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If it's occupied, we can knock it off on the way in." "A lot of captains would try to come out with the moon masked off by the planet," Harkaman said. "Would you?" The big man shook his tousled head. "No. If they have launchers on the moon, they could launch at us in a curve around the planet, by data relayed from the other side, and we'd be at a disadvantage replying. Just go straight in.
Other columns of black smoke began rising across the countryside on both sides of the river. "You know, these people are civilized, if you don't limit the term to contragravity and nuclear energy," Harkaman said. "They have gunpowder, for one thing, and I can think of some rather impressive Old Terran civilizations that didn't have that much.
"I suppose it's silly to ask if you're paying these people anything for the work they do or for the things you take from them," Harkaman said. From the way the Space Scourge and Lamia people laughed, it evidently was. Harkaman shrugged. "Well, it's your planet. Make any kind of a mess out of it you want to." "You think we ought to pay them?" Spasso was incredulous. "Damn bunch of savages!"
"Crazy men who pretend to thrones are bombs that ought to be deactivated, before they blow things up." "We couldn't do that," Grauffis said. "After all, he's Duke Angus' nephew " "I could do it," Harkaman said. "He only has three hundred men in this company of his. Why you people ever let him recruit them Satan only knows," he parenthesized. "I have eight hundred; five hundred ground-fighters.
But Harkaman, he was sure, could have furnished hundreds of instances, on scores of planets and over ten centuries of time, in which people had done exactly that and hadn't known what they were doing, even after it was too late. "They have something about like that on Aton," one of the Mardukan officers said. "Oh, Aton; that's a dictatorship, pure and simple.
He picked up his cane and used it to push himself to his feet. The broken leg had mended, but he was still weak. He took a few tottering steps, paused to lean on the cane, and then forced himself on to the open window and stood for a moment staring out. Then he turned. "Captain Harkaman, it might be that you could still get a command, here on Gram.
"Do you think he went to Tanith?" Harkaman heaved himself out of his chair and prowled about the room for a few minutes, then came back and sat down again. "No. That was Duke Angus' idea, not his. He couldn't put in a base on Tanith, anyhow. You know the kind of a crew he has."
The doctors, who had recently been urging him to find new interests and activities, were now warning of the dangers of overexertion. Harkaman finally added his voice to theirs. "You take it easy, Lucas." They had dropped formality and were on a first-name basis now. "You got hulled pretty badly; you let damage-control work on you, and don't strain the machinery till it's fixed.
Harkaman had the loss of the other Corisande on Durendal to remember, and the others wanted no part in Sword-World squabbles, and there was renewed agitation that he should start calling himself King of Tanith. He refused to do either, which left both parties dissatisfied. So partisan politics had finally come to Tanith. Maybe that was another milestone of progress.
All the furniture was handmade, cunningly pegged together and highly polished. On the walls hung trophies of weapons thrusting-spears and throwing-spears, crossbows and quarrels, and a number of heavy guns, crude things, but carefully made. "Pick all this stuff up off the locals?" Harkaman asked. "Yes, we got most of it at a big town down at the forks of the river," Valkanhayn said.
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