Space Viking

  VI

  Grauffis excused himself to make a screen call and then returned toexcuse himself again. Evidently Duke Angus had dropped whatever hewas doing as soon as he heard what his henchman had to tell him.Harkaman was silent until after he was out of the room, then said:

  "Lord Trask, this is a wonderful thing for me. It's not beenpleasant to be a shipless captain living on strangers' bounty.I'd hate, though, to have you think, some time, that I'd advancedmy own fortunes at the expense of yours."

  "Don't worry about that. If anybody's being taken advantage of,you are. I need a space-captain, and your misfortune is my owngood luck."

  Harkaman started to pack tobacco into his pipe. "Have you ever beenoff Gram, at all?" he asked.

  "A few years at the University of Camelot, on Excalibur. Otherwise, no."

  "Well, have you any conception of the sort of thing you're settingyourself to?" The Space Viking snapped his lighter and puffed."You know, of course, how big the Old Federation is. You know thefigures, that is, but do they mean anything to you? I know theydon't to a good many spacemen, even. We talk glibly about ten to thehundredth power, but emotionally we still count, 'One, Two, Three,Many.' A ship in hyperspace logs about a light-year an hour. Youcan go from here to Excalibur in thirty hours. But you could senda radio message announcing the birth of a son, and he'd be a fatherbefore it was received. The Old Federation, where you're going tohunt Dunnan, occupies a space-volume of two hundred billion cubiclight-years. And you're hunting for one ship and one man in that.How are you going to do it, Lord Trask?"

  "I haven't started thinking about how; all I know is that I have todo it. There are planets in the Old Federation where Space Vikingscome and go; raid-and-trade bases, like the one Duke Angus plannedto establish on Tanith. At one or another of them, I'll pick up wordof Dunnan, sooner or later."

  "We'll hear where he was a year ago, and by the time we get there,he'll be gone for a year and a half to two years. We've been raidingthe Old Federation for over three hundred years, Lord Trask. At present,I'd say there are at least two hundred Space Viking ships in operation.Why haven't we raided it bare long ago? Well, that's the answer:distance and voyage-time. You know, Dunnan could die of old age--whichis not a usual cause of death among Space Vikings--before you caught upwith him. And your youngest ship's-boy could die of old age before hefound out about it."

  "Well, I can go on hunting for him till I die, then. There's nothingelse that means anything to me."

  "I thought it was something like that. I won't be with you, all yourlife. I want a ship of my own, like the _Corisande_, that I lost onDurendal. Some day, I'll have one. But till you can command your ownship, I'll command her for you. That's a promise."

  Some note of ceremony seemed indicated. Summoning a robot, he had itpour wine for them, and they pledged each other.

  Rovard Grauffis had recovered his aplomb by the time he returnedaccompanied by the Duke. If Angus had ever lost his, he gave noindication of it. The effect on everybody else was literally seismic.The generally accepted view was that Lord Trask's reason had beenunhinged by his tragic loss; there might, he conceded, be more thana crumb of truth in that. At first, his cousin Nikkolay raged at himfor alienating the barony from the family, and then he learned thatDuke Angus was appointing him vicar-baron and giving him TraskonNew House for his residence. Immediately he began acting like oneat the death-bed of a rich grandmother. The Wardshaven financialand industrial barons, whom he had known only distantly, on theother hand, came flocking around him, offering assistance andhailing him as the savior of the duchy. Duke Angus' credit, almostobliterated by the loss of the _Enterprise_, was firmlyre-established, and theirs with it.

  There were conferences at which lawyers and bankers arguedinterminably; he attended a few at first, found himself completelyuninterested, and told everybody so. All he wanted was a ship; thebest ship possible, as soon as possible. Alex Gorram had been thefirst to be notified; he had commenced work on the unfinishedsister-ship of the _Enterprise_ immediately. Until he was strongenough to go to the shipyard himself, he watched the work on thetwo-thousand-foot globular skeleton by screen, and conferred eitherin person or by screen with engineers and shipyard executives. Hisrooms at the ducal palace were converted, almost overnight, fromsickrooms to offices. The doctors, who had recently been urginghim to find new interests and activities, were now warning of thedangers of overexertion. Harkaman finally added his voice to theirs.

  "You take it easy, Lucas." They had dropped formality and wereon a first-name basis now. "You got hulled pretty badly; you letdamage-control work on you, and don't strain the machinery tillit's fixed. We have plenty of time. We're not going to get anywherechasing Dunnan. The only way we can catch him is by interception.The longer he moves around in the Old Federation before he hearswe're after him, the more of a trail he'll leave. Once we canestablish a predictable pattern, we'll have a chance. Then, sometime, he'll come out of hyperspace somewhere and find us waitingfor him."

  "Do you think he went to Tanith?"

  Harkaman heaved himself out of his chair and prowled about the roomfor a few minutes, then came back and sat down again.

