"Of course, we could go ahead with it, now," Harkaman said.

"We could tear enough armor off the _Lamia_ to shield any kind of a reaction plant."

That was the first time either of them had gotten close to the possibility that the ship mightn't return. Trask laid his cigar in the ashtray--it had come from President Pedrosan Pedro's private office--and splashed a little more brandy into his gla.s.s.

"She'll be coming before long. We have enough of our people aboard to make sure n.o.body else tries to take the ship. And I really believe, now, that Valkanhayn can be trusted."

"I do, too. I'm not worried about what might happen on the ship.

But we don't know what's been happening on Gram. Glaspyth and Didreksburg could have teamed up and jumped Wardshaven before Duke Angus was ready to invade Glaspyth. Boake might be landing the ship in a trap at Wardshaven."

"Be a sorry looking trap after it closed on him. That would be the first time in history that a Sword-World was raided by s.p.a.ce Vikings."

Harkaman looked at his half-empty gla.s.s, then filled it to the top.

It was the same drink he had started with, just as a regiment that has been decimated and recruited up to strength a few times is still the same regiment.

The buzz of the communication screen--one of the few things in the room that hadn't been looted somewhere--interrupted him. They both rose; Harkaman, still carrying his drink, went to put it on. It was a man on duty in the control room, overhead, reporting that two emergences had just been detected at twenty light-minutes due north of the planet. Harkaman gulped his drink and set down the empty gla.s.s.

"All right. You put out a general alert? Switch anything that comes in over to this screen." He got out his pipe and was packing tobacco into it mechanically. "They'll be out of the last microjump and about two light-seconds away in a few minutes."

Trask sat down again, saw that his cigarette had burned almost to the tip, and lit a fresh one from it, wishing he could be as calm about it as Harkaman. Three minutes later, the control tower picked up two emergences at a light-second and a half, a thousand or so miles apart. Then the screen flickered, and Boake Valkanhayn was looking out of it, from the desk in the newly refurbished command room of the _s.p.a.ce Scourge_.

He was a newly refurbished Boake Valkanhayn, too. His heavily braided captain's jacket looked like the work of one of the better tailors on Gram, and on the breast was a large and ornate knight's star, of unfamiliar design, bearing, among other things, the sword and atom-symbol of the house of Ward.

"Prince Trask; Count Harkaman," he greeted. "_s.p.a.ce Scourge_, Tanith; thirty-two hundred hours out of Wardshaven on Gram, Baron Valkanhayn commanding, accompanied by chartered freighter _Rozinante_, Durendal, Captain Morbes. Requesting permission and instructions to orbit in."

"Baron Valkanhayn?" Harkaman asked.

"That's right," Valkanhayn grinned. "And I have a vellum scroll the size of a blanket to prove it. I have a whole cargo of scrolls. One says you're Otto, Count Harkaman, and another says you're Admiral of the Royal Navy of Gram."

"He did it!" Trask cried. "He made himself King of Gram!"

"That's right. And you're his trusty and well-loved Lucas, Prince Trask, and Viceroy of his Majesty's Realm of Tanith."

Harkaman bristled at that. "The Gehenna you say. This is _our_ Realm of Tanith."

"Is his Majesty making it worth while to accept his sovereignty?"

Trask asked. "That is, beside vellum scrolls?"

Valkanhayn was still grinning. "Wait till we start sending cargo down. And wait till you see what's crammed into the other ship."

"Did Spa.s.so come back with you?" Harkaman asked.

"Oh, no. Sir Garvan Spa.s.so entered the service of his Majesty, King Angus. He is Chief of Police at Glaspyth, now, and n.o.body can call what he's doing there chicken-stealing, either. Any chickens he steals, he steals the whole farm to get them."

That didn't sound good. Spa.s.so could make King Angus' name stink all over Glaspyth. Or maybe he'd allow Spa.s.so to crush the adherents of Omfray, and then hang him for his oppression of the people. He'd read about somebody who'd done something like that, in one of Harkaman's Old Terran history books.

Baron Rathmore had stayed on Gram; so had Rolve Hemmerding. The rest of the gentlemen-adventurers, all with shiny new t.i.tles of n.o.bility, had returned. From them, as the two ships were getting into orbit, he learned what had happened on Gram since the _Nemesis_ had s.p.a.ced out.

Duke Angus had announced his intention of carrying on with the Tanith Adventure, and had started construction of a new ship at the Gorram yards. This had served plausibly to explain all the activities of preparation for the invasion of Glaspyth, and had deceived Duke Omfray completely. Omfray had already started a ship of his own; the entire resources of his duchy were thrown into an effort to get her finished and to s.p.a.ce ahead of the one Angus was building. Work was going on frantically on her when the Wardshaven invaders. .h.i.t Glaspyth; she was now nearing completion as a unit of the Royal Navy. Duke Omfray had managed to escape to Didreksburg; when Angus' troops moved in on the latter duchy, he had escaped again, this time off-planet. He was now eating the bitter bread of exile at the court of his wife's uncle, the King of Haulteclere.

