 CHAPTERS 13 THROUGH FIFTEEN of SPACE VIKING by H. BEEAM PIPER, read by Mark Nelson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. SPACE VIKING 13. Beowulf was bad. Vulcan Hain and Spasso had both been opposed to the raid. Nobody raided Beowulf. Beowulf was too tough. Beowulf had nuclear energy and nuclear weapons and contra-gravity and normal spacecraft. 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, nod and get away with it. And besides, hadn't they gotten enough loot on Amaterasu? No, we did not, Trask told them. If we're going to make anything out of Tannath, we're going to need power, and I don't mean windmills and waterwheels. As you've remarked, Beowulf has nuclear energy. That's where we get our plutonium and our power units. So they went to Beowulf. They came out of hyperspace eight light-hours from the F7 star, of which Beowulf was the fourth planet, and twenty light minutes apart. Goat Kirby made a micro-jump that brought the ships within practical communicating distance, and they began making plans in an internship screen conference. There are, or were, three chief sources of fissionable ores, Harkamon said. The last ship to raid here and get away was Stefan Kintauer's Princess of Lioness, sixty years ago. He hit one on the Antarctic continent. According to his account, everything there was fairly new. He didn't mess things up too badly in an ought to be still operating. We'll go in from the south pole, and we'll have to go in fast. They shifted personnel and equipment. They would go in bunched, the pinnaces ahead. They and the space-scourge would go down to the ground, while the better-armed nemesis would hover above to fight off local contra-gravity, shoot down missiles, and generally provide overhead cover. Trask transferred to the space-scourge, taking with him Morland and two hundred of the nemesis ground fighters. Most of the single mounts, landing craft, and manipulators, and heavy-duty lifters went with him, jamming the decks around the vehicle ports of Valkenhayne ship. They jumped in to six light-minutes, and while Valkenhayne's astrogator was still fiddling with his controls, they began sensing radar and micro-ray detection. When they came out again, they were two light-seconds off the south pole, and half a dozen ships were either in orbit or coming up from the planet. All normal spacecraft, of course, but some were almost as big as the nemesis. From there on it was a nightmare. Ships pounded at them with guns, and they pounded back. Missiles went out, and counter-missiles stopped them in rapidly expanding and quickly vanishing globes of light. Red lights flashed on the damaged board, and sirens howled and klaxons squawked. In the outside view screens they saw the nemesis vanish in a blaze of radiance, and then, while their hearts were still in their throats, come out of it again. Red lights went off on the board as damage-control crews and their robots sealed the breeches in the hull, and pumped air back into evacuated areas, and then more red lights came on. Occasionally they would glance toward Boke Valkenhayne, who sat motionless in his chair, chewing a cigar that had gone out long ago. He wasn't enjoying it, but he wasn't showing fear. Once a beowulfer vanished in a supernova flash, and when the ball of incandescence widened to nothing the ship was gone. All Valkenhayne said was, Hope, one of our boys, did that. They fought their way in and down toward the atmosphere. Another beowulf ship blew up, a craft about the size of Spasso's Lemia. A moment later another. Valkenhayne was pounding the desk in front of him with his fist and yelling, That was one of ours! Find out who launched it! Get his name! Missiles were coming up from the planet now. Valkenhayne's detection officer was trying to locate the source. While he was trying, a big, melon-shaped thing fell away from the nemesis, and in the jiggling, radiation-distorted internship screen, Harkman's image was laughing. Hellburner just went off, target about fifty degrees south, twenty-five degrees east of the sunrise line. That's where those missiles are coming from. Counter-missiles sped toward the big, metal, melon. Defense missiles, robot-launched, met them. The Hellburner's track was marked first by expanding red and orange globes in airless space, and then by fire-puffs after it entered atmosphere. It vanished into the darkness beyond the sunset and then made a sunlight of its own. It was sunlight. A Beta Solar Phoenix reaction, and it would sustain itself for hours. He hoped it hadn't landed within a thousand miles of their objective. The ground operation was a nightmare of a different sort. He went down in a command car, with Patrick Moreland and a couple of others. There were missiles and gun batteries. There were darting patterns of flights of combat vehicles, blazing gunfire, and single vehicles that shot past or blew up in front of them. Robots on contra-gravity, military robots with missiles to launch, and working robots with only their own mass to hurl, flung themselves mindlessly at them. Screens that went crazy from radiation, speakers that jabbered contradictory orders. Finally the battle, which had raged in the air over 2,000 square miles of mines and refineries and reaction plants, became two distinct and concentrated battles, one at the packing plant and storage vaults, and one at the power unit cartridge factory. Three penises came down to form a triangle over each. The space scourge hung midway between, poured out a swarm of vehicles and big claw-armed manipulators. Armored lighters and landing craft shuttle back and forth. The command car looped and dodged from one target to the other. At one, keg-like canisters of plutonium, Calapsium plated and weighing tons apiece were coming out of the vaults. And at the other, lifters were bringing out loads of nuclear-electric power unit cartridges, some as big as a 10-liter jar to power a spaceship engine, and some small as a round of pistol ammunition for things like flashlights. Every hour or so he looked at his watch, and it would be three or four minutes later. At last, when he was completely convinced that he had really been killed and was damned and would spend all eternity in this fire-riven chaos, the nemesis began firing red flares and the speakers in all the vehicles were signaling recall. He got aboard the space scourge somehow after assuring himself that nobody who was alive was left behind. There were twenty odd who weren't and the sick bay was full of wounded who had gone up with cargo, and more were being helped off the vehicles as they were birthed. The car in which he had been riding had been hit several times, and one of the gunners was bleeding under his helmet and didn't seem aware of it. When he got to the command room he found Boke Falconhane, his face drawn and weary, getting coffee from a robot and lacing it with Brandy. "'That's it,' he said, blowing on the steaming cup. It was the battered silver one that had been in front of him when he had first appeared in the nemesis screen. He nodded toward the damaged screen. Everything had been patched up, or the outer decks around the breached portions of the hull sealed. Ship secure,' he sat down the silver mug and lit a cigar. "'To quote Garvin Spasso, nobody can call that chicken-stealing.'" "'No, not even if you count Tizona giraffe-burrs as chickens. That gram-gump hair Brandy you're putting in that coffee? I'll have the same. Just leave out the coffee.'" "'Fourteen.'" The lame-use detection picked them up as soon as they were out of the last micro-jump. Trasque's gnawing fear that Dunnan might attack in their absence had been groundless. Incredibly, he realized, they had been gone only thirty odd galactic standard days, and in that time Alvin Carford had done an incredible amount of work. He had gotten the spaceport completely cleared of rubble and debris, and he had the woods cleared away from around it and the two tall buildings. The locals called the city Riven. A few inscriptions found here and there in it indicated that the original name had been Rivington. He had done considerable mapping, in some detail of the continent on which it was located, and in general of the rest of the planet. And he had established friendly relations with the people of trade town and made friends with their king. Nobody, not even those who had collected it, quite believed their eyes when the loot was unloaded. The little herd of long-haired unicorns, the Capara locals had called them Craigs, probably a corruption of the name of some naturalist who had first studied them, had come through the voyage and even the battle of Beowulf in good shape. Trask and a few of his former cattlemen from Traskin watched them anxiously, and the ship's doctor, acting veterinarian, made elaborate tests of the vegetation they would be likely to eat. Three of the cows proved to be with calf. These were isolated and watched over with a special solicitude. The locals were inclined to take a poor view of the Craigs at first. Cattle ought to have two horns, one on either side curved back. It wasn't right for cattle to have only one horn in the middle slanting forward. Both ships had taken heavy damage. The nemesis had one pinnisfirth knocked open, and everybody was glad the Beowulfers hadn't noticed that and gotten a missile inside. The space scourge had taken a hit directly on her south pole while lifting out from the planet, and a good deal of the southern part of the ship was sealed off when she came in. The nemesis was repaired as far as possible and put on off planet patrol. Then they went to work on the space scourge, transferring much of her armament to ground defense, clearing out all the available cargo space and repairing her