"

Fawzi looked at him in surprise. "It would only be in the way and add
weight. We want her for a cargo ship, don't we?"

"That's what she was built for. What kind of armament?"

Fawzi didn't know. Klem Zareff did.

"Four 115-mm rifles, two fore and two aft. A pair of lift-and-drive
missile launchers amidships. And a secondary gun battery of 70-mm's
and 50-mm auto-cannon. I know the class; we captured a few of them.
Good ships."

Fawzi was horrified. "Why, that's more firepower than the whole Air
Patrol. Look, the Government won't like our having anything like
that."

"They're giving her to us, aren't they?" Menardes asked.

"Gehenna with what the Government likes!" the old Rebel swore. "If
they'd put a few of those ships into commission, they could wipe out
these outlaws and a private company wouldn't need an armed ship."

"May I use your screen, Kurt?" Conn asked.

When Fawzi nodded, he punched out the combination of the operating
office at Tenth Army, and finally got his father on. He told him about
the ship.

"There's talk about tearing the armament out," he added.

"Is that so, now? Well, I'll call Lester Dawes before he can get
started on it. I think I'll go in to Storisende tomorrow and see the
ship for myself. See what I can do about ammunition for those guns,
too."

"But, Rod," Fawzi protested, joining the conversation, "we don't want
to start a war."

"No. We want to stay out of one. You don't do that by disarming. We're
taking that ship down into the Badlands. Remember?" Rodney Maxwell
said. "Ever hear the name Blackie Perales?"

Fawzi had. He stopped arguing about armament. Instead, he began
worrying about how much the civic clean-up campaign was costing
Litchfield.

"You think we really need that, Rod?"

"Of course we do. You'd be surprised how much labor we're going to
need, and how hard up we're going to be for capable supervisors. This
thing's a training program, Kurt, and we'll need every man we train on
it."

"But it's costing like Nifflheim, Rod. We're going to bankrupt the
city."

"Worse than it is now, you mean? Oh, don't worry, Kurt. As soon as we
find Merlin, everything'll be all right."

Franz Veltrin came in, shortly after Rodney Maxwell was off the
screen. He dropped his audiovisual camera and sound recorder on the
table, laid his pistol-belt on top of them and took a drink of brandy,
downing it with the audible satisfaction of a thirsty horse at a
trough. Then he l