot of trouble with the guest list because Mrs. Corleone had not yet decided what to do with the mayor's wife: on the one hand she wanted her there and on the other she didn't, so that part of it was left up in the air.

They were finally being shown out and Mrs. Corleone turned to Jettero at the door. She said, "No wonder you would never touch those girls at the Gracious Palms!"

Kissed on both cheeks and getting into the Silver Spirit again, the Countess Krak's head was in a new whirl. What girls?

To the clank of tanks and the beat of a police helicopter that was riding escort overhead, Jettero got her laughing a bit about his unarmed-combat class at the UN's "favorite hotel." He was quite witty and charming about it and she forgave him. But she didn't get a chance to talk to him at all about Voltar at dinner. Although they ate in a most exclusive restaurant on East 52nd Street,

The Four Reasons, and although Jettero had said they would have an intimate dinner, he also insisted that the tank officers and crews, two police captains who seemed to have joined the parade and the condo chauffeur also have dinner in the same place; and even if they were at different tables and studiously let Jettero and his lady sit close to each other in candlelight, people kept dropping by who had nice things to say. And from the restaurant manager to the head of Saudi-Yemen Oil, all had to be introduced.

Then they went to a world title prizefight and a whole row had to be cleared out for the tank crews, police officials, bank presidents and a pop star who now seemed to have joined the parade.

The Countess never did figure out who won the fight or why, as she couldn't understand why neither fighter used any proper blows when they were wide open for them and never once even tapped each other with their feet.

The after-fight late supper was about as intimate as rush hour, as they had now acquired the heads of two TV networks and their guests and it drove Sardine's half mad trying to serve them all. She hadn't realized that Jettero knew so many people and even though he assured her that he didn't, the restaurant manager himself took over a microphone from the M. C. and convulsed the whole assemblage with a story, which they found hilarious, of Police Inspector Grafferty accidentally getting his face full of spaghetti at the hands of "a certain celebrity" who "shall not be named" as he looked at Jettero.

It was not until they had been in bed for two hours that the Countess Krak found him quiet enough to listen.

"Jettero, I hate to have to bring this up. But please be serious. I'm quite worried about the danger we are in.

You just grazed over it on the viewer-phone. I do not agree with your estimate at all."

He propped his head up on a pillow and she knew she had his attention.

"You don't know Lombar Hisst," she said. "I do. For almost three years I had to work at his orders. He's completely mad. He's entirely capable of blowing this whole planet up simply to get revenge on it if it thwarted him."

Jettero yawned. "I don't think you know what a big job it is to blow up a planet. I even doubt it could be done. It's even a very great engineering feat just to pull off a planet's atmosphere."

"But it could be attacked," she said. "The populations could be mowed down."

"Listen," he said, "you stop fretting your pretty head. In the first place, the planet does have some defenses and they would be an embarrassment to any in­vader. Even if they were wiped out, which they would be, they still would take a lot of killing. You'd have to land at least a million men to mop the place up. And that would require, in terms of ships, everything the Apparatus has got. In order to conquer Earth, Lombar Hisst would have to pull his ships and troops out of every hangar and barracks in the Confederacy. And they have a lot of other things to do, like suppressing the revolt of Mortiiy on Calabar. Lombar would be spread too thin. And he won't have any other forces available. He can't tell anyone we have the Emperor here and the Fleet and the Army would simply yawn at him if he tried to insist they chase all over the place looking for me. They wouldn't help him invade Earth. They'd think he'd gone crazy."

The Countess rose on her elbow and pushed her hair out of her eyes. "Darling, I know your reputation with the Fleet and even the Army has been excellent and that is as it should be. But I get a horrible feeling about all this. You have forgotten what happened here on Earth: that PR made an awful mess. All that horrible publicity. All those women and all those lies. Remember Madison?"

"Aw, they don't do that sort of thing on Voltar," said Jettero. "That goofy PR technology isn't even known there. And as for Madison, he went in the river."

"Well, call it woman's intuition if you will," she said, "but I've got a bad feeling about all this. Please, won't you worry just a little bit?"