hull as far as possible. To repair her completely was a job for a regular shipyard, like Alex Gorham's on Gram, and that was where the work would be done. Boke Vulcan Hain would command her on the voyage to and from Gram. Since Beowulf, Trask had not only ceased to dislike the man, but was beginning to admire him. He had been a good man once, before ill fortune which had been only part of his own making had overtaken him. He had just let himself go and stopped caring. Now he had taken hold of himself again. It had started showing after they had landed on Amaterasu. He had begun to dress more neatly and speak more grammatically, to look and act more like a spaceman and less like a barfly. His men had begun to jump to obey when he gave an order. He had opposed the raid on Beowulf, but that had been the dying struggle of the chicken thief he had been. He had been scared going in. Well, who hadn't been, except a few greenhorns brave with the valour of ignorance. But he had gone in and fought his ship well, and had held his station over the fishing-evils plant in a hell of bombs and missile, and he had made sure everybody who had gone down and who was still alive was aboard before he lifted out. He was a space viking again. Garvin Spasso wasn't and never would be. He was outraged when he heard that Valkenhayn would take his ship, loaded with much of the loot of the three planets to gram. He came to Trask fairly spluttering about it. You know what'll happen, he demanded. He'll space out with that cargo, and that'll be the last any of us'll hear of him again. He'll probably take it to Jo Yu's, or Excalibur, and buy himself a lordship with it. Oh, I doubt that, Garvin. A number of our people are going along. Goat Kirby will be the Astrogator. You trust him, wouldn't you? And Sir Patrick Morland, and Baron Rathmore, and Lord Valprie, and Rolf Hammerding. He was silent for a moment, struck by an idea. Would you be willing to make the trip in the space scourge, too? Spasso would very decidedly. Trask nodded. Good, there will be sure nothing crooked is pulled, he said seriously. After Spasso was gone he got in touch with Baron Rathmore. See to it that he gets as much money that's due to him as possible when you get to gram. And ask Duke Angus, as a favor, to give him some meaningless position with a suitably impressive title, Lord Chamberlain of the Ducal Washroom or something. Then he can prime him with misinformation and give him an opportunity to sell it to Amfrey of Glasbeth. Then, of course, he could be contacted to sell Amfrey out to Angus. A couple of times around and somebody'll stick a knife in him and then will be rid of him for good. They loaded the space scourge with gold from Stalgaland and paintings and statues from the art museums and fabrics and furs and jewels and porcelains and plate from the markets of Egglandsby. They loaded sacks and kegs of specie from Capara. Most of the Caparalute wasn't worth hauling to gram, but it was far enough in advance of their own technologies to be priceless to the Tannath locals. Some of these kegs were learning simple machine operations, and a few were able to handle contra-gravity vehicles that had been fitted with adequate safety devices. The former slave guards had all become sergeants and lieutenants in an infantry regiment that had been formed, and the king of Trade Town borrowed some to train his own army. Some genius in the machine shop altered a matchlock musket to flitlock and showed the local gunsmiths how to do it. The kegs continued to thrive after the space scourge departed. Several calves were born and seemed to be doing well. The biochemistry of Tannath and Capara were safely alike. Trask had hopes for them. Every Viking ship had its own karniculture vats, but men tired of karniculture meat and fresh meat was always in demand. Someday he hoped Kreg beef would be an item of sale to ships putting in on Tannath, and the long-haired hides might even find a market in the sword worlds. They had contra-gravity scours plying between Rivington and Trade Town regularly now, and air lorries were linking the villages. The boatmen of Trade Town rioted occasionally against this unfair competition, and in Rivington itself bulldozers and power shovels and manipulators labored, and there was always a rising cloud of dust over the city. There was so much to do, and only a trifle under twenty-five galactic-standard hours in a day to do it. There were whole days in which he never thought once of André Dunnan. A hundred and twenty-five days to Graham, and a hundred and twenty-five days back. That had long ago passed. Of course there would be the work of repairing the space scourge, the conferences with the investors in the original Tannath adventure, the business of gathering the needed equipment for the new base. Even so he was beginning to worry a little. Worry about something as far out of his control as the space scourge was useless, he knew. Even Harkeman, usually unperturbable, began to be fretful after two hundred and seventy days had passed. They were relaxing in the living quarters they had fitted out at the top of the spaceport building before retiring, both sprawled, wearily in chairs that had come from one of the better hotels of Eglenceby, their drinks between them on a low table, the top of which was inlaid with something that looked like ivory but wasn't. On the floor beside it laid the plans for a reaction plant and mass energy converter they would build as soon as the space scourge returned with equipment for producing collapseium-plated shielding. Of course we could go ahead with it now, Harkeman said. We could tear enough armor off the lamea 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 might in return. Trask laid his cigar in the ashtray. It had come from President Pedro San Pedro's private office, and splashed a little more brandy into his glass. She'll be coming before long. We have enough of our people aboard to make sure nobody else tries to take the ship, and I really believe now that Vulcan Hain 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. Glaspeth and Diedricksburg could have teamed up and jumped Wardshaven before Duke Angus was ready to invade Glaspeth. Boke 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 space Vikings. Harkeman looked at his half-empty glass, then filled it to the top. It was the same drink he 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. Harkeman, still carrying his drink, went to put it on. It was a man on duty in the control room overhead, reporting that two emergencies had just been detected at twenty light minutes due north of the planet. Harkeman gulped his drink and set down the empty glass. 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 micro-jump 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 Harkeman. Three minutes later the control tower picked up two emergencies at a light second and a half, a thousand or so miles apart. Then the screen flickered and Boke Valkenhayn was looking out of it, from the desk in the newly refurbished command room of the space scourge. He was a newly refurbished Boke Valkenhayn too. His heavily braided captain's jacket looked like the work of one of the better tailors on Graham, and on the breast was a large and ornate night-star of unfamiliar design bearing, among other things, the sword and atom symbol of the House of Ward. Prince Trask, Count Harkeman, he greeted. Space scourge, Tanneth, thirty two hundred hours out of Ward's haven on Graham, barren Valkenhayn commanding, accompanied by chartered freighter Rosenanti, Durendal, Captain Morbes, requesting permission and instructions to orbit in. Barren Valkenhayn, Harkeman asked. That's right, Valkenhayn grinned, and I have a vellum scroll the size of a blanket to prove it. I have a whole cargo of scrolls. One says, your auto, Count Harkeman, and another says your admiral of the Royal Navy of Graham. He did it, Trask cried. He made himself King of Graham. That's right, and you're his trusty and well-loved Lucas, Prince Trask, and viceroy of his Majesty's realm of Tanneth. Harkeman bristled at that. The Gahana you say, this is our realm of Tanneth. Is his Majesty making it worthwhile to accept his sovereignty? Trask asked. That is, beside vellum scrolls. Valkenhayn was still grinning. Wait till we start sending cargo down, and wait till you see what's crammed into the other ship. Did Spasso come back with you? Harkeman asked. Oh, no! Sir Garvin Spasso entered the service of his Majesty, King Angus. He is Chief of Police at Glasbeth now, and nobody can call what he's doing there chicken-stealing, either. And chickens he steals. He steals the whole farm to get them. That didn't sound good. Spasso could make King Angus' name stink all over Glasbeth. Or maybe he'd allow Spasso to crush the adherents of Amfre and then hang him for his oppression of the people. He'd read about somebody who'd done something like that in one of Harkeman's old Terran history books. Baron Rathmore had stayed on Gram, so had Rolf Hemmerding. The rest of the gentlemen adventurers, all with shiny new titles of nobility, had returned. From them, as the two ships were getting into orbit, he'd learned what had happened on Gram since the Nemesis had spaced out. Duke Angus had announced his intention of carrying on with the Tanneth adventure, and had started construction of a new ship at the Gorham Yards. This had served plausibly to explain all the activities of preparation for the invasion of Glasbeth, and had deceived Duke Amfre completely. Amfre had already started a ship of his own. The entire resources of his duchy were thrown into an effort to get her finished, and a space ahead of the one Angus was building. Work was going on frantically on her when the Wardshaven invaders hit Glasbeth. She was now nearing completion as a unit of the Royal Navy. Duke Amfre had managed to escape to Diedricksburg, 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 Hulteclear. The Count of Newhaven, the Duke of Biglarsport, and the Lord of Northport, all of whom had favoured the establishment of a planetary monarchy, had immediately acknowledged Angus as their sovereign. So, with a knife at his throat, had the Duke of Diedricksburg. Many other feudal magnates had refused to surrender their sovereignty. That might mean fighting, but Patrick, now Baron Morland, doubted it. The space-guards 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 Tanneth Adventure. As for accepting King Angus' annexation of Tanneth 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 space-fikings, and until they had adequate industries of their own they would be depended on Gram for many things which could not be gotten by raiding. I suppose the King knows I'm not here from my health, or his profit, he asked Lord Valprie, during one of the screen conversations as the space-scourge was getting into orbit. My business out here is Andrei Dunin. Oh, yes, the words Haven Noble 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 loosight. What Dunin did touched his honor too. Sovereign princes never see any humor in things like that. I suppose he knows that sooner or later Dunin will try to attack Tanneth. 