Space Viking

by H. Beam Piper

  IX

  That was just about the situation. Spasso and Valkanhayn and some oftheir officers met them on the landing stage of the big building inthe middle of the spaceport, where they had established quarters.Entering and going down a long hallway, they passed a dozen men andwomen gathering up rubbish from the floor with shovels and withtheir hands and putting it into a lifter-skid. Both sexes woreshapeless garments of coarse cloth, like ponchos, and flat-soledsandals. Watching them was another local in a kilt, buskins and aleather jerkin; he wore a short sword on his belt and carried awickedly thonged whip. He also wore a Space Viking combat helmet,painted with the device of Spasso's _Lamia_. He bowed as theyapproached, putting a hand to his forehead. After they had passed,they could hear him shouting at the others, and the sound of whip-blows.

  You make slaves out of people, and some will always be slave-drivers;they will bow to you, and then take it out on the others. Harkaman'snose was twitching as though he had a bit of rotten fish caught inhis mustache.

  "We have about eight hundred of them. There were only three hundredthat were any good for work here; we gathered the rest up at villagesalong the big river," Spasso was saying.

  "How do you get food for them?" Harkaman asked. "Or don't you bother?"

  "Oh, we gather that up all over," Valkanhayn told him. "We sendparties out with landing craft. They'll let down on a village, runthe locals out, gather up what's around and bring it here. Once ina while they put up a fight, but the best they have is a few crossbowsand some muzzle-loading muskets. When they do, we burn the villageand machine-gun everybody we see."

  "That's the stuff," Harkaman approved. "If the cow doesn't want tobe milked, just shoot her. Of course, you don't get much milk out ofher again, but--"

  The room to which their hosts guided them was at the far end of thehall. It had probably been a conference room or something of thesort, and originally it had been paneled, but the paneling had longago vanished. Holes had been dug here and there in the walls, and heremembered having noticed that the door was gone and the metalgroove in which it had slid had been pried out.

  There was a big table in the middle, and chairs and couches coveredwith colored spreads. All the furniture was handmade, cunninglypegged together and highly polished. On the walls hung trophies ofweapons--thrusting-spears and throwing-spears, crossbows and quarrels,and a number of heavy guns, crude things, but carefully made.

  "Pick all this stuff up off the locals?" Harkaman asked.

  "Yes, we got most of it at a big town down at the forks of theriver," Valkanhayn said. "We shook it down a couple of times. That'swhere we recruited the fellows we're using to boss the workers."

  Then he picked up a stick with a leather-covered knob and beat on agong, bawling for wine. A voice, somewhere, replied, "Yes, master; Icome!" and in a few moments a woman entered carrying a jug in eitherhand. She was wearing a blue bathrobe several sizes too large forher, instead of the poncho things the slaves in the hallway wore.She had dark brown hair and gray eyes; if she had not been soobviously frightened she would have been beautiful. She set the jugson the table and brought silver cups from a chest against the wall:when Spasso dismissed her, she went out hastily.

  "I suppose it's silly to ask if you're paying these people anythingfor the work they do or for the things you take from them," Harkamansaid. From the way the _Space Scourge_ and _Lamia_ people laughed,it evidently was. Harkaman shrugged. "Well, it's your planet. Makeany kind of a mess out of it you want to."

  "You think we _ought_ to pay them?" Spasso was incredulous. "Damnbunch of savages!"

  "They aren't as savage as the Xochitl locals were when Haultecleretook it over. You've been there; you've seen what Prince Viktor doeswith them now."

  "We haven't got the men or equipment they have on Xochitl,"Valkanhayn said. "We can't afford to coddle the locals."

  "You can't afford not to," Harkaman told him. "You have two ships,here. You can only use one for raiding; the other will have to stayhere to hold the planet. If you take them both away, the locals,whom you have been studiously antagonizing, will swamp whoever youleave behind. And if you don't leave anybody behind, what's the useof having a planetary base?"

  "Well, why don't you join us," Spasso finally came out with it."With our three ships we could have a real thing, here."

  Harkaman looked at him inquiringly. "The gentlemen," Trask said,"are putting this wrongly. They mean, why don't we let them joinus?"