  "No. That was Duke Angus' idea, not his. He couldn't put in a baseon Tanith, anyhow. You know the kind of a crew he has."

  There had been an extensive inquiry into Dunnan's associates andaccomplices; Duke Angus was still hoping for positive proof toimplicate Omfray of Glaspyth in the piracy. Dunnan had with hima dozen and a half employees of the Gorram shipyards whom he hadcorrupted. There was some technical ability among them, but for themost part they were agitators and trouble-makers and incompetentworkmen. Even under the circumstances, Alex Gorram was glad to seethe last of them. As for Dunnan's own mercenary company, there wereabout a score of former spacemen among them; the rest graded downfrom bandits through thugs and sneak-thieves to barroom bums.Dunnan himself was an astrogator, not an engineer.

  "That gang aren't even good enough for routine raiding," Harkamansaid. "They'd never under any circumstances be able to put in a baseon Tanith. Unless Dunnan's completely crazy, which I doubt, he's goneto some regular Viking base planet, like Hoth or Nergal or Dagon orXochitl, to recruit officers and engineers and able spacemen."

  "All that machinery and robotic equipment and so on that was goingto Tanith--was that aboard when he took the ship?"

  "Yes, and that's another reason why he'd go to some planet like Hothor Nergal or Xochitl. On a Viking-occupied planet in the OldFederation, that stuff's almost worth its weight in gold."

  "What's Tanith like?"

  "Almost completely Terra-type, third of a Class-G sun. Very muchlike Haulteclere or Flamberge. It was one of the last planets theFederation colonized before the Big War. Nobody knows what happened,exactly. There wasn't any interstellar war; at least, you don't findany big slag-puddles where cities used to be. They probably dida lot of fighting among themselves, after they got out of theFederation. There's still some traces of combat-damage around. Thenthey started to decivilize, down to the pre-mechanical level--windand water power and animal power. They have draft-animals that looklike introduced Terran carabaos, and a few small sailboats and bigcanoes and bateaux on the rivers. They have gunpowder, which seemsto be the last thing any people lose.

  "I was there, five years ago. I liked Tanith for a base. There's onemoon, almost solid nickel iron, and fissionable-ore deposits. Then,like a fool, I hired out to the Elmersans on Durendal and lost myship. When I came here, your Duke was thinking about Xipototec. Iconvinced him that Tanith was a better planet for his purpose."

  "Dunnan might go there, at that. He might think he was scoring oneon Duke Angus. After all, he has all that equipment."

  "And nobody to use it. If I were Dunnan, I'd go to Nergal, orXochitl. There are always a couple of thousand Space Vikings oneither, spending their loot and taking it easy between raids. Hecould sign on a full crew on either. I suggest we go to Xochitl,first. We might pick up news of him, if nothing else."

 
* * * * *

  All right, they'd try Xochitl first. Harkaman knew the planet,and was friendly with the Haulteclere noble who ruled it.

  The work went on at the Gorram shipyard; it had taken a yearto build the _Enterprise_, but the steel-mills and engine-workswere over the preparatory work of tooling up, and material andequipment was flowing in a steady stream. Lucas let them persuadehim to take more rest, and day by day grew stronger. Soon he wasspending most of his time at the shipyard, watching the enginesgo in--Abbot lift-and-drive for normal space, Dillingham hyperdrive,power-converters, pseudograv, all at the center of the globular ship.

  Living quarters and workshops went in next, all armored incollapsium-plated steel. Then the ship lifted out to an orbit athousand miles off-planet, followed by swarms of armored work-craftand cargo-lighters; the rest of the work was more easily done inspace. At the same time, the four two-hundred-foot pinnaces thatwould be carried aboard were being finished. Each of them had itsown hyperdrive engines, and could travel as far and as fast asthe ship herself.

  Otto Harkaman was beginning to be distressed because the ship stilllacked a name. He didn't like having to speak of her as "her," or"the ship," and there were many things soon to go on that should bename-marked. _Elaine_, Trask thought, at once, and almost at oncerejected it. He didn't want her name associated with the thingsthat ship would do in the Old Federation. _Revenge_, _Avenger_,_Retribution_, _Vendetta_; none appealed to him. A news-commentator,turgidly eloquent about the nemesis which the criminal Dunnan hadinvoked against himself, supplied it, _Nemesis_ it was.

  Now he was studying his new profession of interstellar robbery andmurder against which he had once inveighed. Otto Harkaman's handfulof followers became his teachers. Vann Larch, guns-and-missiles,who was also a painter; Guatt Kirbey, sour and pessimistic, thehyperspatial astrogator who tried to express his science in music;Sharll Renner, the normal-space astrogator. Alvyn Karffard, theexec, who had been with Harkaman longest of all. And Sir PaytrikMorland, a local recruit, formerly guard-captain to Count Lionelof Newhaven, who commanded the ground-fighters and the combatcontragravity. They were using the farms and villages of Traskonfor drill and practice, and he noticed that while the _Nemesis_would carry only five hundred ground and air fighters, over athousand were being trained.