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 Tanneth, and normal space transports for the fifty thousand mile run between planet and satellite. A collapsed matter producer. Now they could collapse him 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 Traskin would have thought about that. The Prince of Tanneth 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 Tanneth. 15. As soon as the space-gurge was unloaded she was put on off planet watch. Harkamon immediately spaced out in the nemesis, while Trask remained behind. It began unloading the Rosinanti after setting her down at Riffington spaceport. After that was done, her officers and crew took a holiday which lasted a month until the nemesis returned. Harkamon 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 trans-shipped to the Rosinanti was manufactured goods which would compete with merchandise produced on Gram. 15. That load will be a calm down after what the space-gurge took back, but we didn't want to send the Rosinanti back empty, he said. One thing, I had time to do a little reading between stops. The books from the Egglandsby Library? Yes, I learned a curious thing about Amaterasu. Do you know why the planet was so extensively colonized by the Federation, when there didn't seem to be any fishnable 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 Harkamon shrugged. Why should they mine it? There's only one thing it's good for, and you can't run a spaceship 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 the gadolinium sells for on the sword-worlds. We could, if we could do business with anybody there, after what we did to Egglandsby in Stalgaland, where would we get plutonium? Why do you think the Beowulfers don't have hyperships when they have everything else? Harkamon 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? Why not? We can make a big profit on both ends of the deal. You know what would happen next, don't you? There'd be ships from both planets all over the place in a few years. We want that like we want a hole in the head. He couldn't see the objection. Tanneth and Amaterasu and Beowulf could work up a very good triangular trade. All three would profit. It wouldn't cost men and ship damage and ammunition, either. Maybe a mutual defense alliance, too. Think about it later. There was too much to do here on Tanneth at present. There had been mines on the moon of Tanneth before the collapse of the Federation. They had been stripped of their equipment afterward while Tanneth was still fighting a rearguard battle against barbarism. But the underground chambers and man-made caverns could still be used, and in time the mines were reopened and the steel mill put in, and eventually ingots of finished steel were coming down by shuttlecraft. In the meantime the shipyard had been laid out and was taking shape. The Graham ship Queen Flavia, she had been the one found unfinished at Glasbeth, came in three months after the Rosinanti started back. She must have been finished while Vulcan Hane was still in hyperspace. She carried considerable cargo. Some of it superfluous, but all of it useful. Everybody was investing in the Tanneth adventure now, and the money had to be spent for something. Better, she brought close to a thousand men and women. The leakage of brains and ability from the sword worlds was turning into a flood. Among them was Basil Gorham. Trask remembered him as an insufferable young twerp, but he seemed to be a good shipyard man. He very frankly predicted that in a few years his father's yards at Wardshaven would be idle, and all the Tanneth ships would be Tanneth built. A junior partner of Lothar Fales also came out, to establish a branch of the bank of Wardshaven at Rivington. As soon as the Queen Flavia had discharged her cargo and passengers, she took on five hundred ground fighters from the Lamea, Nemesis, and Space-Gurge companies, and spaced out on a raiding voyage. While she was gone, the second ship, the one Duke Angus had started at Wardshaven, and King Angus had finished, the black star came in. Trask was slightly incredulous at realizing that she had spaced out from Gram almost exactly two years after the Nemesis had departed. He still hadn't any idea where Andrei Dunin was, or what he was doing, or how to find him. The news of the Gram base on Tanneth spread slowly, first by the scheduled liners and tramp freighters that linked the sword worlds, and then by trading ships and outbound space vikings to the old Federation. Two years and six months after the Nemesis had come out of hyperspace to find Boke, Valkenhayne, and Garvin Spasso on Tanneth, the first independent space viking came in to sell a cargo and get repairs. They bought his loot. He had been raiding some planet rather above the level of Capara and below that of Amaterasu, and healed the wounds his ship had taken getting it. He had been dealing with the Everard family on Hoth, and professed himself much more satisfied with the bargains he had gotten on Tanneth and swore to return. He had never even heard of Andrei Dunin or the Enterprise. It was a Gilgamesher that brought the first news. He had first heard of Gilgameshers, the word was used indiscriminately for a native of, or a ship from, Gilgamesh, on Gram, from Harkamon and Carford and Van Larch and the others. Since coming to Tanneth he had heard about them from every space viking, never in complementary and rarely in printable terms. Gilgamesh was raided with reservations as a civilized planet, though not on a level with Odin or Isis or Baldur or Marduk or Aton, or any of the other worlds which had maintained the culture of the Terran Federation uninterruptedly. Perhaps Gilgamesh deserved more credit. Its people had undergone two centuries of darkness and pulled themselves out of it by their bootstraps. They had recovered all the old techniques, up to and including the hyperdrive. They didn't raid, they traded. They had religious objections to violence, though they kept these within sensible limits and were able and willing to fight with fanatical ferocity in defense of their home planet. About a century before there had been a five-ship viking raid on Gilgamesh. One ship returned and had been sold for scrap after reaching a friendly base. Their ships went everywhere to trade, and wherever they traded a few of them usually settled, and where they settled they made money, sending most of it home. Their societies seemed to be a loose theosocialism, and their religion an absurd potpourri of most of the major monotheisms of the Federation period, plus doctrinal and ritualistic innovations of their own. Aside from their propensity for sharp trading, their bigoted refusal to regard anybody not of their creed as more than half human, and their maze of dietary and other taboos in which they hid from social contact with others, made them generally disliked. After their ship had gotten into orbit, three of them came down to do business. The captain and his exec wore long coats, almost knee-length, butt into the throat, and small white caps, like forage caps. The third, one of their priests, wore a robe with a cowl, and the symbol of their religion, a blue triangle in a white circle on his breast. They all wore beards that hung down from their cheeks, with their chins and upper lips shaved. They all had the same righteous disapproving faces. They all refused refreshments of any sort, and they sat uneasily, as though fearing contamination from the heathens who had sat in their chairs before them. They had a mixed cargo of general merchandise, picked up here and there on sub-civilized planets, in which nobody on Tanneth was interested. They also had some good stuff, vegetable amber and flame-bird plumes from ermine-sule, ivory or something very like it from somewhere else, diamonds and other organic opals and Zarathustra sunstones. They also had some platinum. They wanted machinery, especially contra-gravity engines and robots. The trouble was, they wanted to haggle. Haggling, it seemed, was the Gilgamesh planetary sport. Have you ever heard of a space viking ship named the Enterprise, he asked them, at the seventh or eighth impasse in the bargaining? She bears a crescent, light blue on black. Her captain's name is Andrei Dunin. A ship so named, with such a device, raided