So Andray Dunnan was haunting him again. Tiny bits of information
came in--Dunnan'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 Dunnan 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 Dunnan was building strength for an attack on Tanith.
He made it a rule that there should always be at least two ships in
orbit off Tanith in addition to the _Lamia_, 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 Gram. Count Lionel of Newhaven was building
one of his own, and three big freighters shuttled across the three
thousand light-years between Tanith and Gram. Sesar Karvall, who had
never recovered from his wounds, had died; Lady Lavina had turned
the barony and the business over to her brother, Burt Sandrasan,
and gone to live on Excalibur. The shipyard at Rivington was
finished, and now they had built the landing-legs of Harkaman's
_Corisande II_, and were putting up the skeleton.
And they were trading with Amaterasu, now. Pedrosan Pedro had been
overthrown and put to death by General Dagró Ector during the
disorders following the looting of Eglonsby; the troops left behind
in Stolgoland 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
Stolgoland and Eglonsby. 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 fissionables
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 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 write 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 Tanith to study various technologies.
The Tanith 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 Gram to school. In another
five years, they'd be coming home to teach; in the meantime, he
was bringing teachers to Tanith from Gram. There was a school
at Tradetown, 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, Tanith would be able to
pretend to the status of civilization.
* * * * *
If only Andray Dunnan and his ships didn't come too soon. They would
be beaten off, he was confident of that; but the damage Tanith 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 Dunnan's base, smash it, destroy his ships, kill the man
himself, first. Not to avenge that murder six years ago on Gram;
that was long ago and far away, and Elaine was vanished, and so was
the Lucas Trask who had loved and lost her. What mattered now was
planting and nurturing civilization on Tanith.
But where would he find Dunnan, in two hundred billion cubic
light-years? Dunnan had no such problem. He knew where his enemy was.
And Dunnan was gathering strength. The _Yo-Yo_, Captain Vann
Humfort; she had been reported twice, once in company with the
_Starhopper_, and once with the _Enterprise_. She bore a blazon of
a feminine hand dangling a planet by a string from one finger; a
good ship, and an able, ruthless captain. The _Bolide_; she and the
_Enterprise_ had made a raid on Ithunn. The Gilgameshers had settled
there and one of their ships had brought that story in.
And he recruited two ships at once on Melkarth, and there was a good
deal of mirth about that among the Tanith 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 Nial Burrik, 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 Tanith, 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
Burrik had his base. First, there was a trading ship came in. You
may have heard of her; she is the one called the _Honest Horris_."
Trask laughed at that. Her captain, Horris Sasstroff, called himself
"Honest Horris," a misnomer which he had also bestowed on his ship.
He was a trader of sorts. Even the Gilgameshers despised him, and
not even a Gilgamesher would have taken a wretched craft like the
_Honest Horris_ to space.
"He had been to Melkarth before," the Gilgamesher said. "He and
Burrik are friends." He pronounced that like a final and damning
judgment of both of them. "The story the locals told our brethren
of the _Fairdealer_ was that the _Honest Horris_ was landed beside
Burrik's ship for ten days, when two other 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 _Starhopper_. He wondered why they'd gone
to a planet like Melkarth. Maybe they knew in advance whom they'd
find there.
"The locals thought there 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 Burrik left nothing of any worth
whatever behind; they were much disappointed at that."
"Have any of them been back since?"
All three Gilgameshers, captain, exec, and priest, shook their heads.
"Captain Gurrash of the _Fairdealer_ said it had been over a year
before his ship put in there. He could still see where the landing
legs of the ships had pressed into the ground, but the locals said
they had not been back."
That made two more ships about which inquiries must be made. He
wondered, for a moment, why in Gehenna Dunnan would want ships like
that; they must make the _Space Scourge_ and the _Lamia_ 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 Tanith 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 Dunnan sent those ships to Tanith 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 Valkanhayn brought with him, along with the princely title and the
commission as Viceroy of Tanith, a most cordial personal audiovisual
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 audiovisual message
from him in person, and a stiff complaint from Rovard Grauffis to the
effect that His Majesty felt it unseemly for a subject to address his
sovereign while seated, even by audiovisual. This was accompanied by a
rather apologetic personal message from Grauffis--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 Gram.
Prince Trask of Tanith couldn't quite see it. The King was simply
the first nobleman of the planet. Even kings like Rodolf of Excalibur
or Napolyon of Flamberge 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 Grauffis replied in kind.
Not only the form but also the content of the messages from Gram
underwent change. His Majesty was most dissatisfied. His Majesty was
deeply disappointed. His Majesty felt that His Majesty's colonial
realm of Tanith 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 Tanith from his own spaceport. All goods
from Tanith should pass through the Wardshaven spaceport.
"Look, Rovard," he told the audiovisual camera which was recording
his reply to Grauffis. "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
fissionables; 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 to 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 Tanith 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 Gram. 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 Joris of Bigglersport and Alan 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 Gram now, even the war on
Southmain Continent's 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. "Andray Dunnan's
grandmother was the King's mother. Her father was old Baron Zarvas
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 Harkaman. 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 Ffayle 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 Wardshaven out here; from now on, it'll be a branch of the Bank
of Tanith. This is where the business is being done. It's getting
impossible to do business at all in Wardshaven. 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 Gram. Discriminatory taxes, too; pinched the
small landholding and industrial barons and favored a few big ones.
Baron Spasso and his crowd."
"Baron Spasso, now?"
Ffayle nodded. "Of about half of Glaspyth. A lot of the Glaspyth
barons lost their baronies--some of them their heads--after Duke
Omfray 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 Garvan
Spasso, who was elevated to the peerage and rewarded with the lands
of the conspirators."
"You said business was bad, as business?"
Ffayle nodded again. "The big Tanith boom has busted. It got
oversold; everybody wanted in on it. And they should never have
built those two last ships, the _Speedwell_ and the _Goodhope_;
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 Gram. I'm glad Lavina Karvall
has enough money invested to live on. And finally, the consumers'
goods market is getting flooded with stuff that's coming in from
here and competing with Gram industry."
Well, that was understandable. One of the ships that made the
shuttle-trip to Gram 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 in interstellar trade, went aboard. A two thousand
foot freighter had a great deal of cargo space.
Baron Trask of Traskon hadn't even begun to realise what Tanith base
was going to cost Gram.
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