The President and the Syndics exchanged relieved glances. Let the taxpayers worry about the cost; they'd come out of it with whole skins.

"You understand, we want maximum value and minimum bulk," he continued. "Jewels, objects of art, furs, the better grades of luxury goods of all kinds. Rare-element metals. And monetary metals, gold and platinum. You have a metallic-based currency, I suppose?"

"Oh, no!" President Pedrosan was slightly scandalized. "Our currency is based on services to society. Our monetary unit is simply called a credit."

Harkaman snorted impolitely. Evidently he'd seen economic systems like that before. Trask wanted to know if they used gold or platinum at all.

"Gold, to some extent, for jewelry." Evidently they weren't complete economic puritans. "And platinum in industry, of course."

"If they want gold, they should have raided Stolgoland," one of the Syndics said. "They have a gold-standard currency." From the way he said it, he might have been accusing them of eating with their fingers, and possibly of eating their own young.

"I know, the maps we're using for this planet are a few centuries old; Stolgoland doesn't seem to appear on them."

"I wish it didn't appear on ours, either." That was General Dagro Ector, Syndic for State Protection.

"It would have been a good thing for this whole planet if you'd decided to raid them instead of us," somebody else said.

"It isn't too late for these gentlemen to make that decision,"

Pedrosan said. "I gather that gold is a monetary metal among your people?" When Trask nodded, he continued: "It is also the basis of the Stolgonian currency. The actual currency is paper, theoretically redeemable in gold. In actuality, the circulation of gold has been prohibited, and the entire gold wealth of the nation is concentrated in vaults at three depositories. We know exactly where they are."

"You begin to interest me, President Pedrosan."

"I do? Well, you have two large s.p.a.ceships and six smaller craft.

You have nuclear weapons, something n.o.body on this planet has. You have contragravity, something that is hardly more than a legend here. On the other hand, we have a million and a half ground-troops, jet aircraft, armored ground-vehicles, and chemical weapons. If you will undertake to attack Stolgoland, we will place this entire force at your disposal; General Dagro will command them as you direct. All that we ask is that, when you have loaded the gold h.o.a.rds of Stolgoland aboard your ships, you will leave our troops in possession of the country."

That was all there was to that meeting. There was a second one; only Trask, Harkaman and Sir Paytrik Morland represented the s.p.a.ce Vikings, and the Eglonsby government was represented by President Pedrosan and General Dagro. They met more intimately, in a smaller and more luxurious room in the same building.

"If you're going to declare war on Stolgoland, you'd better get along with it," Morland advised.

"What?" Pedrosan seemed to have only the vaguest idea of what he was talking about. "You mean, warn them? Certainly not. We will attack them by surprise. It will be nothing but plain self-defense," he added righteously. "The oligarchic capitalists of Stolgoland have been plotting to attack us for years."

"Yes. If you had carried out your original intention of looting Eglonsby, they would have invaded us the moment your ships lifted out. It's exactly what I'd do in their place."

"But you maintain nominally friendly relations with them?"

"Of course. We are civilized. The peace-loving government and people of Eglonsby...."

"Yes, Mr. President; I understand. And they have an emba.s.sy here?"

"They call it that!" cried Dagro. "It is a nest of vipers, a plague-spot of espionage and subversion...!"

"We'll grab that ourselves, right away," Harkaman said. "You won't be able to round up all their agents outside it, and if we tried to, it would cause suspicion. We'll have to put up a front to deceive them."

"Yes. You will go on the air at once, calling on the people to collaborate with us, and you will specifically order your troops mobilized to a.s.sist us in collecting the tribute we are levying on Eglonsby," Trask said. "In that way, if any Stolgonian spies see your troops concentrated around our landing craft, they'll think it's to help us load our loot."

"And we'll announce that a large part of the tribute will consist of military equipment," Dagro added. "That will explain why our guns and tanks are being loaded on your contragravity vehicles."

When the Stolgonian emba.s.sy was seized by the s.p.a.ce Vikings, the amba.s.sador asked to be taken at once to their leader. He had a proposition: If the s.p.a.ce Vikings would completely disable the army of Eglonsby and admit Stolgonian troops when they were ready to leave, the invaders would bring with them ten thousand kilos of gold. Trask affected to be very hospitable to the offer.

Stolgoland lay across a narrow and shallow sea from the State of Eglonsby; it was dotted with islands, and every one of them was, in turn, dotted with oil wells. Petroleum was what kept the aircraft and ground-vehicles of Amaterasu in operation; oil, rather than ideology, was at the root of the enmity between the two nations.