  "Well, if you want to put it like that," Valkanhayn conceded. "We'lladmit, your _Nemesis_ would be the big end of it. But why not? Threeships, we could have a real base here. Nikky Gratham's father onlyhad two when he started on Jagannath, and look what the Grathams gotthere now."

  "Are we interested?" Harkaman asked.

  "Not very, I'm afraid. Of course, we've just landed; Tanith mayhave great possibilities. Suppose we reserve decision for a whileand look around a little."

  * * * * *

  There were stars in the sky, and, for good measure, a sliver of moonon the western horizon. It was only a small moon, but it was close.He walked to the edge of the landing stage, and Elaine was walkingwith him. The noise from inside, where the _Nemesis_ crew werefeasting with those of the _Lamia_ and _Space Scourge_, grew fainter.To the south, a star moved; one of the pinnaces they had left onoff-planet watch. There was firelight far below, and he could hearsinging. Suddenly he realized that it was the poor devils of localswhom Valkanhayn and Spasso had enslaved. Elaine went away quickly.

  "Have your fill of Space Viking glamour, Lucas?"

  He turned. It was Baron Rathmore, who had come along to serve for ayear or so and then hitch a ride home from some base planet and cashin politically on having been with Lucas Trask.

  "For the moment. I'm told that this lot aren't typical."

  "I hope not. They're a pack of sadistic brutes, and piggish alongwith it."

  "Well, brutality and bad manners I can condone, but Spasso andValkanhayn are a pair of ignominious little crooks, and stupid alongwith it. If Andray Dunnan had gotten here ahead of us, he might havedone one good thing in his wretched life. I can't understand why hedidn't come here."

  "I think he still will," Rathmore said. "I knew him and I knewNevil Ormm. Ormm's ambitious, and Dunnan is insanely vindictive--"He broke off with a sour laugh. "I'm telling _you_ that!"

  "Why didn't he come here directly, then?"

  "Maybe he doesn't want a base on Tanith. That would be somethingconstructive; Dunnan's a destroyer. I think he took that cargo ofequipment somewhere and sold it. I think he'll wait till he's fairlysure the other ship is finished. Then he'll come in and shoot theplace up, the way--" He bit that off abruptly.

  "The way he did my wedding; I think of it all the time."

  * * * * *

  The next morning, he and Harkaman took an aircar and went to lookat the city at the forks of the river. It was completely new, inthe sense that it had been built since the collapse of Federationcivilization and the loss of civilized technologies. It was huddledon a long, irregularly triangular mound, evidently to raise it aboveflood-level. Generations of labor must have gone into it. To theeyes of a civilization using contragravity and powered equipment itwasn't at all impressive. Fifty to a hundred men with adequateequipment could have gotten the thing up in a summer. It was onlyby forcing himself to think in terms of spadeful after spadeful ofearth, cartload after cartload creaking behind straining beasts,timber after timber cut with axes and dressed with adzes, stoneafter stone and brick after brick, that he could appreciate it. Theyeven had it walled, with a palisade of tree-trunks behind whichearth and rocks had been banked, and along the river were docks,at which boats were moored. The locals simply called it Tradetown.

  As they approached, a big gong began booming, and a white puff ofsmoke was followed by the thud of a signal-gun. The boats, longcanoe-like craft and round-bowed, many-oared barges, put out hastilyinto the river; through binoculars they co
uld see people scatteringfrom the surrounding fields, driving cattle ahead of them. By thetime they were over the city, nobody was in sight. They seemedto have developed a pretty fair air-raid warning system in thenine-hundred-odd hours in which they had been exposed to thefigurative mercies of Boake Valkanhayn and Garvan Spasso. It hadn'tsaved them entirely; a section of the city had been burned, andthere were evidences of shelling. Light chemical-explosive stuff;this city was too good a cow for even those two to kill before themilking was over.

  They circled slowly over it at a thousand feet. When they turnedaway, black smoke began rising from what might have been potteryworks or brick-kilns on the outskirts; something resinous hadevidently been fed to the fires. Other columns of black smoke beganrising across the countryside on both sides of the river.

