s
own hyperdrive engines, and could travel as far and as fast as
the ship herself.

Otto Harkaman was beginning to be distressed because the ship still
lacked a name. He didn't like having to speak of her as "her," or
"the ship," and there were many things soon to go on that should be
name-marked. _Elaine_, Trask thought, at once, and almost at once
rejected it. He didn't want her name associated with the things
that ship would do in the Old Federation. _Revenge_, _Avenger_,
_Retribution_, _Vendetta_; none appealed to him. A news-commentator,
turgidly eloquent about the nemesis which the criminal Dunnan had
invoked against himself, supplied it, _Nemesis_ it was.

Now he was studying his new profession of interstellar robbery and
murder against which he had once inveighed. Otto Harkaman's handful
of followers became his teachers. Vann Larch, guns-and-missiles,
who was also a painter; Guatt Kirbey, sour and pessimistic, the
hyperspatial astrogator who tried to express his science in music;
Sharll Renner, the normal-space astrogator. Alvyn Karffard, the
exec, who had been with Harkaman longest of all. And Sir Paytrik
Morland, a local recruit, formerly guard-captain to Count Lionel
of Newhaven, who commanded the ground-fighters and the combat
contragravity. They were using the farms and villages of Traskon
for drill and practice, and he noticed that while the _Nemesis_
would carry only five hundred ground and air fighters, over a
thousand were being trained.

He commented to Rovard Grauffis.

"Yes. Don't mention it outside," the Duke's henchman said. "You and
Sir Paytrik and Captain Harkaman will pick the five hundred best.
The Duke will take the rest into his service. Some of these days,
Omfray of Glaspyth will find out what a Space Viking raid is really
like."

And Duke Angus would tax his new subjects of Glaspyth to redeem
the pledges on his new barony of Traskon. Some old Pre-Atomic writer
Harkaman was fond of quoting had said, "Gold will not always get
you good soldiers, but good soldiers can get you gold."

* * * * *

The _Nemesis_ came back to the Gorram yards and settled onto her
curved landing legs like a monstrous spider. The _Enterprise_ had
borne the Ward sword and atom-symbol; the _Nemesis_ should bear his
own badge, but the bisonoid head, tawny on green, of Traskon, was no
longer his. He chose a skull impaled on an upright sword, and it was
blazoned on the ship when he