  He commented to Rovard Grauffis.

  "Yes. Don't mention it outside," the Duke's henchman said. "You andSir Paytrik and Captain Harkaman will pick the five hundred best.The Duke will take the rest into his service. Some of these days,Omfray of Glaspyth will find out what a Space Viking raid is reallylike."

  And Duke Angus would tax his new subjects of Glaspyth to redeemthe pledges on his new barony of Traskon. Some old Pre-Atomic writerHarkaman was fond of quoting had said, "Gold will not always getyou good soldiers, but good soldiers can get you gold."

  * * * * *

  The _Nemesis_ came back to the Gorram yards and settled onto hercurved landing legs like a monstrous spider. The _Enterprise_ hadborne the Ward sword and atom-symbol; the _Nemesis_ should bear hisown badge, but the bisonoid head, tawny on green, of Traskon, was nolonger his. He chose a skull impaled on an upright sword, and it wasblazoned on the ship when he and Harkaman took her out for hershakedown cruise.

  When they landed again at the Gorram yards, two hundred hours later,they learned that a tramp freighter from Morglay had come intoBigglersport in their absence with news of Andray Dunnan. Hercaptain had come to Wardshaven at Duke Angus' urgent invitationand was waiting for them at the Ducal Palace.

  They sat, a dozen of them, around a table in the Duke's privateapartments. The freighter captain, a small, precise man with agraying beard, alternately puffed at a cigarette and sipped froma beaker of brandy.

  "I spaced out from Morglay two hundred hours ago," he was saying. "I'dbeen there twelve local days, three hundred Galactic Standard hours,and the run from Curtana was three hundred and twenty. This ship,the _Enterprise_, spaced out from there several days before I did.I'd say she's twelve hundred hours out of Windsor, on Curtana, now."

  The room was still. The breeze fluttered curtains at the openwindows; from the garden below, winged night-things twittered.

  "I never expected it," Harkaman said. "I thought he'd take the shipout to the Old Federation at once." He poured wine for himself. "Ofcourse, Dunnan's crazy. A crazy man has an advantage, sometimes,like a left-handed knife-fighter. He does unexpected things."

  "That wasn't such a crazy move," Rovard Grauffis said. "We have verylittle direct trade with Curtana. It's only an accident we heardabout this when we did."

  The freighter captain's beaker was half empty. He filled it to thebrim from the decanter.

  "She was the first Gram ship there for years," he agreed. "Thatattracted notice, of course. And his having the blazonry changed,from the sword and atom-symbol to the blue crescent. And theill-feeling on the part of other captains and planet-side employersabout the men he'd lured away from them."

  "How many men and what kind?"

  The man with the gray beard shrugged. "I was too busy getting acargo together for Morglay, to pay much attention. Almost a fullspaceship complement, officers and spacemen of every kind. And alot of industrial engineers and technicians."

  "Then he is going to use that equipment that was aboard, and put ina base somewhere," somebody said.

  "If he left Curtana twelve hundred hours ago, he's still inhyperspace," Guatt Kirbey said. "It's over two thousand from Curtanato the nearest Old Federation planet."

  "How far to Tanith?" Duke Angus asked. "I'm sure that's where he'sgone. He'd expect me to finish the other ship and equip her like the_Enterprise_ and send her out; he'd want to get there first."

  "I'd thought that Tanith would be the last place he'd go," Harkamansaid, "but this changes the whole outlook. He could have gone to Tanith."

  "He's crazy, and you're trying to apply sane logic to him," GuattKirbey said. "You're figuring what you'd do, and you aren't crazy.Of course, I've had my doubts, at times, but--"

  "Yes, he's crazy, and Captain Harkaman's allowing for that," RovardGrauffis said. "Dunnan hates all of us. He hates his Grace, here.He hates Lord Lucas, and Sesar Karvall; of course, he may thinkhe killed both of them. He hates Captain Harkaman. So how couldhe score all of us off at once? By taking Tanith."

  "You say he was buying supplies and ammunition?"

  "That's right. Gun ammunition, ship's missiles, and a lot ofground-defense missiles."

  "What was he buying them with? Trading machinery?"

  "No. Gold."

  "Yes. Lothar Ffayle found out that a lot of gold was transferred toDunnan from banks in Glaspyth and Didreksburg," Grauffis said. "Hegot that aboard when he took the ship, evidently."

  "All right," Trask said. "We can't be sure of anything, but we havesome reasons for thinking he went to Tanith, and that's more thanwe have for any other planet in the Old Federation. I won't try toestimate the odds against our finding him there, but they're a gooddeal bigger anywhere else. We'll go there, first."