Chermosh more than a year ago, the priest Supercargo said. Some of our people tarry on Chermosh to trade. This ship sacked the city in which they were. Some of them lost heavily in world's goods. That's a pity. The Gilgamesh priest shrugged. It is, as Yah, the almighty wills, he said, then brightened slightly. The Chermoshers are heathens and worshippers of false gods. The space vikings looted their temple and destroyed it utterly. They carried away the graven images and abominations. Our people bore witness that there was much wailing and lamentation among the idolaters. So that was the first entry on the big board. It covered, optimistically, the whole of one wall in his office. And for some time that one chalked note about the raid on Chermosh, and the date, as nearly as it could be approximated, looked very lonely on it. The captain of the black star brought back material for a couple more. He had put in on several planets known to be temporarily occupied by space vikings to barter lutes, give his men some time off ship, and make inquiries, and he had names for a couple of planets raided by the blue crescent ship. One was only six months old. The way news filtered about in the old federation that was practically hot off the stove. The owner-captain of the Albarac had something to add, when he brought his ship in six months later. He sipped his drink slowly, as though he had limited himself to one and wanted to make it last as long as possible. Almost two years ago, on Jagannath, he said, the enterprise was on orbit there, getting some light repairs. I met the man a few times. Looks just like those pictures, but he's wearing a small pointed beard now. He sold a lot of loot. General merchandise, precious and semi-precious stones, a lot of carved and inlaid furniture, that looked as though it had come from some Neo-Barbe King's Palace, and some temple stuff. Buddhist! There were a couple of big gold daibutsus. His crew were standing drinks for all comers. Some of them were pretty dark above the collar, as though they had been on a hot-star planet not too long before. And he had a lot of Imhotep furs to sell, simply fabulous stuff. What kind of repairs? Combat damage? That was my impression. He spaced out a little over a hundred hours after I came in, in company with another ship. The Star Hopper, Captain Theodor Von. The talk was that they were making a two-ship raid somewhere. The Captain of the Albarac thought for a moment. One other thing. He was buying ammunition, everything from pistol cartridges to hell-burners. And he was buying all the air and water recycling equipment and all the karniculture and hydroponic equipment he could get. That was something to know. He thanked the Space Viking and then asked, Did he know at the time that I'm out here hunting for him? If he did, nobody else on Jagannath did. I didn't hear about it myself till six months afterward. That evening he played off the recording he had made of the conversation for Harkamun and Valkenhayne and Carford and some of the others. Somebody instantly said, That temple stuff came from Chermosh. They're Buddhist there. That checks with the Gilgamesher story. He got the furs on Imhotep. He traded for them, Harkamun said. Nobody gets anything off Imhotep by raiding. The planet's in the middle of a glaciation. The land surface down to the 50th parallel is iced over solid. There is one city, ten or fifteen thousand, and the rest of the population is scattered around in settlements of a couple of hundred all along the face of the glaciers. They're all hunters and trappers. They have some contragravity, and when a ship comes in they spread the news by radio and everybody brings in his furs to town. They use telescope sites, and everybody over ten years old can hit a man in the head at five hundred yards. And big weapons are no good. They're too well dispersed. So the only way to get anything out of them is to trade for it. I think I know where he was, Alvin Carford said. On Imhotep, silver is a monetary medal. On Agni they use silver for sewer pipe. Agni is a hot-star planet, Class B3 Sun. And on Agni they're tough, and they have good weapons. That could be where the Enterprise took the combat damage. That started an argument as to whether he'd gone to Chermosh first. It was sure that he had gone to Agni and then Imhotep. Goat Kirby tried to figure both courses. It doesn't tell us anything either way, he said at length. Chermosh is a way off to the side from Agni and Imhotep in either case. Well, he does have a base somewhere, and it's not on any Terra-type planet, Val'kenhain said. Otherwise what would he want with all that air and water and hydroponic and karniculture stuff? The old Federation area was full of non-terra-type planets, and why should anybody bother going to any of them? Any planet that wasn't oxygen atmosphere, six to eight thousand miles in diameter, and within a narrow surface temperature range, wasn't worth wasting time on. But a planet like that, if one had the survival equipment, would make a wonderful hideout. What sort of a captain is this Theodor Vaughn, he asked? A good one, Harkman said promptly. He has a nasty streak, sadistic, but he knows his business, and he has a good ship and a well-trained crew. You think he and Dunon have teamed up? Don't you? I think, now that he has a base, Dunon is getting a fleet together. You'll know we're after him by now, Van Larch said, and he knows where we are, and that puts him one up on us. End of Chapter 15, Chapter 16-18 of Space Viking by H. Beam Piper, read by Mark Nelson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. SPACE VIKING, 16 So André Dunon was haunting him again. Tiny bits of information came in. Dunon's ship had been on hoth, on Nergal, selling loot. Now he sold for gold or platinum and bought little, usually arms and ammunition. Apparently his base, wherever it was, was fully self-sufficient. It was certain, too, that Dunon knew he was being hunted. One Space Viking, who had talked with him, quoted him as saying, I don't want any trouble with Trask, and if he's smart he won't look for any with me. This made him all the more positive that somewhere Dunon was building strength for an attack on Tanneth. He made it a rule that there should always be at least two ships in orbit off Tanneth in addition to the Calamia, which was on permanent patrol, and he installed more missile-launching stations both on the moon and on the planet. There were three ships bearing the ward, swords and atom symbol, and a fourth building on Graham. Count Lionel of New Haven was building one of his own, and three big freighters shuttled across three thousand light-years between Tanneth and Graham. Cesar Carval, who had never recovered from his wounds, had died. Lady Lavina had turned the barony and the business over to her brother, Bert Sandreson, and gone to live on Excalibur. The shipyard at Rivington was finished, and now they had built the landing legs of Harkman's Cor-Sandy II and were putting up the skeleton. And they were trading with Amaterasu now. Pedros and Pedro had been overthrown and put to death by General Dagro Ector during the disorders following the looting of Eglandsby. The troops left behind in Stalgaland had mutinied and made common cause with their late enemies. The two nations were in an uneasy alliance with several other nations combining against them, when the nemesis and the space scourge returned and declared peace against the whole planet. There was no fighting. Everybody knew what had happened to Stalgaland and Eglandsby. In the end all the governments of Amaterasu joined in a loose agreement to get the mines reopened and resume production of gadolinium, and to share in the fishnables being imported in exchange. It had been harder and had taken a year longer to do business with Beowulf. The Beowulfers had a single planetary government, and they were inclined to shoot first and negotiate afterward. A natural enough attitude in view of the experiences of the past. However, they had enough old Federation period textbooks still in microprint to know what could be done with gadolinium. They decided to ride off the past as fair fight and no bad blood and start over again. It would be some years before either planet had hyperships of their own. In the meantime both were good customers and rapidly becoming good friends. A number of young Amaterasuans and Beowulfers had come to Tannath to study various technologies. The Tannath locals were studying too. In the first year Trask had gathered the more intelligent boys of ten to twelve from each community and begun teaching them. In the past year he had sent the most intelligent of them off to Graham to school. In another five years they'd be coming home to teach. In the meantime he was bringing teachers to Tannath from Graham. There was a school at Trade Town, and others in some of the larger villages, and at Rivington there was something that could almost be called a college. In another ten years or so Tannath would be able to pretend to the status of civilization. If only Andrei Dunin and his ships didn't come too soon. They would be beaten off, he was confident of that, but the damage Tannath would take in the defense would set back his work for years. He knew all too well what space Viking ships could do to a planet. He'd have to find Dunin's base, smash it, destroy his ships, kill the man himself first. Not to avenge that murder six years ago on Graham, that was long ago and far away, and Delaine was vanished, and so was the Lucas Trask who had loved and lost her. What mattered now was planting and nurturing civilization on Tannath. But where would he find Dunin in two hundred billion cubic light years? Dunin had no such problems. He