XI
Khepera left a bad taste in Trask's mouth. He was still tasting itwhen the colored turbulence died out of the screen and left the graynothingness of hyperspace. Garvan Spasso--they had had no trouble ininducing him to come along--was staring avidly at the screen asthough he could still see the ravished planet they had left.
"That was a good one; that was a good one!" he was crowing. He'dsaid that a dozen times since they had lifted out. "Three cities infive days, and all the stuff we gathered up around them. We tookover two million stellars."
And did ten times as much damage getting it, and there was no scaleof values by which to compute the death and suffering.
"Knock it off, Spasso. You said that before."
There was a time when he wouldn't have spoken to the fellow, oranybody else, like that. Gresham's law, extended: Bad manners driveout good manners. Spasso turned on him indignantly.
"Who do you think you are--?"
"He thinks he's Lord Trask of Tanith," Harkaman said. "He's right,too; he is." He looked searchingly at Trask for a moment, thenturned back to Spasso. "I'm just as tired as he is of hearing youpop your mouth about a lousy two million stellars. Nearer a millionand a half, but two million's nothing to pop about. Maybe it wouldbe for the _Lamia_, but we have a three-ship fleet and a planetarybase to meet expenses on. Out of this raid, a ground-fighter or anable spaceman will get a hundred and fifty stellars. We'll get abouta thousand, ourselves. How long do you think we can stay in businessdoing this kind of chicken-stealing."
"You call this chicken-stealing?"
"I call it chicken-stealing, and so'll you before we get back toTanith. If you live that long."
For a moment, Spasso was still affronted. Then, temporarily, hisvulpine face showed avaricious hope, and then apprehension.Evidently he knew Otto Harkaman's reputation, and some of the thingsHarkaman had done weren't his idea of an easy way to make money.
Khepera had been easy; the locals hadn't had anything to fight with.Small arms, and light cannon which hadn't been able to fire morethan a few rounds. Wherever they had attempted resistance, thecombat cars had swooped in, dropping bombs and firing machine gunsand auto-cannon. Yet they had fought, bitterly and hopelessly--justas he would have, defending Traskon.
Trask busied himself getting coffee and a cigarette from one of therobots. When he looked up, Spasso had gone away, and Harkaman wassitting on the edge of the desk, loading his short pipe.
"Well, you saw the elephant, Lucas," Harkaman said. "You don't seemto have liked it."
"Elephant?"
"Old Terran expression I read somewhere. All I know is that anelephant was an animal about the size of one of your Gram megatheres.The expression means, experiencing something for the first timewhich makes a great impression. Elephants must have been somethingto see. This was your first Viking raid. You've seen it, now."
He'd been in combat before; he'd led the fighting-men of Traskonduring the boundary dispute with Baron Manniwel, and there werealways bandits and cattle rustlers. He'd thought it would be likethat. He remembered, five days, or was it five ages, ago, hisexcited anticipation as the city grew and spread in the screen andthe _Nemesis_ came dropping down toward it. The pinnaces, his fourand the two from the _Space Scourge_, had gone spiraling out ahundred miles beyond the city; the _Space Scourge_ had gone intoa tighter circle twenty miles from its center; the _Nemesis_ hadcontinued her relentless descent until she was ten miles from theground, before she began spewing out landing craft, and combat cars,and the little egg-shaped one-man air-cavalry mounts. It had beenthrilling. Everything had gone perfectly; not even Valkanhayn's ganghad goofed.
Then the screenviews had begun coming in. The brief and hopelessfight in the city. He could still see that silly little field gun,it must have been around seventy or eighty millimeter, on ahigh-wheeled carriage, drawn by six shaggy, bandy-legged beasts.They had gotten it unlimbered and were trying to get it on a targetwhen a rocket from an aircar landed directly under the muzzle. Gun,caisson, crew, even the draft team fifty yards behind, had simplyvanished.
Or the little company, some of them women, trying to defend the topof a tall and half-ruinous building with rifles and pistols. Oneair-cavalryman wiped them all out with his machine guns.
"They don't have a chance," he'd said, half-sick. "But they keep onfighting."
"Yes; stupid of them, isn't it?" Harkaman, beside him, had said.
"What would you do in their place?"
"Fight. Try to kill as many Space Vikings as I could before they gotme. Terro-humans are all stupid like that. That's why we're human."
