"Is his Majesty making it worth while to accept his sovereignty?" Trask asked. "That is, beside vellum scrolls?"
Valkanhayn was still grinning. "Wait till we start sending cargo down. And wait till you see what's crammed into the other ship."
"Did Spasso come back with you?" Harkaman asked.
"Oh, no. Sir Garvan Spasso entered the service of his Majesty, King Angus. He is Chief of Police at Glaspyth, now, and nobody can call what he's doing there chicken-stealing, either. Any chickens he steals, he steals the whole farm to get them."
That didn't sound good. Spasso could make King Angus' name stink all over Glaspyth. Or maybe he'd allow Spasso to crush the adherents of Omfray, and then hang him for his oppression of the people. He'd read about somebody who'd done something like that, in one of Harkaman's Old Terran history books.
Baron Rathmore had stayed on Gram; so had Rolve Hemmerding. The rest of the gentlemen-adventurers, all with shiny new titles of nobility, had returned. From them, as the two ships were getting into orbit, he learned what had happened on Gram since the Nemesis had spaced out.
Duke Angus had announced his intention of carrying on with the Tanith Adventure, and had started construction of a new ship at the Gorram yards. This had served plausibly to explain all the activities of preparation for the invasion of Glaspyth, and had deceived Duke Omfray completely. Omfray had already started a ship of his own; the entire resources of his duchy were thrown into an effort to get her finished and to space ahead of the one Angus was building. Work was going on frantically on her when the Wardshaven invaders hit Glaspyth; she was now nearing completion as a unit of the Royal Navy. Duke Omfray had managed to escape to Didreksburg; when Angus' troops moved in on the latter duchy, he had escaped again, this time off-planet. He was now eating the bitter bread of exile at the court of his wife's uncle, the King of Haulteclere.
The Count of Newhaven, the Duke of Bigglersport, and the Lord of Northport, all of whom had favored the establishment of a planetary monarchy, had immediately acknowledged Angus as their sovereign. So, with a knife at his throat, had the Duke of Didreksburg. Many other feudal magnates had refused to surrender their sovereignty. That might mean fighting, but Paytrik, now Baron, Morland, doubted it.
"The Space Scourge stopped that," he said. "When they heard about the base here, and saw what we'd shipped to Gram, they started changing their minds. Only subjects of King Angus will be allowed to invest in the Tanith Adventure."
As for accepting King Angus' annexation of Tanith and accepting his sovereignty, that would also be advisable. They would need a Sword World outlet for the loot they took or obtained by barter from other Space Vikings, and until they had adequate industries of their own, they would be dependent on Gram for many things which could not be gotten by raiding.
"I suppose the King knows I'm not out here for my health, or his profit?" he asked Lord Valpry, during one of the screen conversations as the Space Scourge was getting into orbit. "My business out here is Andray Dunnan."
"Oh, yes," the Wardshaven noble replied. "In fact, he told me, in so many words, that he would be most happy if you sent him his nephew's head in a block of lucite. What Dunnan did touched his honor, too. Sovereign princes never see any humor in things like that."
"I suppose he knows that sooner or later Dunnan will try to attack Tanith?"
"If he doesn't, it isn't because I didn't tell him often enough. When you see the defense armament we're bringing, you'll think he does."
It was impressive, but nothing to the engineering and industrial equipment. Mining robots for use on the iron Moon of Tanith, and normal-space transports for the fifty thousand mile run between planet and satellite. A collapsed-matter producer; now they could collapsium-plate their own shielding. A small, fully robotic, steel mill that could be set up and operated on the satellite. Industrial robots, and machinery to make machinery. And, best of all, two hundred engineers and highly skilled technicians.
Quite a few industrial baronies on Gram would realize, before long, what they had lost in those men. He wondered what Lord Trask of Traskon would have thought about that.
The Prince of Tanith was no longer interested in what happened to Gram. Maybe, if things prospered for the next century or so, his successors would be ruling Gram by viceroy from Tanith.
XV
As soon as the Space Scourge was unloaded, she was put on off-planet watch; Harkaman immediately spaced out in the Nemesis, while Trask remained behind. They began unloading the Rozinante, after setting her down at Rivington Spaceport. After that was done, her officers and crew took a holiday which lasted a month, until the Nemesis returned. Harkaman must have made quick raids on half a dozen planets. None of the cargo he brought back was spectacularly valuable, and he dismissed the whole thing as chicken-stealing, but he had lost some men and the ship showed a few fresh scars. A good deal of what was transshipped to the Rozinante was manufactured goods which would compete with merchandise produced on Gram.
"That load will be a come-down, after what the Space Scourge took back, but we didn't want to send the Rozinante back empty," he said. "One thing, I had time to do a little reading, between stops."
"The books from the Eglonsby library?"
"Yes. I learned a curious thing about Amaterasu. Do you know why that planet was so extensively colonized by the Federation, when there don't seem to be any fissionable ores? The planet produced gadolinium."
Gadolinium was essential to hyperdrive engines; the engines of a ship the size of the Nemesis required fifty pounds of it. On the Sword-Worlds, it was worth several times its weight in gold. If they still mined it, Amaterasu would repay a second visit.
When he mentioned it, Harkaman shrugged. "Why should they mine it? There's only one thing it's good for, and you can't run a spaceship on Diesel oil. I suppose the mines could be reopened, and new refineries built, but...."
"We could trade plutonium for gadolinium. They have none of their own. We could charge our own prices for it, and we wouldn't need to tell them what gadolinium sells for on the Sword-Worlds."
"We could, if we could do business with anybody there, after what we did to Eglonsby and Stolgoland. Where would we get plutonium?"
"Why do you think the Beowulfers don't have hyperships, when they have everything else?"
Harkaman snapped his fingers. "By Satan, that's it!" Then he looked at Trask in alarm. "Hey, you're not thinking of selling Amaterasu plutonium and Beowulf gadolinium, are you?"
"Why not? We could make a big profit on both ends of the deal."
"You know what would happen next, don't you? There'd be ships from both planets all over the place in a few years. We want that like we want a hole in the head."
He couldn't see the objection. Tanith and Amaterasu and Beowulf could work up a very good triangular trade; all three would profit. It wouldn't cost men and ship-damage and ammunition, either. Maybe a mutual defense alliance, too. Think about it later; there was too much to do here on Tanith at present.
There had been mines on the Moon of Tanith before the collapse of the Federation; they had been stripped of their equipment afterward, while Tanith was still fighting a rearguard battle against barbarism, but the underground chambers and man-made caverns could still be used, and in time the mines were reopened and the steel mill put in, and eventually ingots of finished steel were coming down by shuttle-craft. In the meantime, the shipyard had been laid out and was taking shape.