ous attack, once, for almost a year. It's been
constantly strengthened ever since."

"And what have they to throw at it?" Harkaman persisted.

"When I left, six ships of the former Royal Navy, that had gone
over to Makann. Four fifteen-hundred-footers, same class as the
_Victrix_, and two thousand-footers. Then, there were four of
Andray Dunnan's ships--"

"You mean, he really is on Marduk?"

"I thought you knew that, and I was wondering how you'd found out.
Yes: _Fortuna_, _Bolide_, and two armed merchantmen, a Baldurbuilt
ship called the _Reliable_, and your friend _Honest Horris_."

"You didn't really believe Dunnan was on Marduk?" Boake Valkanhayn
asked.

"Actually, I didn't. I had to have some kind of a story, to talk
those people out of that crusade against Omfray of Glaspyth." He
left unmentioned Valkanhayn's own insistence on a plundering
expedition against Xochitl. "Now that it turns out to be true,
I'm not surprised. We decided, long ago, that Dunnan was planning
to raid Marduk. It appears that we underestimated him. Maybe he
was reading about Hitler, too. He wasn't planning any raid; he
was planning conquest, in the only way a great civilization can
be conquered--by subversion."

"Yes," Harkaman put in. "Five years ago, when Dunnan started this
programme, who was this Makann, anyhow?"

"Nobody," Bentrik said. "A crackpot agitator in Drepplin; he had
a coven of fellow-crackpots, who met in the back room of a saloon
and had their office in a cigar box. The next year, he had a suite
of offices and was buying time on a couple of telecasts. The year
after that, he had three telecast stations of his own, and
was holding rallies and meetings of thousands of people. And
so on, upward."

"Yes. Dunnan financed him, and moved in behind him, the same way
Makann moved in behind the King. And Dunnan will have him shot
the way he had Prince Edvard shot, and use the murder as a pretext
to liquidate his personal followers."

"And then he'll own Marduk. And we'll have the Mardukan navy coming
out of hyperspace on Tanith," Valkanhayn added. "So we go to Marduk
and smash him now, while he's still little enough to smash."

There had been a few who had wanted to do that about Hitler, and
a great many, later, who had regretted that it hadn't been done.

"The _Nemesis_, the _Corisande_, and the _Space Scourge_ for sure?"
he asked.

Harkaman and Valkanhayn agreed; Valkanhayn thought the _Viking's
Gift_ of Beowulf w