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things around and leave some of Valkanhayn's men in place of some of Spasso's.
We might even talk Spasso - into going along. That'll mean having to endure
him at our table, but it would be wise."
"Have you picked a place to raid?"
"Three of them. First, Khepera. That's only thirty lightyears from here. That
won't amount to much; just chicken stealing. It'll give our green hands some
relatively safe combat-training, and it'll give us some idea of how Spasso's
and Valkanhayn's people behave, and give them confidence for the next job."'
"And then?" "
Amaterasu. My information about Amaterasu is about twenty years old. A lot of
things can happen in twenty years. As I know of it-I was never there
myself-it's fairly civilized. About like Terra just before the beginning of
the
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Atomic Era. No nuclear energy, they lost that, and of course nothing beyond
it, but they have hydro-electric and solar-electric power, and non-nuclear jet
aircraft, and some very good chemical-explosive weapons, which they use very
freely on each other. It was last known to have been raided by a ship from
Excalibur twenty years ago."
"That sounds promising. And the third planet?"
"Beowulf. We won't take enough damage on Amaterasu to make any difference
there, but if we saved Amaterasu for last, we might be needing too many
repairs."
"It's like that?"
"Yes. They have nuclear energy. I don't think it would be a wise to mention
Beowulf to Captains Spasso and Valkanhayn. Wait till we've hit Khepera and
Amaterasu. They may be feeling like heroes, then.
IV
KHEPERA LEFT A bad taste in his mouth. He was still tasting it when the
colored turbulence died out of the screen and left the gray nothingness of
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hyperspace. Garvan Spasso- - they had had no trouble in inducing him to come
along was staring avidly at the screen as though he could still see the
ravished planet they had left.
"That was a good one; that was a good one!" he was crowing. He'd said that a
dozen times since they had lifted out. "Three cities in five days, and all the
stuff we gathered up around them. We took over two million stellars."
And did ten times as much damage getting it, and there was no scale of values
by which to compute the death and suffering.
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"Knock it off, Spasso. You said that before."
There was a time when he wouldn't have spoken to the - fellow, or anybody
else, like that. Gresham's law, extended: Bad manners drive out good manners.
Spasso turned on him indignantly.
"Who do you think you are . . . ?" t
"He thinks be's Lord Trask of Tanith," Harkaman said. "He's right, too; he
is." He looked searchingly at Trask for
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a moment, then turned back to Spasso. "I'm just as tired as he is of hearing
you pop your mouth about a lousy two million stellars. Nearer a million and a
half, but two million's nothing to pop about. Maybe it would be for the Lamia,
but we have a three-ship fleet and a planetary base to meet expenses on. Out
of this raid, a ground-fighter or an able spaceman will get a hundred and
fifty stellars. We'll get about a thousand, ourselves. How long do you think
we can stay in business doing this kind of chicken-stealing."
"You call this chicken-stealing?"
"I call it chicken-stealing, and so'll you before we get back to Tanith. If
you live that long."
For a moment, Spasso was still affronted. Then, temporarily, his vulpine face
showed avaricious hope, and then apprehension. Evidently he knew Otto
Harkaman's reputation, and some of the things Harkaman had done weren't his
idea of an easy way to make money.
Khepera had been easy; the locals hadn't had anything to fight with.
Small arms, and light cannon which hadn't been able to fire more than a few
rounds. Wherever they bad attempted resistance, the combat-cars had swooped
in, dropping bombs and firing machine guns and auto-cannon. Yet they had
fought, bitterly and hopelessly-just as he would have, defending Traskon.
He busied himself getting coffee and a cigarette from one of the robots. When
he looked up, Spasso had gone away, and Harkaman was sitting on the edge of
the desk, loading his short pipe.
"Well, you saw the elephant, Lucas," he said. "You don't seem to have liked
it."
"Elephant?"
"Old Terran expression I read somewhere. All I know is that an elephant was an
animal about the size of one of your Gram megatheres. The expression means,
experiencing something for the first time which makes a great impression.
Elephants must have been something to see. This was your first Viking raid.
You've seen it, now."
He'd been in combat before; he'd led the fighting-men of Traskon during the
boundary dispute with Baron Manniwel and there were always bandits and
cattle-rustlers. He'd
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Thought it would be like that. He remembered, five days, or was it five ages,
ago, his excited anticipation as the city grew and spread in the screen and
the Nemesis came dropping down toward it. The pinnaces, his four and the two
from the Space-Scourge, had gone spirling out a hundred miles beyond the city;
the Space-Scourge had gone into a tighter circle twenty miles from its center;
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the Nemesis had continued her relentless descent until she was ten miles from
the ground, before she began spewing out landing craft, and combat cars, and
the little egg-shaped one-man air cavalry mounts. It had been thrilling.
Everything had gone perfectly; not even Valkanhayn's gang had goofed.
Then the screen-views had begun coming in. The brief and hopeless fight in the
city. He could still see that silly little field-gun, it must have been around
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