knew where his enemy was. And Dunin was gathering strength. The yo-yo, Captain Van Humphurt, she had been reported twice, once in company with the Starhopper and once with the Enterprise. She bore a blazin' of a feminine hand dangling a planet by a string from a finger, a good ship and an able, ruthless Captain. The Bolide, she and the Enterprise had made a raid on Ithun. The Gilgameshers had settled there and one of their ships had brought that story in. He recruited two ships at once on Melkarth, and there was a good deal of mirth about that among the Tannath space Vikings. Melkarth was strictly a poultry planet. Its people had sunk to the village peasant level. They had no wealth worth taking or carrying away. It was, however, a place where a ship could be set down. And there were women, and the locals had not lost the art of distillation and made potent liquors. A crew could have fun there much less expensively than on a regular Viking base-planet, and for the last eight years a Captain Nile Burrick of the Fortuna had been occupying it, taking his ship out for occasional quick raids and spending most of the time living from day to day almost on the local level. Once in a while a Gilgamesher would come in to see if he had anything to trade. It was a Gilgamesher who brought the story to Tannath, and it was almost two years old when he told it. We heard it from the people of the planet, the ones who live where Burrick had his base. First there was a trading ship came in. You may have heard of her. She is the one called Honest Horus. Trask laughed at that. Her Captain, Horus Strastroff, called himself Honest Horus, a misnomer which he had also bestowed on his ship. He was a traitor of sorts. Even the Gilgameshers despised him, and not even a Gilgamesher would have taken a wretched craft like the Honest Horus to space. He had been to Melcharth before. The Gilgamesher said, He and Burrick are friends. He pronounced that like a final and damning judgment of both of them. The story the locals told our brethren of the Fair Dealer was that the Honest Horus was landing beside Burrick's ship for ten days when the two ships came in. They said one had the Blue Crescent Badge and the other bore a green monster leaping from one star to another. The Enterprise and the Star Hopper. He wondered why they had gone to a planet like Melcharth. Maybe they knew in advance whom they'd find there. The locals thought they would be fighting, but there was not. There was a great feast of all four crews. Then everything of value was loaded aboard the Fortuna and all four ships lifted and spaced out together. They said Burrick left nothing of any worth whatever behind. They were much disappointed at that. Have any of them been back since? All three Gilgameshers, Captain, Exeq, and Priest, shook their heads. Captain Girash of the Fair Dealer said it had been over a year before his ship put in there. He could still see where the landing legs of the ship had pressed into the ground, but the locals said they had not been back. It made two more ships about which inquiries must be made. He wondered for a moment why in Gehenna Duned would want ships like that. They must make the space scourge and the lamea, as he had first seen them, look like units of the Royal Navy of Excalibur. Then he became frightened, with an irrational retrospective fright at what might have happened. It could have, too, at any time in the last year and a half. Either or both of those ships could have come in on Tanneth completely unsuspected. It was only by the sheerest accident that he had found out even now about them. Everybody else thought it was a huge joke. They thought it would be a bigger joke if Duned sent those ships to Tanneth now when they were warned and ready for them. There were other things to worry about. One was the altering attitude of His Majesty Angus I. When the space scourge returned, the newly titled Baron Valkenhayne had brought with him, along with the princely title and the commission as Viceroy of Tanneth, a most cordial, personal, audio-visual greeting, warm and friendly. Angus had made it seated at his desk, bare-headed, and smoking a cigarette. The one which had come on the next ship out was just as cordial, but the king was not smoking and wore a small, gold-circled cap of maintenance. By the time they had three ships in service on scheduled three-month arrivals a year and a half later he was speaking from his throne, wearing his crown and employing the first-person plural for himself and, finally, the third-person singular for Trask. By the end of the fourth year there was no audio-visual message from him in person and a stiff complaint from Rovard Groffis to the effect that his Majesty felt it unseemly for a subject to address his sovereign while seated, even by audio-visual. This was accompanied by a rather apologetic personal message from Groffis, now Prime Minister, to the effect that his Majesty felt compelled to stand on his royal dignity at all times, and that, after all, there was a difference between the position and dignity of the Duke of Wardshaven and that of the planetary King of Graham. Prince Trask of Tanneth couldn't quite see it. The king was simply the first nobleman of the planet. Even kings like Rodolf of Excalibur or Napoleon of Flambert didn't try to be anything more. Thereafter he addressed his greetings and reports to the Prime Minister, always with a personal message to which Groffis replied in kind. Not only the form but also the content of the messages from Graham underwent change. His Majesty was most dissatisfied. His Majesty was deeply disappointed. His Majesty felt that his Majesty's colonial realm of Tanneth was not contributing sufficiently to the Royal Exchequer. And his Majesty felt that Prince Trask was placing entirely too much emphasis upon trade and not enough upon raiding. After all, why barter with barbarians when it was possible to take what you wanted from them by force? And there was the matter of the Blue Comet, Count Lionel of Newhaven's ship. His Majesty was most displeased that the Count of Newhaven was trading with Tanneth from his own spaceport. All goods from Tanneth should pass through the Wardshaven spaceport. Look, Rovard! He told the audio-visual camera which was recording his reply to Groffis. You saw the space scourge when she came in, didn't you? That's what happens to a ship that raids a planet where there's anything worth taking. Beowulf is lousy with fishnables. They'll give us all the plutonium we can load, in exchange for gadolinium, which we sell them at about twice sword world prices. We trade plutonium on Amaterasu for gadolinium and get it for about half sword world prices. He pressed the stop button until he could remember the ancient formula. You may quote me as saying that whoever has advised his Majesty that that isn't good business is no friend to his Majesty or the realm. As for the complaint about the Blue Comet, as long as she is owned and operated by the Count of Newhaven, who is a stockholder in the Tanneth adventure, she has every right to trade here. He wondered why his Majesty didn't stop Lionel of Newhaven from sending the Blue Comet out from Graeme. He found out from her skipper the next time she came in. He doesn't dare, that's why. He's king as long as the great lords, like Count Lionel and Jorys of Bigler Sport and Allen of Northport, want him to be. Count Lionel has more men and more guns and contragravity than he has now, and that's without the help he'd get from everybody else. Everything's quiet on Graeme now, even the war on South Main Continent stopped. Everybody wants to keep it that way. Even King Angus isn't crazy enough to do anything to start a war. Not yet, anyhow. Not yet. The captain of the Blue Comet, who was one of Count Lionel's vassal barons, was silent for a moment. You ought to know, Prince Trask, he said, Andrei Dunnan's grandmother was the king's mother. Her father was old Baron Zarvis of Blackcliffe. He was what was called an invalid the last twenty years of his life. He was always attended by two male nurses about the size of Otto Harkman. He was also said to be slightly eccentric. The unfortunate grandfather of Duke Angus had always been a subject nice people avoided. The unfortunate grandfather of King Angus was probably a subject everybody who valued their necks avoided. Lothar Fale had also come out on the Blue Comet. He was just as outspoken. I'm not going back. I'm transferring most of the funds of the Bank of Wartshaven out here. From now on, it'll be a branch of the Bank of Tanneth. This is where the business is being done. It's getting impossible to do business at all in Wartshaven. What little business there is to do. Just what's been happening? Well, taxation first. It seems the more money came in from here the higher taxes got on Graham. Discriminatory taxes too. Pinched the small landholder and industrial barons and favored a few big ones, Baron Spasso and his crowd. Baron Spasso now? Bail knotted. Of about half of Glasbeth and a lot of the Glasbeth barons lost their baronies, some of them their heads, after Duke Amfrey was run out. It seems there was a plot against the life of his majesty. It was exposed by the zeal and vigilance of Sir Garvin Spasso, who was elevated to the peerage and rewarded with the lands of the conspirators. You said business was bad, as business? Bail knotted again. The big tanneth boom has busted. It got oversold. Everybody wanted in on it. And they should never have built those two last ships, the speed well and the good hope. The return on them didn't justify it. Then you're creating your own industries and building your own equipment and armament here. That's caused a slump in industry on Graham. I'm glad Levina Carval has enough money invested to live on. And finally the consumer goods market is getting flooded with stuff that's coming in from here and competing with Graham industry. Well, that was understandable. One of the ships that made the shuttle trip to Graham would carry enough in her strong rooms, in gold and jewels and the like, to pay a handsome profit on the voyage. The bulk goods that went into the cargo holds was practically taking a free ride. So anything on hand, stuff that nobody would ordinarily think of shipping an interstellar trade went aboard. A 2,000-foot freighter had a great deal of cargo space. Baron Trask of Traskin hadn't even begun to realize what tanneth base was going to cost Graham. 