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Valkanhayn was aghast, probably at the idea of burning an unlooted city. Spasso was sputtering something about, "... Teach the dirty Neobarbs a lesson " Koreff told him he was switched on. He picked up a hand-phone. "Space Vikings Nemesis and Space Scourge, calling the city of Eglonsby. Space Vikings...." He repeated it for over a minute; there was no reply. "Vann," he called Guns-and-Missiles.
The four seaports from whence the Stolgonian invasion of Eglonsby was to have been launched were neutralized by nuclear bombing. Neutralized was a nice word, Trask thought; there was no echo in it of the screams of the still-living, maimed and burned and blinded, around the fringes of ground-zero.
Eglonsby espionage in Stolgoland was similarly active. The Stolgonian armies were being massed at four seaports on the coast facing Eglonsby, and there was a frantic gathering of every sort of ship available. By this time, any sympathy that Trask might have felt for either party had evaporated. The invasion of Stolgoland started the fifth morning after their arrival over Eglonsby.
It will be nothing but plain self-defense," he added righteously. "The oligarchic capitalists of Stolgoland have been plotting to attack us for years." "Yes. If you had carried out your original intention of looting Eglonsby, they would have invaded us the moment your ships lifted out. It's exactly what I'd do in their place." "But you maintain nominally friendly relations with them?" "Of course.
"We are prepared to resist, but we realize what this would cost in lives and destruction of property," he began. "You don't begin to. Do you know anything about nuclear weapons?" "From history; we have no nuclear power of any sort. We can find no fissionables on this planet." "The cost, as you put it, would be everything and everybody in Eglonsby and for a radius of almost a hundred miles.
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.
The only unfiltered screen aboard the Nemesis was the one tuned to the falling missile. The city of Eglonsby rushed upward in it, and then it went suddenly dark. There was an orange-yellow blaze in the other screens. After a while, the filters went off and the telescopic screen went on again. He picked up the phone. "Space Vikings calling Eglonsby; this is your last warning. Communicate at once."
The Nemesis and the Space Scourge, from landing craft and from the ships themselves, landed Eglonsby troops on Stolgonopolis. While they were sacking the city, with all the usual atrocities, the Space Vikings were loading the gold, and anything else that was of more than ordinary value, aboard the ships.
Into this Otto Harkaman vanished, with half a dozen men and a contragravity scow. Its historical section would be much poorer in the future. President Pedrosan Pedro was on the radio from Stolgonopolis that night. "Is this how you Space Vikings keep faith?" he demanded indignantly. "You've abandoned me and my army here in Stolgoland, and you're sacking Eglonsby.
When the Stolgonian embassy was seized by the Space Vikings, the ambassador asked to be taken at once to their leader. He had a proposition: If the Space Vikings would completely disable the army of Eglonsby and admit Stolgonian troops when they were ready to leave, the invaders would bring with them ten thousand kilos of gold. Trask affected to be very hospitable to the offer.
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