ive. Now the little point on which all of it had
rested was gone.

"That was another Lucas Trask, Rovard. He's dead, now."

VI

Grauffis excused himself to make a screen call and then returned to
excuse himself again. Evidently Duke Angus had dropped whatever he
was doing as soon as he heard what his henchman had to tell him.
Harkaman was silent until after he was out of the room, then said:

"Lord Trask, this is a wonderful thing for me. It's not been
pleasant to be a shipless captain living on strangers' bounty.
I'd hate, though, to have you think, some time, that I'd advanced
my own fortunes at the expense of yours."

"Don't worry about that. If anybody's being taken advantage of,
you are. I need a space-captain, and your misfortune is my own
good luck."

Harkaman started to pack tobacco into his pipe. "Have you ever been
off Gram, at all?" he asked.

"A few years at the University of Camelot, on Excalibur. Otherwise, no."

"Well, have you any conception of the sort of thing you're setting
yourself to?" The Space Viking snapped his lighter and puffed.
"You know, of course, how big the Old Federation is. You know the
figures, that is, but do they mean anything to you? I know they
don't to a good many spacemen, even. We talk glibly about ten to the
hundredth power, but emotionally we still count, 'One, Two, Three,
Many.' A ship in hyperspace logs about a light-year an hour. You
can go from here to Excalibur in thirty hours. But you could send
a radio message announcing the birth of a son, and he'd be a father
before it was received. The Old Federation, where you're going to
hunt Dunnan, occupies a space-volume of two hundred billion cubic
light-years. And you're hunting for one ship and one man in that.
How are you going to do it, Lord Trask?"

"I haven't started thinking about how; all I know is that I have to
do it. There are planets in the Old Federation where Space Vikings
come and go; raid-and-trade bases, like the one Duke Angus planned
to establish on Tanith. At one or another of them, I'll pick up word
of Dunnan, sooner or later."

"We'll hear where he was a year ago, and by the time we get there,
he'll be gone for a year and a half to two years. We've been raiding
the Old Federation for over three hundred years, Lord Trask. At present,
I'd say there are at least two hundred Space Viking ships in operation.
Why haven't we raided it bare long ago? Well, that's the answer:
distance and voyag