17. As might be expected, the Beowulfers finished their hyper ship first. They had started with everything but little know-how which had been quickly learned. Amaterasu had had to begin by creating the industry they needed to create the industry they needed to build a ship. The Beowulf ship, she was named Viking's Gift, came in on tanneth five and a half years after the nemesis and the space scourge had raided Beowulf. Her skipper had fought a normal drive ship in that battle. Beside plutonium and radioactive isotopes, she carried a general cargo of the sort of luxury goods unique to Beowulf which could always find a market in interstellar trade. After selling the cargo and depositing the money in the bank of tanneth, the skipper of the Viking's Gift wanted to know where he could find a good planet to raid. They gave him a list, none too tough but all slightly above the chicken-stealing level, and another list of planets he was not to raid, planets with which tanneth was trading. Six months later they learned that he had showed up on Capara, with which they were now trading, and had flooded the market there with plundered textiles, hardware, ceramics, and plastics. He had bought Kregmeat and Hydes. You see what you did now, Harkamon clamored. You thought you were making a customer what you made was a competitor. What I made was an ally. If we ever do find Dunon's planet we'll need a fleet to take it. A couple of Beowulf ships would help. You know them, you fought them too. Harkamon had other worries. While cruising in Coruscandi too, he had come in on Vithar, one of the planets where tanneth ships traded, to find it being raided by a space Viking ship based on Zachiddle. He had fought a short but furious ship action, battering the invader until he was glad to hyper out. Then he had gone directly to Zachiddle, arriving on the heels of the ship he had beaten, and had had it out both with the Captain and Prince Victor, serving them with an ultimatum to leave tanneth trade-planets alone in the future. How did they take it? Trask asked when he returned to report. Just about the way you would have. Victor said his people were space Vikings, not Gilgameshers. I told him we weren't Gilgameshers either, as he'd find out on Zachiddle the next time one of his ships raided one of our planets. Are you going to back me up? Of course you can always send Prince Victor my head with an apology. If I have to send him anything I'll send him a sky full of ships and a planet full of hell-burners. You did perfectly right, Otto, exactly what I'd have done in your place. There the matter rested. There were no more raids by Zachiddle ships on any of their trade-planets. No mention of the incident was made in any of the reports sent back to Graham. The Graham situation was deteriorating rapidly enough. Finally there was an audio-visual message from Angus himself. He was seated on his throne, wearing his crown, and he began speaking from the screen abruptly. We, Angus, King of Graham and Tanneth, are highly displeased with our subject, Lucas, Prince, and Viceroy of Tanneth. We consider ourselves very badly served by Prince Trask. We therefore command him to return to Graham and render to us a count of his administration of our colony and realm of Tanneth. After some hasty preparations, Trask recorded a reply. He was sitting on a throne himself, and wore a crown just as ornate as King Angus, and robes of white and black Imhotep furs. We, Lucas, Prince of Tanneth, he began, are quite willing to acknowledge the suzerainty of the King of Graham, formerly Duke of Wardshaven. It is our earnest desire, if possible, to remain at peace and friendship with the King of Graham, and to carry on trade relations with him and with his subjects. We must, however, reject absolutely any efforts on his part to dictate the internal policies of our realm of Tanneth. It is our earnest hope, dammit, he'd said earnest, he should have thought of some other word. That no act on the part of his majesty the King of Graham will create any breach in the friendship existing between his realm and ours. Three months later the next ship, which had left Graham while King Angus summons was still in hyperspace, brought Baron Rathmore. Shaking hands with him as he left the landing-craft, Trask wanted to know if he'd been sent out as the new Viceroy. Rathmore started to laugh and ended by cursing Vile. No, I've come out to offer my sword to the King of Tanneth, he said. Prince of Tanneth for the time being, Trask corrected. The sword, however, is most acceptable. I take it you've had all of our blessed sovereign you can stomach. Lucas, you have enough ships and men here to take, Graham, Rathmore said. Proclaim yourself King of Tanneth and then lay claim to the throne of Graham, and the whole planet will rise for you. Rathmore had lowered his voice, but even so the open landing stage was no place for this sort of talk. He said so, ordered a couple of the locals to collect Rathmore's luggage and got him into a haul-car, taking him down to his living quarters. After they were in private Rathmore began again. It's more than anybody can stand. There isn't one of the old great nobility he hasn't alienated, or one of the minor barons, the landholders and industrialists, the people who are always the backbone of Graham, and it goes from them down to the common folk. Assessments on the lords, taxes on the people, inflation to meet the taxes, high prices, debased coinage. Everybody's being beggard except this rabble of new lords he has around him, and that slut of a wife and her greedy kinfolk. Trask stiffened. You're not speaking of Queen Flavia, are you? he asked softly. Rathmore's mouth opened slightly. Great Satan, don't you know? No, of course not. The news would have come on the same ship I did. Why, Angus divorced Flavia. He claimed that she was incapable of giving him an heir to the throne. He remarried immediately. The girl's name meant nothing to Trask. He did know of her father, a Baron Valdeva. He was lord of a small estate south of the Wardlands and west of New Haven. Most of his people were out and out bandits and cattle-rustlers, and he was as close to being one himself as he could get. Nice family he's married into. A credit to the dignity of the throne. Yes. You wouldn't know this Lady Demoiselle Evida. She was only seventeen when you left Graham, and hadn't begun to acquire a reputation outside her father's lands. She's made up for lost time since, though, and she has enough uncles and aunts and cousins and ex-lovers and whatnot to fill out an infantry regiment, and every one of them's at court with both hands out to grab everything they can. How does Duke Joris like this? The Duke of Biglarsport was Queen Flavia's brother. I daresay he's less than delighted. He's hiring mercenaries is what he's doing, and buying combat contra-gravity. Lucas, why don't you come back? You have no idea what a reputation you have on Graham now. Everybody would rally to you. He shook his head. I have a throne here on Tanneth. On Graham I want nothing. I'm sorry for the way Angus turned out. I thought he'd make a good king. But since he's made an intolerable king, the lords and people of Graham will have to get rid of him for themselves. I have my own tasks here." Rathmore shrugged. I was afraid that would be it, he said. Well, I offered my sword, I won't take it back. I can help you in what you're doing on Tanneth. The captain of the free, space-viking damn thing was named Roger Fan Morville Esthersan, which meant that he was some sword-worlders acknowledged bastard by a woman of one of the old Federation planets. His mother's people could have been Nurgallers. He had coarse black hair, a mahogany-brown skin, and red-brown almost maroon eyes. He tasted the wine the robot poured for him and expressed appreciation. Then began unwrapping the parcel he had brought in. Something I found while raiding on tetragrammaton, he said. I thought you might like to have it. It was made on Graham. It was an automatic pistol, with a belt and holster. The leather was bisonoid hide. The buckle of the belt was an oval enameled with a crescent, pale blue on black. The pistol was a plain, ten-millimeter military model with grooved plastic grips. On the receiver it bore the stamp of the House of Hoylbar, the firearms manufacturers of Glaspeth. Evidently it was one of the arms Duke Aumfrey had provided for Andre Dunnan's original mercenary company. Tetragrammaton. He glanced over to the big board. There was no previous report from that planet. How long ago? I'd say about three hundred hours. I came from there directly, less than two hundred and fifty hours. Dunnanships had left the planet three days before I got there. That was practically sizzling hot. Well, something like that had to happen sooner or later. The space viking was asking him if he knew what sort of a place Tetragrammaton was. Neo-barbarian, trying to re-civilize in a crude way. Small population concentrated on one continent, farming and fisheries. A