agged her into the feminine circle. He saw Rovard Grauffis,
small and saturnine, Duke Angus' henchman, and Burt Sandrasan,
Lady Lavina's brother. They spoke, and then an upper-servant,
his tabard blazoned with the yellow flame and black hammer of
Karvall mills, approached his master with some tale of domestic
crisis, and the two went away together.

"You haven't met Captain Harkaman, Lucas," Rovard Grauffis said.
"I wish you'd come over and say hello and have a drink with him.
I know your attitude, but he's a good sort. Personally, I wish
we had a few like him around here."

That was his main objection. There were fewer and fewer men of
that sort on any of the Sword-Worlds.

II

A dozen men clustered around the bartending robot--his cousin
and family lawyer, Nikkolay Trask; Lothar Ffayle, the banker;
Alex Gorram, the shipbuilder, and his son Basil; Baron Rathmore;
more of the Wardshaven nobles whom he knew only distantly.
And Otto Harkaman.

Harkaman was a Space Viking. That would have set him apart, even
if he hadn't topped the tallest of them by a head. He wore a short
black jacket, heavily gold-braided, and black trousers inside
ankle-boots; the dagger on his belt was no mere dress-ornament. His
tousled red-brown hair was long enough to furnish extra padding in
a combat-helmet, and his beard was cut square at the bottom.

He had been fighting on Durendal, for one of the branches of the
royal house contesting fratricidally for the throne. The wrong one;
he had lost his ship, and most of his men and, almost, his own life.
He had been a penniless refugee on Flamberge, owning only the
clothes he stood in and his personal weapons and the loyalty of
half a dozen adventurers as penniless as himself, when Duke Angus
had invited him to Gram to command the _Enterprise_.

"A pleasure, Lord Trask. I've met your lovely bride-to-be, and
now that I meet you, let me congratulate both." Then, as they
were having a drink together, he put his foot in it by asking:
"You're not an investor in the Tanith Adventure, are you?"

He said he wasn't, and would have let it go at that. Young Basil
Gorram had to get his foot in, too.

"Lord Trask does not approve of the Tanith Adventure," he said
scornfully. "He thinks we should stay home and produce wealth,
instead of exporting robbery and murder to the Old Federation
for it."

The smile remained on Otto Harkaman's face; only the friendliness
was gone. He unobtrusively shif