The _Lamia_'s detection picked them up as soon as they were out of
the last microjump; Trask'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
Alvyn Karffard 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 Rivvin; 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 Tradetown 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 Khepera locals had called them kreggs, 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 Traskon
watched them anxiously, and the ship's doctor, acting veterinarian,
made elaborate tests of vegetation they would be likely to eat.
Three of the cows proved to be with calf; these were isolated and
watched over with especial solicitude.
[Illustration]
The locals were inclined to take a poor view of the kreggs, 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 pinnace
berth 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 Gorram's on Gram. And that was where the work
would be done.
Boake Valkanhayn 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 partly of his own making had overtaken
him. He'd 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
valor of ignorance. But he had gone in, and fought his ship well,
and had held his station over the fissionables 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.
Garvan Spasso wasn't, and never would be. He was outraged when he
heard that Valkanhayn 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 Joyeuse or Excalibur and buy himself a lordship
with it."
"Oh, I doubt that, Garvan. A number of our people are going
along--Guatt Kirbey will be the astrogator; you'd trust him,
wouldn't you? And Sir Paytrik Morland, and Baron Rathmore, and
Lord Valpry, and Rolve Hemmerding...." 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. Then we'll 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 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
Omfray of Glaspyth. Then, of course, he could be contacted to sell
Omfray out to Angus. A couple of times around and somebody'll stick
a knife in him, and then we'll be rid of him for good."
* * * * *
They loaded the _Space Scourge_ with gold from Stolgoland, and
paintings and statues from the art museums and fabrics and furs and
jewels and porcelains and plate from the markets of Eglonsby. They
loaded sacks and kegs of specie from Khepera. Most of the Khepera
loot wasn't worth hauling to Gram, but it was far enough in advance
of their own technologies to be priceless to the Tanith locals.
Some of these were learning simple machine operations, and a few
were able to handle contragravity 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 Tradetown borrowed some to train his own
army. Some genius in the machine shop altered a matchlock musket
to flintlock and showed the local gunsmiths how to do it.
The kreggs continued to thrive, after the _Space Scourge_ departed.
Several calves were born, and seemed to be doing well; the biochemistry
of Tanith and Khepera were safely alike. Trask had hopes for them.
Every Viking ship had its own carniculture vats, but men tired of
carniculture meat, and fresh meat was always in demand. Some day,
he hoped, kregg-beef would be an item of sale to ships putting in
on Tanith, and the long-haired hides might even find a market in
the Sword-Worlds. They had contragravity scows plying between
Rivington and Tradetown regularly, now, and air-lorries were linking
the villages. The boatmen of Tradetown 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 Andray Dunnan.
A hundred and twenty-five days to Gram, and a hundred and
twenty-five days back. They had long ago passed. Of course, there
would be the work of repairing the _Space Scourge_, the conferences
with the investors in the original Tanith 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. He couldn't
help it, though. Even Harkaman, usually imperturbable, 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 Eglonsby,
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 lay the plans for a reaction-plant and mass-energy
converter they would build as soon as the _Space Scourge_ returned
with equipment for producing collapsium-plated shielding.
"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 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 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 Space Vikings."
Harkaman looked at his half-empty glass, 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 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 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 _Space 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. "_Space 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 Spasso come back with you?" Harkaman asked.
"Oh, no. Sir Garvan Spasso entered the service of his Majesty, King
Angus. He is Chief of Police at Glaspyth, now, and nobody 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. Spasso could make King Angus' name stink all
over Glaspyth. Or maybe he'd allow Spasso 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 titles of
nobility, had returned. From them, as the two ships were getting
into orbit, he learned what had happened on Gram since the _Nemesis_
had spaced 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 space ahead of the one Angus was
building. Work was going on frantically on her when the Wardshaven
invaders hit 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 _Space 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
Space 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 _Space Scourge_ was getting into orbit.
"My business out here is Andray Dunnan."
"Oh, yes," the Wardshaven 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 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-space 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.