in
eagerly. "This is a wonderful planet--"

"It could be. All it has now is possibilities. We'd need a
spaceport, for one thing."

"Well, what's this, here?" Valkanhayn wanted to know.

"It was a spaceport," Harkaman told him. "It could be one again. And
we'd need a shipyard, capable of any kind of heavy repair work.
Capable of building a complete ship, in fact. I never saw a ship
come into a Viking base planet with any kind of a cargo worth
dickering over that hadn't taken some damage getting it. Prince
Viktor of Xochitl makes a good half of his money on ship repairs,
and so do Nikky Gratham on Jagannath and the Everrards on Hoth."

"And engine works, hyperdrive, normal space and pseudograv," Trask
added. "And a steel mill, and a collapsed-matter plant. And
robotic-equipment works, and--"

"Oh, that's out of all reason!" Valkanhayn cried. "It would take
twenty trips with a ship the size of this one to get all that stuff
here, and how'd we ever be able to pay for it?"

"That's the sort of base Duke Angus of Wardshaven planned. The
_Enterprise_, practically a duplicate of the _Nemesis_, carried
everything that would be needed to get it started, when she was
pirated."

"When she was--?"

"Now you're going to have to tell the gentlemen the truth,"
Harkaman chuckled.

"I intend to." He laid his cigar down, sipped some of his brandy,
and explained about Duke Angus' Tanith adventure. "It was part of a
larger plan; Angus wanted to gain economic supremacy for Wardshaven
to forward his political ambitions. It was, however, an entirely
practical business proposition. I was opposed to it, because I
thought it would be too good a proposition for Tanith and work to
the disadvantage of the home planet in the end." He told them about
the _Enterprise_, and the cargo of industrial and construction
equipment she carried, and then told them how Andray Dunnan had
pirated her.

"That wouldn't have annoyed me at all; I had no money invested in
the project. What did annoy me, to put it mildly, was that just
before he took the ship out, Dunnan shot up my wedding, wounded me
and my father-in-law, and killed the lady to whom I had been married
for less than half an hour. I fitted out this ship at my own
expense, took on Captain Harkaman, who had been left without a
command when the _Enterprise_ was pirated, and came out here to
hunt Dunnan down and kill him. I believe that I can do that best by
establishing a base on Tanith mysel