comes the _Starhopper_ again!"

"Tell him to wait a moment; we have troubles," he said.

_Nemesis_ and _Starhopper_ sledge-hammered each other and parried
with counter-missiles, and then, quite unexpectedly, the
_Starhopper_ went to Em-See-Square.

There was an awful lot of Em being converted to Ee off Marduk,
today. Including Manfred Ravallo; that grieved him. Manfred was
a good man, and a good friend. He had a girl in Rivington....
Nifflheim, there were eight hundred good men aboard the _Black
Star_, and most of them had girls who'd wait in vain for them on
Tanith. Well, what had Otto Harkaman said, so long ago, on Gram?
Something about old age not being a usual cause of death among
Space Vikings, wasn't it?

Then he remembered that Gompertz of the _Grendelsbane_ was trying
to get him. He told young Count Steven to switch him over.

"We just lost one of our Mardukans," Gompertz told him, in his
staccato Beowulf accent. "I think she was the _Challenger_. The ship
that got her looks like the _Banshee_; I'm turning to engage her."

"Which way; west around the planet? Be right with you, captain."

XXVII

It was like finishing a word puzzle. You sit staring at it, looking
for more spaces to print letters into, and suddenly you realize
that there are no more, that the puzzle is done. That was how the
space-battle of Marduk, the Battle _off_ Marduk, ended. Suddenly
there were no more colored fire-globes opening and fading, no more
missiles coming, no more enemy ships to throw missiles at. Now it
was time to take a count of his own ships, and then begin thinking
about the Battle _on_ Marduk.

The _Black Star_ was gone. So was RMNS _Challenger_, and RMNS
_Conquistador_. _Space Scourge_ was badly hammered; worse than after
the Beowulf raid, Boake Valkanhayn said. The _Viking's Gift_ was
heavily damaged, too, and so was the _Corisande_, and so, from the
looks of the damage board, was the _Nemesis_. And three ships were
missing--the three independent Space Vikings, _Harpy_, _Curse of
Cagn_, and Roger-fan-Morvill Esthersan's _Damnthing_.

Prince Bentrik frowned over that. "I can't think that all three
of those ships would have been destroyed, without anybody seeing
it happen."

"Neither can I. But I can think that all those ships broke out of
the battle together and headed in for the planet. They didn't come
here to help liberate Marduk, they came here to fill their cargo
holds. I only hope the people they'