* * * * *
If the taking of the city had been a massacre, the sack that hadfollowed had been a man-made Hell. He had gone down, along withHarkaman, while the fighting, if it could be so called, was stillgoing on. Harkaman had suggested that the men ought to see himmoving about among them; for his own part, he had felt a compulsionto share their guilt.
He and Sir Paytrik Morland had been on foot together in one of thebig hollow buildings that had stood since Khepera had been a MemberRepublic of the Terran Federation. The air was acrid with smoke,powder smoke and the smoke of burning. It was surprising, how muchwould burn, in this city of concrete and vitrified stone. It wassurprising, too, how well-kept everything was, at least on theground level. These people had taken pride in their city.
They found themselves alone, in a great empty hallway; the noise andhorror of the sack had moved away from them, or they from it, andthen, when they entered a side hall, they saw a man, one of thelocals, squatting on the floor with the body of a woman cradled onhis lap. She was dead, half her head had been blown off, but he wasclasping her tightly, her blood staining his shirt, and sobbingheartbrokenly. A carbine lay forgotten on the floor beside him.
"Poor devil," Morland said, and started forward.
"No."
Trask stopped him with his left hand. With his right, he drew hispistol and shot the man dead. Morland was horrified.
"Great Satan, Lucas! Why did you do that?"
"I wish Andray Dunnan had done that for me." He thumbed the safetyon and holstered the pistol. "None of this would be happening ifhe had. How many more happinesses do you think we've smashed heretoday? And we don't even have Dunnan's excuse of madness."
The next morning, with everything of value collected and sentaboard, they had started cross-country for five hundred miles toanother city, the first hundred over a countryside asmoke fromburning villages Valkanhayn's men had pillaged the night before.There was no warning; Khepera had lost electricity and radio andtelegraph, and the spread of news was at the speed of one of thebeasts the locals insisted on calling horses. By midafternoon, theyhad finished with that city. It had been as bad as the first one.
One thing, it was the center of a considerable cattle country. Thecattle were native to the planet, heavy-bodied unicorns the size ofa Gram bisonoid or one of the slightly mutated Terran carabaos onTanith, with long hair like a Terran yak. He had detailed a dozen ofthe _Nemesis_ ground-fighters who had been vaqueros on his Traskonranches to collect a score of cows and four likely bulls, withenough fodder to last them on the voyage. The odds were stronglyagainst any of them living to acclimate themselves to Tanith, butif they did, they might prove to be one of the most valuable piecesof loot from Khepera.
The third city was at the forks of a river, like Tradetown onTanith. Unlike it, this was a real metropolis. They should havegone there first of all. They spent two days systematically pillagingit. The Kheperans carried on considerable river-traffic, withstern-wheel steamboats, and the waterfront was lined with warehousescrammed with every sort of merchandise. Even better, the Kheperanshad money, and for the most part it was gold specie, and the bankvaults were full of it.
Unfortunately, the city had been built since the fall of theFederation and the climb up from the barbarism that had followed,and a great deal of it was of wood. Fires started almost at once,and it was almost complet
ely on fire by the end of the second day.It had been visible in the telescopic screen even after they wereout of atmosphere, a black smear until the turning planet carriedit into darkness and then a lurid glow.
* * * * *
"It was a filthy business."
Harkaman nodded. "Robbery and murder always are. You don't have toask me who said that Space Vikings are professional robbers andmurderers, but who was it said that he didn't care how many planetswere raided and how many innocents massacred in the Old Federation?"
"A dead man. Lucas Trask of Traskon."
"You wish, now, that you'd kept Traskon and stayed on Gram?"
"No. If I had, I'd have spent every hour wishing I was doing whatI'm doing now. I can get used to this, I suppose."
"I think you will. At least, you kept your rations down. I didn't onmy first raid, and had bad dreams about it for a year." He gave hiscoffee cup back to the robot and got to his feet. "Get a littlerest, for a couple of hours. Then draw some alcodote-vitamin pillsfrom the medic. As soon as things are secured, there'll be partiesall over the ship, and we'll be expected to look in on every one ofthem, have a drink, and say 'Well done, boys.'"
* * * * *
Elaine came to him, while he was resting. She looked at him inhorror, and he tried to hide his face from her, and then realizedthat he was trying to hide it from himself.
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