  "You know, these people are civilized, if you don't limit the termto contragravity and nuclear energy," Harkaman said. "They havegunpowder, for one thing, and I can think of some rather impressiveOld Terran civilizations that didn't have that much. They have anorganized society, and anybody who has that is starting towardcivilization."

  "I hate to think of what'll happen to this planet if Spasso andValkanhayn stay here long."

  "Might be a good thing, in the long run. Good things in the long runare often tough while they're happening. I know what'll happen toSpasso and Valkanhayn, though. They'll start decivilizing, themselves.They'll stay here for a while, and when they need something theycan't take from the locals they'll go chicken-stealing after it,but most of the time they'll stay here lording it over their slaves,and finally their ships will wear out and they won't be able to fixthem. Then, some time, the locals'll jump them when they aren'twatching and wipe them out. But in the meantime, the locals'lllearn a lot from them."

  They turned the aircar west again along the river. They looked at afew villages. One or two dated from the Federation period; they hadbeen plantations before whatever it was had happened. More had beenbuilt within the past five centuries. A couple had recently beendestroyed, in punishment for the crime of self-defense.

  "You know," he said, at length, "I'm going to do everybody a favor.I'm going to let Spasso and Valkanhayn persuade me to take thisplanet away from them."

  Harkaman, who was piloting, turned sharply. "You crazy or something?"

  "'When somebody makes a statement you don't understand, don't tellhim he's crazy. Ask him what he means.' Who said that?"

  "On target," Harkaman grinned. "'What _do_ you mean, Lord Trask?'"

  "I can't catch Dunnan by pursuit; I'll have to get him byinterception. You know the source of that quotation, too. This looksto me like a good place to intercept him. When he learns I have abase here, he'll hit it, sooner or later. And even if he doesn't,we can pick up more information on him, when ships start coming inhere, than we would batting around all over the Old Federation."

  Harkaman considered for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, if we could setup a base like Nergal or Xochitl," he agreed. "There'll be four orfive ships, Space Vikings, traders, Gilgameshers and so on, oneither of those planets all the time. If we had the cargo Dunnantook to space in the _Enterprise_, we could start a base like that.But we haven't anything near what we need, and you know what Spassoand Valkanhayn have."

  "We can get it from Gram. As it stands, the investors in the TanithAdventure, from Duke Angus down, lost everything they put into it.If they're willing to throw some good money after bad, they can getit back, and a handsome profit to boot. And there ought to beplanets above the rowboat and ox-cart level not too far away thatcould be raided for a lot of things we'd need."

  "That's right; I know of half a dozen within five hundred light-years.They won't be the kind Spasso and Valkanhayn are in the habit ofraiding, though. And besides machinery, we can get gold, and valuablemerchandise that could be sold on Gram. And if we could make a go ofit, you'd go farther hunting Dunnan by sitting here on Tanith than bygoing looking for him. That was the way we used to hunt marsh pigs onColada, when I was a kid; just find a good place and sit down and wait."

  * * * * *

  They had Valkanhayn and Spasso aboard the _Nemesis_ for dinner; itdidn't take much guiding to keep the conversation on the subject ofTanith and its resources, advantages and possibilities. Finally,when they had reached brandy and coffee, Trask said idly:

  "I believe, together, we could really make something out of this planet."

  "That's what we've been telling you, all along," Spasso broke ineagerly. "This is a wonderful planet--"

  "It could be. All it has now is possibilities. We'd need aspaceport, for one thing."

  "Well, what's this, here?" Valkanhayn wanted to know.

  "It was a spaceport," Harkaman told him. "It could be one again. Andwe'd need a shipyard, capable of any kind of heavy repair work.Capable of building a complete ship, in fact. I never saw a shipcome into a Viking base planet with any kind of a cargo worthdickering over that hadn't taken some damage getting it. PrinceViktor of Xochitl makes a good half of his money on ship repairs,and so do Nikky Gratham on Jagannath and the Everrards on Hoth."

  "And engine works, hyperdrive, normal space and pseudograv," Traskadded. "And a steel mill, and a collapsed-matter plant. Androbotic-equipment works, and--"

  "Oh, that's out of all reason!" Valkanhayn cried. "It would taketwenty trips with a ship the size of this one to get all that stuffhere, and how'd we ever be able to pay for it?"

