uld realize, before long,
what they had lost in those men. He wondered what Lord Trask of
Traskon would have thought about that.

The Prince of Tanith was no longer interested in what happened to
Gram. Maybe, if things prospered for the next century or so, his
successors would be ruling Gram by viceroy from Tanith.

XV

As soon as the _Space Scourge_ was unloaded, she was put on
off-planet watch; Harkaman immediately spaced out in the _Nemesis_,
while Trask remained behind. They began unloading the _Rozinante_,
after setting her down at Rivington Spaceport. After that was done,
her officers and crew took a holiday which lasted a month, until the
_Nemesis_ returned. Harkaman must have made quick raids on half a
dozen planets. None of the cargo he brought back was spectacularly
valuable, and he dismissed the whole thing as chicken-stealing, but
he had lost some men and the ship showed a few fresh scars. A good
deal of what was transshipped to the _Rozinante_ was manufactured
goods which would compete with merchandise produced on Gram.

"That load will be a come-down, after what the _Space Scourge_ took
back, but we didn't want to send the _Rozinante_ back empty," he
said. "One thing, I had time to do a little reading, between stops."

"The books from the Eglonsby library?"

"Yes. I learned a curious thing about Amaterasu. Do you know why that
planet was so extensively colonized by the Federation, when there
don't seem to be any fissionable ores? The planet produced gadolinium."

Gadolinium was essential to hyperdrive engines; the engines of a
ship the size of the _Nemesis_ required fifty pounds of it. On the
Sword-Worlds, it was worth several times its weight in gold. If they
still mined it, Amaterasu would repay a second visit.

When he mentioned it, Harkaman shrugged. "Why should they mine it?
There's only one thing it's good for, and you can't run a spaceship
on Diesel oil. I suppose the mines could be reopened, and new
refineries built, but...."

"We could trade plutonium for gadolinium. They have none of their
own. We could charge our own prices for it, and we wouldn't need to
tell them what gadolinium sells for on the Sword-Worlds."

"We could, if we could do business with anybody there, after what
we did to Eglonsby and Stolgoland. Where would we get plutonium?"

"Why do you think the Beowulfers don't have hyperships, when they
have everything else?"

Harkaman snapped his fingers. "By Satan,