Traskon.

"They aren't any more civilized that we are, Paytrik. There are just
more of them. If there were two billion people on Gram--which I hope
there never will be--Gram would have cities like this, too."

One thing; the government of a planet like Marduk would have to
be something more elaborate than the loose feudalism of the
Sword-Worlds. Maybe this Goldberg-ocracy of theirs had been forced
upon them by the sheer complexity of the population and its
problems.

Alvyn Karffard took a quick look around him to make sure none
of the Mardukans were in earshot.

"I don't care how many people they have," he said. "Marduk can be
had. A wolf never cares how many sheep there are in a flock. With
twenty ships, we could take this planet like we took Eglonsby.
There'd be losses coming in, sure, but after we were in and down,
we'd have it."

"Where would we get twenty ships?"

Tanith, at a pinch, could muster five or six, counting the free
Space Vikings who used the base facilities; they would have to leave
a couple to hold the planet. Beowulf had one, and another almost
completed, and now there was an Amaterasu ship. But to assemble a
Space Viking armada of twenty.... He shook his head. The real reason
why Space Vikings had never raided a civilized planet successfully
had always been their inability to combine under one command in
sufficient strength.

Besides, he didn't want to raid Marduk. A raid, if successful, would
yield immense treasures, but cause a hundred, even a thousand, times
as much destruction, and he didn't want to destroy anything
civilized.

The landing stages of the palace were crowded when he and Prince
Bentrik landed, and, at a discreet distance, swarms of air-vehicles
circled, creating a control problem for the police. Parting from
Bentrik, he was escorted to the suite prepared for him; it was
luxurious in the extreme but scarcely above Sword-World standards.
There were a surprising number of human servants, groveling and
fawning and getting underfoot and doing work robots could have been
doing better. What robots there were were inefficient, and much work
and ingenuity had been lavished on efforts to copy human form to the
detriment of function.

After getting rid of most of the superfluous servants, he put on a
screen and began sampling the newscasts. There were telescopic views
of the _Nemesis_ from some craft on orbit nearby, and he watched the
officers and men of the _Victrix_ being dis