Chapter 10

It took Valkanhayn and Spasso more time and argument to convince their crews than Trask thought necessary. Harkaman seemed satisfied, and so was Baron Rathmore, the Wardshaven politician.

“It’s like talking a lot of uncommitted small landholders into taking somebody’s livery-and-maintenance,” the latter said. “You can’t use too much pressure; make them think it’s their own idea.”

There were meetings of both crews, with heated arguments; Baron Rathmore made frequent speeches, while Lord Trask of Tanith and Admiral Harkaman--the titles were Rathmore’s suggestion--remained loftily aloof. On both ships, everybody owned everything in common, which meant that nobody owned anything. They had taken over Tanith on the same basis of diffused ownership, and nobody in either crew was quite stupid enough to think that they could do anything with the planet by themselves. By joining the Nemesis, it appeared that they were getting something for nothing. In the end, they voted to place themselves under the authority of Lord Trask and Admiral Harkaman. After all, Tanith would be a feudal lordship, and the three ships together a fleet.

Admiral Harkaman’s first act of authority was to order a general inspection of fleet units. He wasn’t shocked by the condition of the two ships, but that was only because he had expected much worse. They were spaceworthy; after all, they had gotten here from Hoth under their own power. They were only combat-worthy if the combat weren’t too severe. His original estimate that the Nemesis could have knocked both of them to pieces was, if anything, over-conservative. The engines were only in fair shape, and the armament was bad.

“We aren’t going to spend our time sitting here on Tanith,” he told the two captains. “This planet is a raiding base, and ‘raiding’ is the operative word. And we are not going to raid easy planets. A planet that can be raided with impunity isn’t worth the time it takes getting to it. We are going to have to fight on every planet we hit, and I am not going to jeopardize the lives of the men under me, which includes your crews as well as mine, because of under-powered and under-armed ships.”

Spasso tried to argue. “We’ve been getting along.”

Harkaman cursed. “Yes. I know how you’ve been getting along; chicken-stealing on planets like Set and Xipototec and Melkarth. Not making enough to cover maintenance expenses; that’s why your ship’s in the shape she is. Well, those days are over. Both ships ought to have a full overhaul, but we’ll have to skip that till we have a shipyard of our own. But I will insist, at least, that your guns and launchers are in order. And your detection equipment; you didn’t get a fix on the Nemesis till we were less than twenty thousand miles off-planet.”

“We had better get the Lamia in condition first,” Trask said. “We can put her on off-planet watch, instead of that pair of pinnaces.”

Work on the Lamia started the next day, and considerable friction-heat was generated between her officers and the engineers sent over from the Nemesis. Baron Rathmore went aboard, and came back laughing.

“You know how that ship’s run?” he asked. “There’s a sort of soviet of officers; chief engineer, exec, guns-and-missiles, astrogator and so on. Spasso’s just an animated ventriloquist’s dummy. I talked to all of them. None of them can pin me down to anything, but they think we’re going to heave Spasso out of command and appoint one of them, and each one thinks he’ll be it. I don’t know how long that’ll last, it’s a string-and-tape job like the one we’re having to do on the ship. It’ll hold till we get something better.”

“We’ll have to get rid of Spasso,” Harkaman agreed. “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. On civilized planets, the language had been frozen unalterably in microbooks and voice tapes. But microbooks can only be read and sound tapes heard with the aid of electricity, and Tanith had lost that long ago.

Most of the people Spasso and Valkanhayn had kidnaped and enslaved came from villages within a radius of five hundred miles. About half of them wanted to be repatriated; they were given gifts of knives, tools, blankets, and bits of metal which seemed to be the chief standard of value and medium of exchange, and shipped home. Finding their proper villages was not easy. At each such village, the news was spread that the Space Vikings would hereafter pay for what they received.