Gently, she smiled at the man waiting below, and despite the special conditioning he had undergone, and the drugs he took with careful regularity for added protection, he almost surrendered to the impulse to throw himself at her feet; to beg for only the privilege to serve her, to obey her, and to worship her.
Out of the entire space fleet, he, Commander Ydnas, after extensive psychological testing, had been selected for this task. The three months of conditioning had passed rapidly, his response to the treatments had been better than they had dared to hope. In the two weeks of their flight he had been unaffected by her presence, and now upon landing he was beginning to feel the strain he was under. He wondered what would have happened had it not been for the added help of the drugs?
His face betrayed none of the anxiety he now felt. It was an impassive mask, his body was ramrod tense and erect.
She came down the steps gracefully, her litheness would have made the movements of a cat seem awkward and clumsy.
Both had been thoroughly trained in the languages needed to carry out the plan of invasion, English and Russian. First, the large continent of North America would be disarmed at her command; and then they would move across the large body of water to Europe. Russia would be their initial target there. The invasion timetable called for a three month campaign, and then Eve would be removed from the planet before the occupation fleet from the mother world would land. Not a man would be lost, nor a space ship damaged, and yet the planet's rich potential would be theirs for the taking.
And what of Eve? She was too dangerous to be permitted to return to her creators. Commander Ydnas had his instructions covering the final phase of the invasion plan. When her task of disarming Earth was completed, and the planet lay helpless to defend itself, they would blast off into space together. Soon as Earth's atmosphere was left behind, she would be slain, her body incinerated through the rocket tubes.
It seemed such a dreadful waste to destroy such beauty of perfection, but the Commander, raised from infancy to be a space officer, realized the need for her disposal. After the need for a weapon has passed, it is safer to destroy it then risk the danger of trying to store it. Even on this world they dumped their poison gases into the seas and did the same with the more volatile explosives.
"Come," he said, starting toward the cabin. When she would have taken his hand, he brushed it aside angrily. Even the work the psychologists had done to condition him, and the strength of the drugs, could be trusted only up to a point. He feared what her touch might do to the iron discipline with which he kept himself in check.
The only response to his rebuff, was a shrug of those magnificently rounded shoulders, and a lazy half-smile of amusement.