as her captain had sold his cargo, with a minimum of
haggling, he spaced out again. His behavior convinced everybody that
the attack would come in a matter of hours.

It didn't.

* * * * *

Three thousand hours had passed since the first warning had reached
Tanith, that made five thousand since Viktor's ships were supposed
to have left Xochitl. There were those, Boake Valkanhayn among them,
who doubted, now, if he ever had.

"The whole thing's just a big Gilgamesher lie," he was declaring.
"Somebody--Nikky Gratham, or the Everrards, or maybe Viktor
himself--paid them to tell us that, to pin our ships down here.
Or they made it up themselves, so they could make hay on our
trade-planets."

"Let's go down to the Ghetto and clean out the whole gang," somebody
else took up. "Anything one of them's in, they're all in together."

"Nifflheim with that; let's all space out for Xochitl," Manfred
Ravallo proposed. "We have enough ships to lick them on Tanith,
we have enough to lick them on their own planet."

He managed to talk them out of both courses of action--what was he,
anyhow; sovereign Prince of Tanith, or the non-ruling King of Marduk,
or just the chieftain of a disciplineless gang of barbarians? One of
the independents spaced out in disgust. The next day, two others
came in, loaded with booty from a raid on Braggi, and decided to
stay around for a while and see what happened.

And four days after that, a five-hundred-foot hyperspace yacht,
bearing the daggers and chevrons of Bigglersport, came in. As soon
as she was out of the last microjump, she began calling by screen.

Trask didn't know the man who was screening, but Hugh Rathmore did;
Duke Joris' confidential secretary.

"Prince Trask; I must speak to you as soon as possible," he began,
almost stuttering. Whatever the urgency of his mission, one would
have thought that a three-thousand-hour voyage would have taken some
of the edge from it. "It is of the first importance."

"You are speaking to me. This screen is reasonably secure. And if
it's of the first importance, the sooner you tell me about it...."

"Prince Trask, you must come to Gram, with every man and every ship
you can command. Satan only knows what's happening there now, but
three thousand hours ago, when the Duke sent me off, Omfray of Glaspyth
was landing on Wardshaven. He has a fleet of eight ships, furnished
to him by his wife's kinsman, the King of Haulte