little heavy industry, in a small way, at a couple of towns. They had some nuclear power introduced a century or so ago by traders from Marduk, one of the really civilized planets. They still depended on Marduk for fishnables. Their export product was an abominably smelling vegetable oil which furnished the base for delicate perfumes and which nobody was ever able to synthesize properly. I heard they had steel mills in operation now, the half-breed space viking said. It seems that somebody on Rimon has just reinvented the railroad, and they need more steel than they can produce for themselves. I thought I'd raid Tetragrammaton for steel and trade it on Rimon for a load of heaven-tea. When I got there, though, the whole planet was in a mess, not raiding, but plain, wanton destruction. The locals were just digging themselves out of it when I landed. Some of them, who didn't think they had anything at all left to lose, gave me a fight. I captured a few of them to find out what had happened. One of them had that pistol. He said he had taken it off a space viking he'd killed. The ships that raided them were the Enterprise and the Yo-Yo. I knew you'd want to hear about it. I got some of the local stories on tape. Well, thank you. I'll want to hear those tapes. Now, you say you want steel? Well, I haven't any money. That's why I was going to raid Tetragrammaton. Diffelheim with the money your cargo's paid for already. This, he said, touching the pistol, and whatever's on the tapes. They played off the tapes that evening. They weren't particularly informative. The locals who had been interrogated hadn't been in actual contact with Dunn and's people except in combat. The man who had been carrying the ten-millimeter oil-bar was the best witness of the lot, and he knew little. He had caught one of them alone, shot him from behind with a shotgun, taken his pistol, and then gotten away as quickly as he could. They had set down landing-craft, it seemed, and said they wanted to trade. Then something must have happened. Nobody knew what, and they had begun a massacre and sacked the town. After returning to their ships, they had opened fire with nuclear missiles. Sounds like Dunnan, Hugh Rathmore said in disgust. He just went kill crazy. The bad blood of Blackcliff. There are funny things about this, Boke Valkenhayne said. I'd say it was a terror raid. But who in Gehenna was he trying to terrorize? I wondered about that, too, Harkam and Fround. This town where he landed seems, such as it was, to have been the planetary capital. They just landed, pretending friendship, which I can't see why they needed to pretend, and then began looting and massacring. There wasn't anything of real value there. All they took was what the men could carry themselves or stuff into their landing-craft, and they did that because they have what amounts to a religious taboo against landing anywhere and leaving without stealing something. The real loot was at these two other towns, a steel mill and big stocks of steel at one, and all that skunk apple oil at the other. So what did they do? They dropped a five-megaton bomb on each one, and blew both of them to MC Square. That was a terror raid, pure and simple. But as Boke inquires, just who were they terrorizing? If there were big cities somewhere else on the planet, it would figure. But there aren't. They blew out the two biggest cities and all the loot in them. Then they wanted to terrorize somebody off the planet. But nobody heard about it off-planet, somebody protested. The Mardukins would. They trade with Tetragrammaton, the acknowledged bastard of somebody named Morville said. They have a couple of ships a year there. That's right, Trask agreed. Marduk. You mean you think Dunnans trying to terrorize Marduk? Valkenhayne demanded? Great, Satan! Even he isn't crazy enough for that! Baron Rathmore started to say something about what Andre Dunnans was crazy enough to do, and what his uncle was crazy enough to do. It was just one of the cracks he had been making since he'd come to Tannath and didn't have to look over his shoulder while he was making them. I think he is too, Trask said. I think that is exactly what he is doing. Don't ask me why. As Otto is fond of remarking, he's crazy and we aren't, and that gives him an advantage. But what have we gotten since those Gilgameshers told us about his picking up Burik ship and the honest Horus? Until today we've heard nothing from any other space viking. What we have gotten was stories from Gilgameshers about raids on planets where they trade, and every one of them is also a planet where Marduk ships trade. And in every case there has been little or nothing reported about valuable loot taken. The stories are all about wanton and murderous bombings. I think Andrei Dunin is making war on Marduk. Then he's crazier than his grandfather and his uncle BOTH, Rathmore cried. You mean he's making a string of terror raids on their trade planets, hoping to pull the Marduk and Space Navy away from the home planet? Harkamon had stopped being incredulous. And when he gets them all lured away, he'll make a fast raid? That's what I think. Remember our fundamental postulate. Dunin is crazy. Remember how he convinced himself that he was the rightful heir to the ducal crown of Wardshaven? And remember his insane passion for Elaine. He pushed that thought hastily from him. Now he's convinced that he's the greatest space viking in history. He has to do something worthy of that distinction. When was the last time anybody attacked a civilized planet? I don't mean Gilgamesh, I mean a planet like Marduk. A hundred and twenty years ago Prince Havelgar of Holtecler, six ships against Aton, two ships got back, he didn't. Nobody's tried it since, Harkamon said. So Dunin the Great will do it. I hope he tries. He surprised himself by adding, That's provided I find out what happened. Then I could stop thinking about him. There was a time when he had dreaded the possibility that somebody else might kill Dunin before he could. Eighteen. Seashat. Obidicut. Lugaluru. Outomla. The young man elevated by his father's death in the Dunin raid to the post of hereditary president of the Democratic Republic of Tetragrammaton had been sure that the Marduk ships which came to his planet traded also on those. There had been some difficulty about making contact, and the first face-to-face meeting had begun in an atmosphere of bitter distrust on his part. They had met out of doors, around them spread wrecked and burned buildings, and hastily constructed huts and shelters, and wide spaces of charred and slagged rubble. They blew up the steel mill here and the oil refinery at Jansboro. They bombed and strafed the little farm towns and villages. They scattered radioactives that killed as many as the bombing, and after they had gone away this other ship came. The damn thing, she bore the head of a beast with three very big horns. That's the one. They did a little damage at first. When the Captain found out what had happened to us, he left some food and medicines for us. Roger Fenn Morville Estherson hadn't mentioned that. Well, we'd like to help you if we can. Do you have nuclear power? We can give you a little equipment. Just remember it of us when you're back on your feet. We'll be back to trade later. But don't think you owe us anything. The man who did this to you is my enemy. Now, I want to talk to every one of your people who can tell me anything at all. C. Shat was the closest. They went there first. They were too late. C. Shat had had it already, and on the evidence of the radioactivity counters not too long ago. There had been two hell-burners. The cities on which they had fallen were still smoking pits, literally burned into the ground and the bedrock below, at the center of 500-mile radii of slag and lava and scorched earth and burned forests. There had been a planet buster. It had started a major earthquake, and half a dozen thermonuclears. There were probably quite a few survivors. A human planetary population is extremely hard to exterminate completely. But within a century they'd be back to the loincloth and the stone hatchet. We don't even know Dunon did it personally, Patrick Marlin said. For all we know he's down in an airtight cave city on some planet nobody ever heard of, sitting on a golden throne surrounded by a harem. He had begun to suspect that Dunon was doing something of just the sort. The greatest space viking of history would naturally found a space viking empire. An emperor goes out to look his empire over now and then. I don't spend all my time on Tannath. Say we try out Homelin next. It's the farthest away. We might get there while he's still shooting up Obidicut and Lugaluru. Guat! Figure us a jump for it. When the colored turbulence washed away in the screen cleared, out Homla looked like Tannath or Capara or Amaterasu or any other Teratai planet. A big disk brilliant with reflected sunlight and glowing with starlit and moonlit atmosphere on the other. There was a single rather large moon and in the telescopic screen the usual markings of seas and continents and rivers and mountain ranges. But there was nothing to show—oh yes, lights on the darkened side and from the size they must be vast cities. All the available data for out Homla was long out of date. A considerable civilization must have developed in the last half dozen centuries. Another light appeared. A hard blue-white spark that spread into a larger, less brilliant yellow light. At the same time all the alarm devices in the command room went into a pandemonium of jangling and flashing and squawking and howling and shouting. Radiation. Energy release. Contra-gravity distortion effects. Infrared output. A welter of indecipherable