Space Viking, H. Beam Piper [best classic romance novels txt] 📗

take his ships back against the Sword-Worlds. Sooner or later, civilization in the Old Federation would drive them all home to loot the planets that had sent them out.

Well, if he was going to be a king, shouldn’t he have a queen? Kings usually did. He climbed into the little hall-car and started up a long shaft. There was Valerie Alvarath. They’d enjoyed each other’s society on the Nemesis. He wondered if she would want to make it permanent, even on a throne.⁠ ⁠…

Elaine was with him. He felt her beside him, almost tangibly. Her voice was whispering to him: She loves you, Lucas. She’ll say yes. Be good to her, and she’ll make you happy. Then she was gone, and he knew that she would never return.

Goodbye, Elaine.

Colophon

Space Viking
was published between 1962 and 1963 by
H. Beam Piper.

This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
Alex Cabal,
and is based on a transcription produced in 2008 by
Greg Weeks, William Woods, and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive.

The cover page is adapted from
Sintesi plastica dei movimenti di una donna,
a painting completed in 1912 by
Luigi Russolo.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.

The first edition of this ebook was released on
January 7, 2016, 12:46 a.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/h-beam-piper/space-viking.

The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.

Uncopyright

May you do good and not evil.
May you find forgiveness for yourself and forgive others.
May you share freely, never taking more than you give.

Copyright pages exist to tell you can’t do something. Unlike them, this Uncopyright page exists to tell you, among other things, that the writing and artwork in this ebook are believed to be in the U.S. public domain. The U.S. public domain represents our collective cultural heritage, and items in it are free for anyone in the U.S. to do almost anything at all with, without having to get permission. Public domain items are free of copyright restrictions.

Copyright laws are different around the world. If you’re not located in the U.S., check with your local laws before using this ebook.

Non-authorship activities performed on public domain items⁠—so-called “sweat of the brow” work⁠—don’t create a new copyright. That means nobody can claim a new copyright on a public domain item for, among other things, work like digitization, markup, or typography. Regardless, to dispel any possible doubt on the copyright status of this ebook, Standard Ebooks L3C, its contributors, and the contributors to this ebook release this ebook under the terms in the CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication, thus dedicating to the worldwide public domain all of the work they’ve done on this ebook, including but not limited to metadata, the titlepage, imprint, colophon, this Uncopyright, and any changes or enhancements to, or markup on, the original text and artwork. This dedication doesn’t change the copyright status of the underlying works, which, though believed to already be in the U.S. public domain, may not yet be in the public domain of other countries. We make this dedication in the interest of enriching our global cultural heritage, to promote free and libre culture around the world, and to give back to the unrestricted culture that has given all of us so much.