  "That's the sort of base Duke Angus of Wardshaven planned. The_Enterprise_, practically a duplicate of the _Nemesis_, carriedeverything that would be needed to get it started, when she waspirated."

  "When she was--?"

  "Now you're going to have to tell the gentlemen the truth,"Harkaman chuckled.

  "I intend to." He laid his cigar down, sipped some of his brandy,and explained about Duke Angus' Tanith adventure. "It was part of alarger plan; Angus wanted to gain economic supremacy for Wardshavento forward his political ambitions. It was, however, an entirelypractical business proposition. I was opposed to it, because Ithought it would be too good a proposition for Tanith and work tothe disadvantage of the home planet in the end." He told them aboutthe _Enterprise_, and the cargo of industrial and constructionequipment she carried, and then told them how Andray Dunnan hadpirated her.

  "That wouldn't have annoyed me at all; I had no money invested inthe project. What did annoy me, to put it mildly, was that justbefore he took the ship out, Dunnan shot up my wedding, wounded meand my father-in-law, and killed the lady to whom I had been marriedfor less than half an hour. I fitted out this ship at my ownexpense, took on Captain Harkaman, who had been left without acommand when the _Enterprise_ was pirated, and came out here tohunt Dunnan down and kill him. I believe that I can do that best byestablishing a base on Tanith myself. The base will have to beoperated at a profit, or it can't be operated at all." He picked upthe cigar again and puffed slowly. "I am inviting you gentlemen tojoin me as partners."

  "Well, you still haven't told us how we're going to get the money tofinance it," Spasso insisted.

  "The Duke of Wardshaven, and the others who invested in the originalTanith adventure will put it up. It's the only way they can recoverwhat they lost on the _Enterprise_."

  "But then, this Duke of Wardshaven will be running it, not us,"Valkanhayn objected.

  "The Duke of Wardshaven," Harkaman reminded him, "is on Gram. We arehere on Tanith. There are three thousand light-years between."

  That seemed a satisfactory answer. Spasso, however, wanted to knowwho would run things here on Tanith.

  "We'll have to hold a meeting of all three crews," he began.

  "We will do nothing of the kind," Trask told him. "I will be runningthings here on Tanith. You people may allow your orders to bedebated and voted on, but I don't. You will inform your respectivecrews to that effect. Any orders you give them in my name will beobeyed without argument."

  "I don't know how the men'll take that," Valkanhayn said.

  "I
know how they'll take it if they're smart," Harkaman told him."And I know what'll happen if they aren't. I know how you've beenrunning your ships, or how your ships' crews have been running you.Well, we don't do it that way. Lucas Trask is owner, and I'mcaptain. I obey his orders on what's to be done, and everybody elseobeys mine on how to do it."

  Spasso looked at Valkanhayn, then shrugged. "That's how the manwants it, Boake. You want to give him an argument? I don't."

  "The first order," Trask said, "is that these people you haveworking here are to be paid. They are not to be beaten by theseplug-uglies you have guarding them. If any of them want to leave,they may do so; they will be given presents and furnishedtransportation home. Those who wish to stay will be issued rations,furnished with clothing and bedding and so on as they need it, andpaid wages. We'll work out some kind of a pay-token system and setup a commissary where they can buy things."

  Disks of plastic or titanium or something, stamped anduncounterfeitable. Get Alvyn Karffard to see about that. Organizework-gangs, and promote the best and most intelligent to foremen.And those guards could be taken in hand by some ground-fightersergeant and given Sword-World weapons and tactical training; usethem to train others; they'd need a sepoy army of some sort. Eventhe best of good will is no substitute for armed force,conspicuously displayed and unhesitatingly used when necessary.

  "And there'll be no more of this raiding villages for food oranything else. We will pay for anything we get from any of thelocals."

  "We'll have trouble about that," Valkanhayn predicted. "Our menthink anything a local has belongs to anybody who can take it."

  "So do I," Harkaman said. "On a planet I'm raiding. This is ourplanet, and our locals. We don't raid our own planet or our ownpeople. You'll just have to teach them that."