ike a brick of collapsium, and
this time next year we'll be using brandy to wash our feet in."

"If you can't get good prices, hang onto it and age it. I wish you could
see what the bars on Terra charge for a drink of ten-year-old
Poictesme."

"This isn't Terra and we aren't selling it by the drink. Only place we
can sell brandy is at Storisende spaceport, and we have to take what the
trading-ship captains offer. You've been on a rich planet for the last
five years, Conn. You've forgotten what it's like to live in a
poorhouse. And that's what Poictesme is."

"Things'll be better from now on, Klem," the mayor said, putting one
hand on the old man's shoulder and the other on Conn's. "Our boy's home.
With what he can tell us, we'll be able to solve all our problems. Come
on, let's go up and hear about it."

They entered the wide doorway of the warehouse on the dock-level floor
of the Airport Building and crossed to the lift. About a dozen others
had joined them, all the important men of Litchfield. Inside, Kurt
Fawzi's laborers were floating out cargo for the ship--casks of brandy,
of course, and a lot of boxes and crates painted light blue and marked
with the wreathed globe of the Terran Federation and the gold triangle
of the Third Fleet-Army Force and the eight-pointed red star of Ordnance
Service. Long cases of rifles, square boxes of ammunition, machine guns,
crated auto-cannon and rockets.

"Where'd that stuff come from?" Conn asked his father. "You dig it
up?"

His father chuckled. "That happened since the last time I wrote you.
Remember the big underground headquarters complex in the Calders?
Everybody thought it had been all cleaned out years ago. You know, it's
never a mistake to take a second look at anything that everybody
believes. I found a lot of sealed-off sections over there that had never
been entered. This stuff's from one of the headquarters defense
armories. I have a gang getting the stuff out. Charley and I flew in
after lunch, and I'm going back the first thing tomorrow."

"But there's enough combat equipment on hand to outfit a private army
for every man, woman and child on Poictesme!" Conn objected. "Where are
we going to sell this?"

"Storisende spaceport. The tramp freighters are buying it for newly
colonized planets that haven't been industrialized yet. They don't pay
much, but it doesn't cost much to get it out, and I've been clearing
about three hundred sols a ton on the spaceport do