abstract
| - Dr. Smith, Will and the Robot encounter an alien being dressed as a medieval knight. The alien induces Will to become his page and Smith to be his varlet. Will is interested in the knight’s story, but Smith is motivated by the hope of passage back to earth in the alien’s spacecraft. The knight explains that he, Sir Sagramonte, has been on a quest to destroy the dragon Gundemar for uncounted years. The next morning Sagramonte goes off alone in search of Gundemar. Meanwhile, Dr. Smith, having learned that Sagramonte has no ship, leaves for the Jupiter 2. On the way he encounters Gundemar. His screams are heard by Sagramonte who runs to find his beast. When Will becomes worried, he searches for the knight. His earlier doubts of Sagramonte’s ability are confirmed when he finds him addled and fretful, and the boy deserts him. Penny herself later meets Gundemar and finds out that she is in fact a cultured and refined lady. The dragon tells Penny how distraught she has become by years of flight from Sagramonte. Penny resolves to help her and hides her in a cave. Unbeknownst to her, the whole episode is witnessed by Dr. Smith. After Will has returned home, everyone notices how depressed he has become. He has lost faith in adults and no longer believes that there are any heroes to look up to. Dr. Smith feels sorry for him and goes to Sagramonte to convince him to restore Will’s faith by confronting Gundemar, and tells the knight where to find her. He then returns to camp and fetches Will to witness the combat. Penny overhears and rushes to help her friend Gundemar. Penny is able to stop the fight between Sagramonte and Gundemar, and it is revealed that the dragon was responsible for instigating the quest in the first place; in fact, she has been teleporting herself and Sagramonte from world to world for many years. On hearing this, Sagramonte becomes utterly despondent, thinking he is a fool and has wasted his life; Will is even more depressed at the whole fiction Gundemar has perpetrated. Penny intercedes with Gundemar, who then provokes Sagramonte to the point where his old gusto is restored and his quest is renewed. The knight and his beast then disappear, teleported to a new planet, and Will’s faith in the heroic is restored.
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