"What is all this? What do you mean, 'Princess'? Will someone explain?" Mark was exasperated.
"Aladdian's the daughter of the late Emperor Bedrim of Venus," Carston said, then fell silent.
A look at the Venusian's smiling face told Mark it was true. His own face was ludicrous, his mouth partly open, for the moment speechless. Then a dark flush of anger swept up like a tide to the roots of his hair.
"A girl ... a defenseless girl that's never committed a crime in her life, condemned to that Venus Swamp! To the most ghastly, the most cruel living-death in the universe...." Words failed him as he shook with rage. "What was Earth's Government thinking of? The Council must have been mad!" Mark Denning choked.
"Careful!" Ernest Carston warned. "Remember you're an Earthman, Denning. To question the Council is treason!"
"Treason be damned, and the Council too!" Mark raged. "There are limits! There's no reason for that Prison Swamp except greed. Better atom-blast habitual criminals than to condemn them there; that is worse than any crime!" He towered above Carston, a formidable engine of destruction, his face a mask of fury.
Then a tiny, fragile hand was on his arm and the Venusian's calm voice rose in the brief silence, "It is too late to remould the past. But we can refashion the immediate future, Mark Denning."
"Can we? How? It seems that Marnik and Commander Cynthia hold all the cards!"
"Not all," Aladdian shook her exquisite head. "They have perfected their plans for the immediate future—but we can be the element of the unpredictable!"
"You mean ... you're not in sympathy with their plans? That you won't serve as a rallying point to sway the masses of Venus?" Carston looked bewildered. "I thought when I saw you, that was the reason they'd brought you here! We know that your people would revolt at a word from you, Princess! That's what our Government feared."