radio and communication screen signals. Radar and scanner ray beams from the planet. Trask's fist began hurting. He found that he had been pounding the desk in front of him with it. He stopped it. We caught him! We caught him! He was yelling hoarsely. Full speed in! Continuous acceleration as much as we can stand! We'll worry about deceleration when we're in shooting distance. The planet grew steadily larger. Carford was taking him in his word about continuous acceleration. There'd be a go henna of a bill to pay when they started decelerating. On the planet more bombs were going off just outside atmosphere beyond the sunset line. Ship observed. Altitude about a hundred to five hundred miles. Hundreds, not thousands. Thirty-five degrees north latitude, fifteen degrees west of the sunset line. Ship is under fire. Bomb explosions near her. A voice whooped. Somebody else was yelling that the city lights were really burning cities or burning forests. The first voice, having stopped, broke in again. Ship is visible in telescopic screen just at the sunset line, and there's another ship detected but not visible, somewhere around the equator, and the third one somewhere out of sight. We can just get the fringe of her contragravity field around the planet. That meant there were two sides and a fight, unless Dunnan had picked up a third ship somewhere. The telescopic view shifted. For a moment the planet was completely off screen, and then its curvature came into the screen against a star-scattered background. They were almost into two thousand miles now. Carford was yelling to stop acceleration and trying to put the ship into a spiral orbit. Suddenly they caught a glimpse of one of the ships. She's in trouble. That was Paul Choriff's voice. She's leaking air and water vapor like crazy. Well, is she a good guy or a bad guy? Morland was yelling back, as though Choriff's spectroscopes could distinguish. Choriff ignored that. Another ship making signal, he said. She's the one coming up over the equator. Swordworld impulse code, her communication screen combination, and, and identify yourself. Carford punched out the combination as Choriff furnished it. While Trask was desperately willing his face into immobility, the screen lighted. It wasn't Andre Dunnan. That was a disappointment. It was almost as good though, his henchman, Sir Neville Orm. Well, Sir Neville, a pleasant surprise, he heard himself saying, We last met on the terrace at Carville House, did we not? For once the paper-white face of Andre Dunnan's Amdanay showed expression. But whether it was fear, surprise, shock, hatred, anger, or what combination of them, Trask could know more than guess. Trask! Satan curse you! Then the screen went blank. In the telescopic screen the other ship came on unfalteringly. Paul Choriff, who had gotten more data on mass, engine energy output, and dimensions, was identifying her as the Enterprise. Well, go for her! Give her everything! They didn't need the order. Van Larch was speaking rapidly into his handphone, and Alvin Carford was hurling his voice all over the nemesis, warning of sudden deceleration and direction change. And while he was speaking, things in the command room began sliding. In the telescopic screen the other ship was plainly visible. He could see the oval patch of black with the blue crescent, and in his screen Dunnan would be seeing the sword-impaled skull of the nemesis. If only he could be sure Dunnan was there to see it. If it had only been Dunnan's face instead of arms that he had seen in the screen. As it was he couldn't be sure, and if one of the missiles that were already going out made a lucky hit he might never be sure. He didn't care who killed Dunnan or how. All he wanted was to know that Dunnan's death had set him free from a self-assumed obligation that was now meaningless to him. The Enterprise launched counter missiles, so did the nemesis. There were momentarily unbearable flashes of pure energy, and from them globes of incandescence spread and vanished. Something must have gotten through. Red lights flashed on the damage board. It had been something heavy enough even to jolt the huge mass of the nemesis. At the same time the other ship took a hit from something that would have vaporized her had she not been armored in Collapsium. Then, as they passed close together, guns hammered back and forth along with missiles. And then the Enterprise was out of sight, around the horizon. Another ship, the size of Otto Harkman's Coruscanti too, was approaching. She bore a tapering, red-nailed, feminine hand dangling a planet by a string. They rushed toward each other, planting a garden of evanescent fire-flowers between them. They pounded one another with guns, and then they sped apart. At the same time Paul Korref was picking up an impulse code signal from the third crippled ship. A screen combination. Trass punched it out as he received it. A man in space armor was looking out from the screen. That was bad if they had to suit up in the command room. They still had air. His helmet was off, but it was attached and hinged back. On his breastplate was a device of a dragon-like beast perched with his tail around a planet and a crown above. He had a thin, high-cheeked face with a vertical wrinkle between his eyes and a clipped, blonde mustache. Who are you, stranger? You're fighting my enemies. Does that make you a friend? I'm a friend of anybody who owns Andre Dunn and his enemy. Sword-world ship Nemesis. I'm Prince Lucas Trask of Tanneth, commanding. Royal Mardukon ship Victrix. The thin-faced man gave a rye laugh. Not been living up to her name so well. I'm Prince Simon Bintrick, commanding. Are you still battle-worthy? We can fire about half our guns. We still have a few missiles left. Seventy percent of the ship's sealed off, and we've been holed in a dozen places. We have power enough for Lyft and some steering-way. We can't make a lateral way except at the expense of Lyft, which made the Victrix practically a stationary target. He yelled over his shoulder at Carford to cut speed all he could without tearing things apart. When that cripple comes into view, start circling around her. Get into a tight circle above her. He turned back to the man in the screen. If we can get ourselves slowed down enough, we'll do all we can to cover you. All you can is all you can. Thank you, Prince Trask. Here comes the Enterprise, Carford shouted, with obscenely blasphemous embellishments. She hairpinned on us. Well, do something about her. Van Larch was already doing it. The Enterprise had taken damage in the last exchange. Korov spectroscopes showed her haloed with air and water vapor. Her instruments would be getting the very same story from the Nemesis. Wedged-shaped segments, extending six to eight decks in, were sealed off in several places. The only thing that could be seen with certainty was the blaze of mutually destroying missiles between. The short-range gun-duel began and ended as they passed. In the screen he had seen a fat, round-nosed thing come up from the Victrix, curving far out ahead of the passing Enterprise. She was almost out of sight around the planet when she ran head-on into it, and vanished in an awesome blaze. For a moment he thought she had been destroyed. Then she lurched into sight and went around the curvature of Outuma. Trask and the Marduken were shaking hands with themselves at each other in their screens. Everybody in the Nemesis Command Room was screaming, Well shot, Victrix! Well shot! Then the yo-yo was coming around again, and Van Larch was saying, Gahena with this fooling around! I'll fix the expurgated unprintability. He yelled orders, a jumble of code letters and numbers, and things began going out. Most of them blew up in space. Then the yo-yo blew up, very quietly, as things do where there is no air to carry shock and sound waves, but very brilliantly. There was brief daylight all over the night-side of the planet. That was our planet-buster, Larch said. I don't know what we'll use on Dunon. I didn't know we had one, Trask admitted. Otto had a couple built on Beowulf. The Beowulfers are good nuclear weaponaires. The Enterprise came back hastily to see what had blown up. Larch put off another entertainment of small stuff, with a 50-megaton thermonuclear view screen piloted among them. It had its own arsenal of small missiles, and it got through. In the telescopic screen a jagged hole was visible just below the equator of the Enterprise, the edges curling outward. Something, possibly a heavy missile in an open tube ready for launching, had gone off inside her. What the inside of the ship was like, or how many of her company were still alive, was hard to guess. There were some, and her launchers were still spewing out missiles. They were intercepted and blew up. The hull of the Enterprise bulked huge in the guidance screen of the missile and filled it. The jagged crater that had obliterated the bottom of Dunon's blue crescent blazin' spread to fill the whole screen. The screen went milky white as the pickup went off. All the other screens blazed briefly until their filters went on. Even afterward they glared like the cloud-veiled sun of Graham at high noon. Finally when the light intensity had dropped and the filters went off, there was nothing left of the Enterprise but an orange haze. Somebody, Patrick Barenmoreland, he saw, was pounding him on the back and screaming inarticulately in his ear. A dozen space-armored officers, with planet-perched dragons on their breasts, were crowding beside Prince Bintrick in the screen from the Victrix, whooping like drunken bisonoid herders on payday night. I wonder, he said, almost inaudibly, if I'll ever know if André Dunon was on that ship. End of Chapter 18