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"I think I know where he was," Alvyn Karffard said. "On Imhotep, silver is a monetary metal. On Agni, they use silver for sewer-pipe. Agni is a hot-star planet, class B-3 sun. And on Agni they are tough, and they have good weapons. That could be where the Enterprise took that combat damage." That started an argument as to whether he'd gone to Chermosh first.

Well, maybe it did; a lot of Ministers and almost all the Counselors spent most of their time worrying about what people on planets like Chermosh and Zarathustra and Deirdre and Quetzalcoatl might think, in ignorance of the fact that interest in Empire politics varied inversely as the square of the distance to Odin and the level of corruption and inefficiency of the local government.

That evening, he played off the recording he had made of the conversation for Harkaman and Valkanhayn and Karffard and some of the others. Somebody instantly said: "That temple stuff came from Chermosh. They're Buddhists, there. That checks with the Gilgamesher's story." "He got the furs on Imhotep; he traded for them," Harkaman said. "Nobody gets anything off Imhotep by raiding.

"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 Andray Dunnan." "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.

It was sure that he had gone to Agni and then Imhotep. Guatt Kirbey tried to figure both courses. "It doesn't tell us anything, either way," he said at length. "Chermosh is away 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," Valkanhayn said.

Our people bore witness that there was much wailing and lamentation among the idolators." 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.