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Roboticians, machine-supervisors, programmers, a couple of engineers, a foreman. There was grudging agreement from the others. Burt Sandrasan's engine-works had lost almost as many, of the same kind. Even Lothar Ffayle admitted to losing a computerman and a guard-sergeant. And after they were gone, the farms and ranches and factories would go on, almost but not quite as before.
Then Harkaman and Rathmore and Valkanhayn and Lothar Ffayle and the others were crowding up behind, and more people were coming off the pinnace, and Prince Bentrik was trying to embrace both his wife and his son at the same time. "Prince Trask." He started at the voice, and was looking into deep blue eyes under coal-black hair.
I have too much to do to stay here and argue." Lothar Ffayle evidently did intend to stay and argue. "All you're saying, Lucas, is that we're expanding. You want us to sit here and build up population pressure like Terra in the First Century?" "With three and a half billion people spread out on twelve planets? They had that many on Terra alone. And it took us eight centuries to reach that."
Again, he could feel the mellow sun of Gram on his back, and hear the laughing voices on the lower terrace, and he was talking to Lothar Ffayle and Rovard Grauffis and Alex Gorram and Cousin Nikkolay and Otto Harkaman. He said: "And finally, nobody bothers fixing anything up. And the power-reactors stop, and nobody seems to be able to get them started again.
Gun ammunition, ship's missiles, and a lot of ground-defense missiles." "What was he buying them with? Trading machinery?" "No. Gold." "Yes. Lothar Ffayle found out that a lot of gold was transferred to Dunnan from banks in Glaspyth and Didreksburg," Grauffis said. "He got that aboard when he took the ship, evidently." "All right," Trask said.
People like Nikky Gratham and Tobbin of Nergal and the Everrards of Hoth get nervous around unpredictable dangers, and when they get nervous they get trigger-happy." He puffed slowly on his pipe and then said: "Then you'll be going back to Gram." "That doesn't follow; just because Valkanhayn and Ravallo and that crowd are wrong doesn't make Valpry and Rathmore and Ffayle right.
"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.
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?"
By this time, the big room in which they were meeting had become a babel of voices, everybody trying to convince everybody else that they'd known it all along. Then the Back-To-Gram party received its coup-de-grace; Lothar Ffayle, to whom the emissaries of Duke Joris had looked for their strongest support, went over.
It was a completely trivial and irrelevant claim, but the story was that it would be supported by King Konrad of Haulteclere. Immediately, Baron Rathmore, Lord Valpry, Lothar Ffayle and the other Gram people began clamoring that he should go back with a fleet and seize the throne for himself. Harkaman, Valkanhayn, Karffard and the other Space Vikings were as vehement against it.
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