"Why, Captain Valkanhayn; this is an unexpected pleasure. That's the _s.p.a.ce Scourge_ you're in, I take it? What are you doing here on Tanith?"

A voice from one of the speakers shouted that a second ship had been detected coming over the north pole. The dark-faced man in the screen smirked quite complacently.

"That's Garvan Spa.s.so, in the _Lamia_," he said. "And what we're doing here, we've taken this planet over. We intend keeping it, too."

"Well! So you and Garvan have teamed up. You two were just made for one another. And you have a little planet, all your very own. I'm so happy for both of you. What are you getting out of it--beside poultry?"

The other's self-a.s.surance started to slip. He slapped it back into place.

"Don't kid me; we know why you're here. Well, we got here first.

Tanith is our planet. You think you can take it away from us?"

"I know we could, and so do you," Harkaman told him. "We outgun you and Spa.s.so together; why, a couple of our pinnaces could knock the _Lamia_ apart. The only question is, do we want to bother?"

By now, he had recovered from his surprise, but not from his disappointment. If this fellow thought the _Nemesis_ was the _Enterprise_--Before he could check himself, he had finished the thought aloud.

"Then the _Enterprise_ didn't come here at all!"

The man in the screen started. "Isn't that the _Enterprise_ you're in?"

"Oh, no. Pardon my remissness, Captain Valkanhayn," Harkaman apologized. "This is the _Nemesis_. The gentleman with me, Lord Lucas Trask, is owner-aboard, for whom I am commanding. Lord Trask, Captain Boake Valkanhayn, of the _s.p.a.ce Scourge_. Captain Valkanhayn is a s.p.a.ce Viking." He said that as though expecting it to be disputed. "So, I am told, is his a.s.sociate, Captain Spa.s.so, whose ship is approaching. You mean to tell me that the _Enterprise_ hasn't been here?"

Valkanhayn was puzzled, slightly apprehensive.

"You mean the Duke of Wardshaven has two ships?"

"As far as I know, the Duke of Wardshaven hasn't any ships,"

Harkaman replied. "This ship is the property and private adventure of Lord Trask. The _Enterprise_, for which we are looking, is owned and commanded by one Andray Dunnan."

The man with the scarred face and hairy chest had picked up his cigar and was puffing on it mechanically. Now he took it out of his mouth as though he wondered how it had gotten there in the first place.

"But isn't the Duke of Wardshaven sending a ship here to establish a base? That was what we'd heard. We heard you'd gone from Flamberge to Gram to command for him."

"Where did you hear this? And when?"

"On Hoth. That'd be about two thousand hours ago; a Gilgamesher brought the news from Xochitl."

"Well, considering it was fifth or sixth hand, your information was good enough, when it was fresh. It was a year and a half old when you got it, though. How long have you been here on Tanith?"

"About a thousand hours." Harkaman clucked sadly at that.

"Pity you wasted all that time. Well, it was nice talking to you, Boake. Say h.e.l.lo to Garvan for me when he comes up."

"You mean you're not staying?" Valkanhayn was horrified, an odd reaction for a man who had just been expecting a bitter battle to drive them away. "You're just s.p.a.cing right out again?"

Harkaman shrugged. "Do we want to waste time here, Lord Trask? The _Enterprise_ has obviously gone somewhere else. She was still in hypers.p.a.ce when Captain Valkanhayn and his accomplice arrived here."

"Is there anything worth staying for?" That seemed to be the reply Harkaman was expecting. "Beside poultry, that is?"

Harkaman shook his head. "This is Captain Valkanhayn's planet; his and Captain Spa.s.so's. Let them be stuck with it."

"But, look; this is a good planet. There's a big local city, maybe ten or twenty thousand people; temples and palaces and everything.

Then, there are a couple of old Federation cities. The one we're at is in good shape, and there's a big s.p.a.ceport. We've been doing a lot of work on it. And the locals won't give you any trouble.

All they have is spears and a few crossbows and matchlocks--"

"I know. I've been here."

"Well, couldn't we make some kind of a deal?" Valkanhayn asked.

A mendicant whine was beginning to creep into his voice. "I can get Garvan on screen and switch him over to your ship--"

"Well, we have a lot of Sword-World merchandise aboard," Harkaman said. "We could make you good prices on some of it. How are you fixed for robotic equipment?"

"But aren't you going to stay here?" Valkanhayn was almost in a panic. "Listen, suppose I talk to Garvan, and we all get together on this. Just excuse me for a minute--"

As soon as he had blanked out, Harkaman threw back his head and guffawed as though he had just heard the funniest and bawdiest joke in the galaxy. Trask, himself, didn't feel like laughing.

"The humor escapes me," he admitted. "We came here on a fools' errand."

"I'm sorry, Lucas." Harkaman was still shaking with mirth. "I know it's a letdown, but that pair of chiseling chicken thieves! I could almost pity them, if it weren't so funny." He laughed again. "You know what their idea was?"

Trask shook his head. "Who are they?"

"What I called them, a couple of chicken thieves. They raid planets like Set and Hertha and Melkarth, where the locals haven't anything to fight with--or anything worth fighting for. I didn't know they'd teamed up, but that figures. n.o.body else would team up with either of them. What must have happened, this story of Duke Angus' Tanith adventure must have filtered out to them, and they thought that if they got here first, I'd think it was cheaper to take them in than run them out. I probably would have, too. They do have ships, of a sort, and they do raid, after a fashion. But now, there isn't going to be any Tanith base, and they have a no-good planet and they're stuck with it."

"Can't they make anything out of it themselves?"

"Like what?" Harkaman hooted. "They have no equipment, and they have no men. Not for a job like that. The only thing they can do is s.p.a.ce out and forget it."

"We could sell them equipment."

"We could if they had anything to use for money. They haven't. One thing, we do want to let down and give the men a chance to walk on ground and look at a sky for a while. The girls here aren't too bad, either," Harkaman said. "As I remember, some of them even take a bath, now and then."

"That's the kind of news of Dunnan we're going to get. By the time we'd get to where he's been reported, he'd be a couple of thousand light-years away," he said disgustedly. "I agree; we ought to give the men a chance to get off the ship, here. We can stall this pair along for a while and we won't have any trouble with them."

The three ships were slowly converging toward a point fifteen thousand miles off-planet and over the sunset line. The _s.p.a.ce Scourge_ bore the device of a mailed fist clutching a comet by the head; it looked more like a whisk broom than a scourge. The _Lamia_ bore a coiled snake with the head, arms and bust of a woman.

Valkanhayn and Spa.s.so were taking their time about screening back, and he began to wonder if they weren't maneuvering the _Nemesis_ into a cross-fire position. He mentioned this to Harkaman and Alvyn Karffard; they both laughed.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Just holding ship's meetings," Karffard said. "They'll be yakking back and forth for a couple of hours, yet."

"Yes; Valkanhayn and Spa.s.so don't own their ships," Harkaman explained. "They've gone in debt to their crews for supplies and maintenance till everybody owns everything in common. The ships look like it, too. They don't even command, really; they just preside over elected command-councils."

Finally, they had both of the more or less commanders on screen.

Valkanhayn had zipped up his shirt and put on a jacket. Garvan Spa.s.so was a small man, partly bald. His eyes were a shade too close together, and his thin mouth had a bitterly crafty twist. He began speaking at once:

"Captain, Boake tells me you say you're not here in the service of the Duke of Wardshaven at all." He said it aggrievedly.