Federation period, plus doctrinal and ritualistic innovations of
their own. Aside from their propensity for sharp trading, their
bigoted refusal to regard anybody not of their creed as more than
half human, and the maze of dietary and other taboos in which they
hid from social contact with others, made them generally disliked.

After their ship had gotten into orbit, three of them came down to
do business. The captain and his exec wore long coats, almost
knee-length, buttoned to the throat, and small white caps like
forage caps; the third, one of their priests, wore a robe with a
cowl, and the symbol of their religion, a blue triangle in a white
circle, on his breast. They all wore beards that hung down from
their cheeks, with their chins and upper lips shaved. They all had
the same righteous, disapproving faces, they all refused
refreshments of any sort, and they sat uneasily as though fearing
contamination from the heathens who had sat in their chairs before
them. They had a mixed cargo of general merchandise picked up here
and there on subcivilized planets, in which nobody on Tanith was
interested. They also had some good stuff--vegetable-amber and
flame-bird plumes from Irminsul; ivory or something very like it
from somewhere else; diamonds and Uller organic opals and
Zarathustra sunstones. They also had some platinum. They wanted
machinery, especially contragravity engines and robots.

[Illustration]

The trouble was, they wanted to haggle. Haggling, it seemed, was
the Gilgamesh planetary sport.

"Have you ever heard of a Space Viking ship named the _Enterprise_?"
he asked them, at the seventh or eighth impasse in the bargaining.
"She bears a crescent, light blue on black. Her captain's name is
Andray Dunnan."

"A ship so named, with such a device, raided Chermosh more than a
year ago," the priest-supercargo said. "Some of our people tarry on
Chermosh to trade. This ship sacked the city in which they were;
some of them lost heavily in world's goods."

"That's a pity."

The Gilgamesh priest shrugged. "It is as Yah the Almighty wills,"
he said, then brightened slightly. "The Chermoshers are heathens
and worshipers of false gods. The Space Vikings looted their temple
and destroyed it utterly; they carried away the graven images and
abominations. Our people bore witness that there was much wailing
and lamentation among the idolators."

* * * * *

So that was the first entry