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and were putting up the skeleton.
And they were trading with Amaterasu, now. Pedrosan Pedro had been overthrown
and put to death by General Dagro Ector during the disorders following the
looting of Eglonsby; the troops left behind in Stolgoland had mutinied and
made common cause with their late enemies. The two nations were in an uneasy
alliance, with several other nations combining against them, when the Nemesis
and the Space Scourge returned and declared peace against the whole planet.
There was no fighting; everybody knew what had happened to Stolgoland and
Eglonsby. In the end, all
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the governments of Amaterasu joined in a loose agreement to get the mines
reopened and resume production of gadolinium, and to share in the fissionables
being imported in exchange.
It had been harder, and had taken a year longer, to do business with Beowulf.
The Beowulfers had a single planetary government, and they were inclined to
shoot first and negotiate afterward, a natural enough attitude in view of
experiences of the past. However, they had enough old Federation period
textbooks still in microprint to know what could be done with gadolinium. They
decided to write off the past as fair fight and no bad blood, and start over
again.
It would be some years before either planet had hyperships of their own. In
the meantime, both were good customers, and rapidly becoming good friends. A
number of young Amaterasuans and Beowulfers had come to Tanith to study
various technologies.
The Tanith locals were studying, too. In the first year, Trask had gathered
the more intelligent boys of ten to twelve from each community and begun
teaching them. In the past year, he had sent the most intelligent of them off
to Gram to school. In another five years, they'd be coming home to teach; in
the meantime, he was bringing teachers to Tanith from Gram. There was a school
at Tradetown, and others in some of the larger villages, and at Rivington
there was something that could almost be called a college. In another ten
years or so, Tanith would be able to pretend to the status of civilization.
If only Andray Dunnan and his ships didn't come too soon. They would be beaten
off, he was confident of that, but the damage Tanith would take, in the
defence, would set back his work for years. He knew all too well what Space
Viking ships could do to a planet. He'd have to find Dunnan's base, smash it,
destroy his ships, kill. the man himself, first. Not to avenge that murder six
years ago on Gram; that was long ago and far away, and Elaine was vanished,
and so was the Lucas Trask who had loved and lost her. What mattered now was
planting and nurturing civilization on Tanith.
But where would he find Dunnan, in two hundred billion
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cubic light-years? Dunnan had no such problem. He knew where his enemy was.
And Dunnan was gathering strength. The Yo-Yo, Captain Vann Hurnfort; she had
been reported twice, once in company with the Starhopper, and once with the
Enterprise. L She bore a blazon of a feminine hand dangling a planet by a
string from one finger; a good ship, and an able, ruthless captain. The
Bolide, she and the Enterprise had made a raid on Ithunn. The Gilgameshers had
settled there and one of their ships had brought that story in.
And he recruited two ships at once on Melkarth, and there was a good deal of
mirth about that among the Tanith Space Vikings.
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Melkarth was strictly a poultry planet. Its people had sunk to the
village-peasant level; they had no wealth worth taking or carrying away. It
was however, a place where a ship could be set down, and there were women, and
the locals had not lost the art of distillation, and made potent liquors. A
crew could have fun there, much less expensively than on a regular Viking base
planet, and for the last eight years a Captain Nial Burrik, of the Fortuna,
had been occupying it, taking his ship out for occasional quick raids and
spending most of the time living from day to day almost on the local level.
Once in a while, a Cilgamesher would come in to see if he had anything to
trade. It was a Gilgamesher who brought the story to Tanith, and it was almost
two ` years old when he told it.
"We heard it from the people of the planet, the ones who live where Burrik had
his base. First, there was a trading ship came in. You may have heard of her;
she is the one called the Honest Horris."
Trask laughed at that. Her captain, Horris Sasstroff, called himself "Honest
Horris," a misnomer which -be had also bestowed on his ship. He was a trader
of sorts. Even the Gilgameshers despised him, and not even a Gilgamesher would
have taken a wretched craft like the Honest Horris to space.
"He had been to Melkarth before," the Gilgamesher said. "He and Burrik are
friends." He pronounced that like a final ` and damning judgment of both of
them. "The story the locals
97
told our brethren of the Fairdealer was that the Honest Horris was landed
beside Burrik's ship for ten days, when two other ships came in. They said one
had the blue crescent badge, and the ° other bore a green monster leaping from
one star to another."
The Enterprise and the Starhopper. He wondered why they'd gone to a planet
like Melkarth. Maybe they knew in advance whom they'd find there.
"The locals thought there would be fighting, but there was not. There was a
great feast, of all four crews. Then everything of value was loaded aboard the
Fortuna, and all four ships lifted and spaced out together. They said Burrik
left nothing of any worth whatever behind; they were much disappointed at
that."
"Have any of them been back since?"
All three Gilgameshers, captain, exec. and priest, shook their heads.
"Captain Gurrash of the Fairdealer said it had been over a year before his
ship put in there. He could still see where the landing-legs of the ships had [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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