e-time. You know, Dunnan could die of old age--which
is not a usual cause of death among Space Vikings--before you caught up
with him. And your youngest ship's-boy could die of old age before he
found out about it."

"Well, I can go on hunting for him till I die, then. There's nothing
else that means anything to me."

"I thought it was something like that. I won't be with you, all your
life. I want a ship of my own, like the _Corisande_, that I lost on
Durendal. Some day, I'll have one. But till you can command your own
ship, I'll command her for you. That's a promise."

Some note of ceremony seemed indicated. Summoning a robot, he had it
pour wine for them, and they pledged each other.

Rovard Grauffis had recovered his aplomb by the time he returned
accompanied by the Duke. If Angus had ever lost his, he gave no
indication of it. The effect on everybody else was literally seismic.
The generally accepted view was that Lord Trask's reason had been
unhinged by his tragic loss; there might, he conceded, be more than
a crumb of truth in that. At first, his cousin Nikkolay raged at him
for alienating the barony from the family, and then he learned that
Duke Angus was appointing him vicar-baron and giving him Traskon
New House for his residence. Immediately he began acting like one
at the death-bed of a rich grandmother. The Wardshaven financial
and industrial barons, whom he had known only distantly, on the
other hand, came flocking around him, offering assistance and
hailing him as the savior of the duchy. Duke Angus' credit, almost
obliterated by the loss of the _Enterprise_, was firmly
re-established, and theirs with it.

There were conferences at which lawyers and bankers argued
interminably; he attended a few at first, found himself completely
uninterested, and told everybody so. All he wanted was a ship; the
best ship possible, as soon as possible. Alex Gorram had been the
first to be notified; he had commenced work on the unfinished
sister-ship of the _Enterprise_ immediately. Until he was strong
enough to go to the shipyard himself, he watched the work on the
two-thousand-foot globular skeleton by screen, and conferred either
in person or by screen with engineers and shipyard executives. His
rooms at the ducal palace were converted, almost overnight, from
sickrooms to offices. The doctors, who had recently been urging
him to find new interests and activities, were now warning of the
dangers of overexertion. H