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Updated: June 27, 2025
Suddenly he realized that it was the poor devils of locals whom Valkanhayn and Spasso had enslaved. Elaine went away quickly. "Have your fill of Space Viking glamour, Lucas?" He turned. It was Baron Rathmore, who had come along to serve for a year or so and then hitch a ride home from some base planet and cash in politically on having been with Lucas Trask. "For the moment.
"I think we'll put one of our own people in his place. Valkanhayn can stay in command of the Space Scourge; he's a spaceman. But Spasso's no good for anything." The local problem was complicated, too. The locals spoke Lingua Terra of a sort, like every descendant of the race that had gone out from the Sol system in the Third Century, but it was a barely comprehensible sort.
"And a steel mill, and a collapsed-matter plant. And robotic-equipment works, and " "Oh, that's out of all reason!" Valkanhayn cried. "It would take twenty trips with a ship the size of this one to get all that stuff here, and how'd we ever be able to pay for it?" "That's the sort of base Duke Angus of Wardshaven planned.
"They have a couple of ships a year there." "That's right," Trask agreed. "Marduk." "You mean, you think Dunnan's trying to terrorize Marduk?" Valkanhayn demanded. "Great Satan, even he isn't crazy enough for that!" Baron Rathmore started to say something about what Andray Dunnan was crazy enough to do, and what his uncle was crazy enough to do.
I don't think it would be wise to mention Beowulf to Captains Spasso and Valkanhayn. Wait till we've hit Khepera and Amaterasu. They may be feeling like heroes, then." Khepera left a bad taste in Trask's mouth. He was still tasting it when the colored turbulence died out of the screen and left the gray nothingness of hyperspace.
If we had the cargo Dunnan took to space in the Enterprise, we could start a base like that. But we haven't anything near what we need, and you know what Spasso and Valkanhayn have." "We can get it from Gram. As it stands, the investors in the Tanith Adventure, from Duke Angus down, lost everything they put into it.
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.
"But then, this Duke of Wardshaven will be running it, not us," Valkanhayn objected. "The Duke of Wardshaven," Harkaman reminded him, "is on Gram. We are here on Tanith. There are three thousand light-years between." That seemed a satisfactory answer. Spasso, however, wanted to know who would run things here on Tanith. "We'll have to hold a meeting of all three crews," he began.
Boake Valkanhayn would command her on the voyage to and from Gram. Since Beowulf, Trask had not only ceased to dislike the man, but was beginning to admire him. He had been a good man once, before ill fortune which had been only partly of his own making had overtaken him. He'd just let himself go and stopped caring. Now he had taken hold of himself again.
The car in which he had been riding had been hit several times, and one of the gunners was bleeding under his helmet and didn't seem aware of it. When he got to the command room, he found Boake Valkanhayn, his face drawn and weary, getting coffee from a robot and lacing it with brandy. "That's it," he said, blowing on the steaming cup.
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