d planets. They still depended on Marduk for
fissionables; their export product was an abominably-smelling
vegetable oil which furnished the base for delicate perfumes, and
which nobody was ever able to synthesize properly.

"I heard they had steel mills in operation, now," the half-breed
Space Viking said. "It seems that somebody on Rimmon has just
re-invented the railroad, and they need more steel than they can
produce for themselves. I thought I'd raid Tetragrammaton for steel
and trade it on Rimmon for a load of heaven-tea. When I got there,
though, the whole planet was in a mess; not raiding, but plain
wanton destruction. The locals were just digging themselves out of
it when I landed. Some of them, who didn't think they had anything
at all left to lose, gave me a fight. I captured a few of them, to
find out what had happened. One of them had that pistol; he said
he'd taken it off a Space Viking he'd killed. The ships that raided
them were the _Enterprise_ and the _Yo-Yo_. I knew you'd want to
hear about it. I got some of the locals' stories on tape."

"Well, thank you. I'll want to hear those tapes. Now, you say you
want steel?"

"Well, I haven't any money. That's why I was going to raid
Tetragrammaton."

"Nifflheim with the money; your cargo's paid for already. This,"
he said, touching the pistol, "and whatever's on the tapes."

* * * * *

They played off the tapes that evening. They weren't particularly
informative. The locals who had been interrogated hadn't been in
actual contact with Dunnan's people except in combat. The man who
had been carrying the 10-mm Hoylbar was the best witness of the lot,
and he knew little. He had caught one of them alone, shot him from
behind with a shotgun, taken his pistol, and then gotten away as
quickly as he could. They had sent down landing craft, it seemed,
and said they wanted to trade; then something must have happened,
nobody knew what, and they had begun a massacre and sacked the town.
After returning to their ships, they had opened fire with nuclear
missiles.

"Sounds like Dunnan," Hugh Rathmore said in disgust. "He just went
kill-crazy. The bad blood of Blackcliffe."

"There are funny things about this," Boake Valkanhayn said. "I'd say
it was a terror-raid, but who in Gehenna was he trying to terrorize?"

"I wondered about that, too." Harkaman frowned. "This town where he
landed seems, such as it was, to have been the planetary