e kreggs continued to thrive, after the _Space Scourge_ departed.
Several calves were born, and seemed to be doing well; the biochemistry
of Tanith and Khepera were safely alike. Trask had hopes for them.
Every Viking ship had its own carniculture vats, but men tired of
carniculture meat, and fresh meat was always in demand. Some day,
he hoped, kregg-beef would be an item of sale to ships putting in
on Tanith, and the long-haired hides might even find a market in
the Sword-Worlds. They had contragravity scows plying between
Rivington and Tradetown regularly, now, and air-lorries were linking
the villages. The boatmen of Tradetown rioted occasionally against
this unfair competition. And in Rivington itself, bulldozers and
power shovels and manipulators labored, and there was always a
rising cloud of dust over the city.

There was so much to do, and only a trifle under twenty-five
Galactic Standard hours in a day to do it. There were whole days
in which he never thought once of Andray Dunnan.

A hundred and twenty-five days to Gram, and a hundred and
twenty-five days back. They had long ago passed. Of course, there
would be the work of repairing the _Space Scourge_, the conferences
with the investors in the original Tanith Adventure, the business
of gathering the needed equipment for the new base. Even so, he was
beginning to worry a little. Worry about something as far out of his
control as the _Space Scourge_ was useless, he knew. He couldn't
help it, though. Even Harkaman, usually imperturbable, began to be
fretful, after two hundred and seventy days had passed.

They were relaxing in the living quarters they had fitted out at the
top of the spaceport building before retiring, both sprawled wearily
in chairs that had come from one of the better hotels of Eglonsby,
their drinks between them on a low table, the top of which was
inlaid with something that looked like ivory but wasn't. On the
floor beside it lay the plans for a reaction-plant and mass-energy
converter they would build as soon as the _Space Scourge_ returned
with equipment for producing collapsium-plated shielding.

"Of course, we could go ahead with it, now," Harkaman said.
"We could tear enough armor off the _Lamia_ to shield any kind
of a reaction plant."

That was the first time either of them had gotten close to the
possibility that the ship mightn't return. Trask laid his cigar in
the ashtray--it had come from President Pedrosan Pedro's private