Apparently the Stolgonian espionage in Eglonsby was completely deceived, and the reports Trask allowed the captive amba.s.sador to make confirmed the deception. Hourly the Eglonsby radio stations poured out exhortations to the people to co-operate with the s.p.a.ce Vikings, with an occasional lamentation about the ma.s.ses of war materials being taken. Eglonsby espionage in Stolgoland was similarly active. The Stolgonian armies were being ma.s.sed at four seaports on the coast facing Eglonsby, and there was a frantic gathering of every sort of ship available. By this time, any sympathy that Trask might have felt for either party had evaporated.

The invasion of Stolgoland started the fifth morning after their arrival over Eglonsby. Before dawn, the six pinnaces went in, making a wide sweep around the curvature of the planet and coming in from the north, two to each of the three gold-troves. They were detected by radar, eventually but too late for any effective resistance to be organized. Two were even taken without a shot; by mid-morning all three had been blown open and the ingots and specie were being removed.

The four seaports from whence the Stolgonian invasion of Eglonsby was to have been launched were neutralized by nuclear bombing.

Neutralized was a nice word, Trask thought; there was no echo in it of the screams of the still-living, maimed and burned and blinded, around the fringes of ground-zero. The _Nemesis_ and the _s.p.a.ce Scourge_, from landing craft and from the ships themselves, landed Eglonsby troops on Stolgonopolis. While they were sacking the city, with all the usual atrocities, the s.p.a.ce Vikings were loading the gold, and anything else that was of more than ordinary value, aboard the ships.

They were still at it the next morning when President Pedrosan arrived at the newly conquered capital, announcing his intention of putting the Stolgonian chief of state and his cabinet on trial as war criminals. Before sunset, they were back over Eglonsby. The loot might run as high as a half-billion Excalibur stellars. Boake Valkanhayn and Garvan Spa.s.so were simply beyond astonishment and beyond words.

The looting of Eglonsby then began.

They gathered up machinery, and stocks of steel and light-metal alloys. The city was full of warehouses, and the warehouses were crammed with valuables. In spite of the socialistic and egalitarian verbiage behind which the government operated, there seemed to be a numerous elite cla.s.s and if gold were not a monetary metal it was not despised for purposes of ostentation. There were several large art museums. Vann Larch, their nearest approach to an art specialist, took charge of culling the best from them.

And there was a vast public library. Into this Otto Harkaman vanished, with half a dozen men and a contragravity scow. Its historical section would be much poorer in the future.

President Pedrosan Pedro was on the radio from Stolgonopolis that night.

"Is this how you s.p.a.ce Vikings keep faith?" he demanded indignantly.

"You've abandoned me and my army here in Stolgoland, and you're sacking Eglonsby. You promised to leave Eglonsby alone if I helped you get the gold of Stolgoland."

"I promised nothing of the kind. I promised to help you take Stolgoland. You've taken it," Trask told him. "I promised to avoid unnecessary damage or violence. I've already hanged a dozen of my own men for rape, murder and wanton vandalism. Now, we expect to be out of here in twenty-four hours. You'd better be back here before then. Your own people are starting to loot. We did not promise to control them for you."

That was true. What few troops had been left behind, and the police, were unable to cope with the mobs that were pillaging in the wake of the s.p.a.ce Vikings. Everybody seemed to be trying to grab what he could and let the Vikings be blamed for it. He had been able to keep his own people in order. There had been at least a dozen cases of rape and wanton murder, and the offenders had been promptly hanged.

None of their shipmates, not even the _s.p.a.ce Scourge_ company, seemed resentful. They felt the culprits had deserved what they'd gotten; not for what they'd done to the locals, but for disobeying orders.

A few troops had been flown in from Stolgoland by the time they had gotten their vehicles stowed and were lifting out. They didn't seem to be making much headway. Harkaman, who had gotten his load of microbooks stowed and was at the command desk, laughed heartily.

"I don't know what Pedrosan'll do. Gehenna, I don't even know what I'd do, if I'd gotten myself into a mess like that. He'll probably bring half his army back, leave the other half in Stolgoland, and lose both. Suppose we drop in, in about three or four years, just out of curiosity. If we make twenty per cent of what we did this time, the trip would pay for itself."

After they went into hypers.p.a.ce and had the ship secured, the parties lasted three Galactic standard days, and n.o.body was at all sober. Harkaman was drooling over the ma.s.s of historical material he had found. Spa.s.so was jubilant. n.o.body could call this chicken-stealing.

He kept repeating that as long as he was able to say anything. Khepera, he conceded, had been. Lousy two or three million stellars; poo!

XIII

Beowulf was bad.

Valkanhayn and Spa.s.so had both been opposed to the raid. n.o.body raided Beowulf; Beowulf was too tough. Beowulf had nuclear energy and nuclear weapons and contragravity and normal-s.p.a.ce craft, they even had colonies on a couple of other planets of their system. They had everything but hyperdrive. Beowulf was a civilized planet, and you didn't raid civilized planets, not and get away with it.

And beside, hadn't they gotten enough loot on Amaterasu?