The Count of Newhaven, the Duke of Bigglersport, and the Lord of Northport, all of whom had favored the establishment of a planetary monarchy, had immediately acknowledged Angus as their sovereign. So, with a knife at his throat, had the Duke of Didreksburg. Many other feudal magnates had refused to surrender their sovereignty. That might mean fighting, but Paytrik, now Baron, Morland, doubted it.

"The _s.p.a.ce Scourge_ stopped that," he said. "When they heard about the base here, and saw what we'd shipped to Gram, they started changing their minds. Only subjects of King Angus will be allowed to invest in the Tanith Adventure."

As for accepting King Angus' annexation of Tanith and accepting his sovereignty, that would also be advisable. They would need a Sword World outlet for the loot they took or obtained by barter from other s.p.a.ce Vikings, and until they had adequate industries of their own, they would be dependent on Gram for many things which could not be gotten by raiding.

"I suppose the King knows I'm not out here for my health, or his profit?" he asked Lord Valpry, during one of the screen conversations as the _s.p.a.ce Scourge_ was getting into orbit.

"My business out here is Andray Dunnan."

"Oh, yes," the Wardshaven n.o.ble replied. "In fact, he told me, in so many words, that he would be most happy if you sent him his nephew's head in a block of lucite. What Dunnan did touched his honor, too.

Sovereign princes never see any humor in things like that."

"I suppose he knows that sooner or later Dunnan will try to attack Tanith?"

"If he doesn't, it isn't because I didn't tell him often enough. When you see the defense armament we're bringing, you'll think he does."

It was impressive, but nothing to the engineering and industrial equipment. Mining robots for use on the iron Moon of Tanith, and normal-s.p.a.ce transports for the fifty thousand mile run between planet and satellite. A collapsed-matter producer; now they could collapsium-plate their own shielding. A small, fully robotic, steel mill that could be set up and operated on the satellite. Industrial robots, and machinery to make machinery. And, best of all, two hundred engineers and highly skilled technicians.

Quite a few industrial baronies on Gram would realize, before long, what they had lost in those men. He wondered what Lord Trask of Traskon would have thought about that.

The Prince of Tanith was no longer interested in what happened to Gram. Maybe, if things prospered for the next century or so, his successors would be ruling Gram by viceroy from Tanith.

XV

As soon as the _s.p.a.ce Scourge_ was unloaded, she was put on off-planet watch; Harkaman immediately s.p.a.ced out in the _Nemesis_, while Trask remained behind. They began unloading the _Rozinante_, after setting her down at Rivington s.p.a.ceport. After that was done, her officers and crew took a holiday which lasted a month, until the _Nemesis_ returned. Harkaman must have made quick raids on half a dozen planets. None of the cargo he brought back was spectacularly valuable, and he dismissed the whole thing as chicken-stealing, but he had lost some men and the ship showed a few fresh scars. A good deal of what was transshipped to the _Rozinante_ was manufactured goods which would compete with merchandise produced on Gram.

"That load will be a come-down, after what the _s.p.a.ce Scourge_ took back, but we didn't want to send the _Rozinante_ back empty," he said. "One thing, I had time to do a little reading, between stops."

"The books from the Eglonsby library?"

"Yes. I learned a curious thing about Amaterasu. Do you know why that planet was so extensively colonized by the Federation, when there don't seem to be any fissionable ores? The planet produced gadolinium."

Gadolinium was essential to hyperdrive engines; the engines of a ship the size of the _Nemesis_ required fifty pounds of it. On the Sword-Worlds, it was worth several times its weight in gold. If they still mined it, Amaterasu would repay a second visit.

When he mentioned it, Harkaman shrugged. "Why should they mine it?

There's only one thing it's good for, and you can't run a s.p.a.ceship on Diesel oil. I suppose the mines could be reopened, and new refineries built, but...."

"We could trade plutonium for gadolinium. They have none of their own. We could charge our own prices for it, and we wouldn't need to tell them what gadolinium sells for on the Sword-Worlds."

"We could, if we could do business with anybody there, after what we did to Eglonsby and Stolgoland. Where would we get plutonium?"

"Why do you think the Beowulfers don't have hyperships, when they have everything else?"

Harkaman snapped his fingers. "By Satan, that's it!" Then he looked at Trask in alarm. "Hey, you're not thinking of selling Amaterasu plutonium and Beowulf gadolinium, are you?"