ll be another Sword-World in forty or fifty
years."

[Illustration]

"Inside another century, we'll conquer the whole Federation," Baron
Rathmore declared. He was a politician and never let exaggeration
worry him.

"What I don't understand," Harkaman said, "is why you support Duke
Angus, Lord Trask, if you think the Tanith adventure is doing Gram
so much harm."

[Illustration]

"If Angus didn't do it, somebody else would. But Angus is going to
make himself King of Gram, and I don't think anybody else could do
that. This planet needs a single sovereignty. I don't know how much
you've seen of it outside this duchy, but don't take Wardshaven as
typical. Some of these duchies, like Glaspyth or Didreksburg, are
literal snake pits. All the major barons are at each other's
throats, and they can't even keep their own knights and petty-barons
in order. Why, there's a miserable little war down in Southmain
Continent that's been going on for over two centuries."

"That's probably where Dunnan's going to take that army of his,"
a robot-manufacturing baron said. "I hope it gets wiped out, and
Dunnan with it."

"You don't have to go to Southmain; just go to Glaspyth," somebody
else said.

"Well, if we don't get a planetary monarchy to keep order, this
planet will decivilize like anything in the Old Federation."

"Oh, _come_, Lucas!" Alex Gorram protested. "That's pulling it out
too far."

"Yes, for one thing, we don't have the Neobarbarians," somebody
said. "And if they ever came out here, we'd blow them to
Em-See-Square in nothing flat. Might be a good thing if they
did, too; it would stop us squabbling among ourselves."

Harkaman looked at him in surprise. "Just who do you think the
Neobarbarians are, anyhow?" he asked. "Some race of invading nomads;
Attila's Huns in spaceships?"

"Well, isn't that who they are?" Gorram asked.

"Nifflheim, no! There aren't a dozen and a half planets in the Old
Federation that still have hyperdrive, and they're all civilized.
That's if 'civilized' is what Gilgamesh is," he added. "These are
homemade barbarians. Workers and peasants who revolted to seize and
divide the wealth and then found they'd smashed the means of
production and killed off all the technical brains. Survivors on
planets hit during the Interstellar Wars, from the Eleventh to
the Thirteenth Centuries, who lost the machinery of civilization.
Followers of political leaders on local-dictatorship planets.
Companies