Gatworth, the skipper of the _Vampire_, Morgan Gatworth's son,
was with them, and, imaged in a screen, so was Klem Zareff. One of the
other screens, from a pickup on the _Vampire_, showed the _Dragon_
lying on her side, her turret crushed and her gun, with the
muzzle-brake gone, bent upward. A couple of lorries from the _Lester
Dawes_ were alongside; as Conn watched, a blanket-wrapped body, and
then another, were lowered from the disabled gunboat.

"Fred, how are you and Charley fixed for counter-missiles?" Zareff was
asking. "Get loaded up with them off the ship, as many as you can
carry. Charley, you go up on top of this ridge above, and take cover
where you can watch the mountain. Transmit what you see back to the
ship. Fred, you take a position about a quarter way around from where
you are now. Don't let them send anything over, but don't start
anything yourselves. I'm coming out with everything I can gather up
here; I'll be along myself in a couple of hours, and the rest will be
stringing in after me. In the meantime, Rodney, you're in command."

Well, that settled that. There was one other point, though.

"Colonel," Conn said, "I assume that this spaceport is occupied by one
of these new prospecting companies. We have no right to take it away
from them, have we?"

"They fired on us without warning," Karski said. "They killed Milt,
and it's ten to one Abe won't live either. We owe them something for
that."

"We do, and we'll pay off. Conn, you assume wrong. This gang's been at
the spaceport long enough to get the detection system working and put
the defense batteries on ready. They didn't do that since this
morning, and up to last evening they neglected to file claim. I'll
assume they're on the wrong side of the law. They're outlaws, Conn.
All the raids along the east coast; everybody's blamed them on the
Badlands gangs. I'll admit they're responsible for some of it, but
I'll bet this gang at the spaceport is doing most of it."

That was reasonable. Barathrum was closer to the scene of the worst
outlaw depredations than the Badlands, not more than an hour at Mach
Two. And nobody ever thought of Barathrum as an outlaw hangout. People
rarely thought of Barathrum at all. He liked the idea. The only thing
against it was that he wanted so badly to believe it.

They brought the body of Milt Hennant aboard, and Abe Samuels, swathed
in bandages and immobilized by narcotic injections. A few more of the
_Dragon_'s si