ar to Tanith?" Duke Angus asked. "I'm sure that's where he's
gone. He'd expect me to finish the other ship and equip her like the
_Enterprise_ and send her out; he'd want to get there first."

"I'd thought that Tanith would be the last place he'd go," Harkaman
said, "but this changes the whole outlook. He could have gone to Tanith."

"He's crazy, and you're trying to apply sane logic to him," Guatt
Kirbey said. "You're figuring what you'd do, and you aren't crazy.
Of course, I've had my doubts, at times, but--"

"Yes, he's crazy, and Captain Harkaman's allowing for that," Rovard
Grauffis said. "Dunnan hates all of us. He hates his Grace, here.
He hates Lord Lucas, and Sesar Karvall; of course, he may think
he killed both of them. He hates Captain Harkaman. So how could
he score all of us off at once? By taking Tanith."

"You say he was buying supplies and ammunition?"

"That's right. Gun ammunition, ship's missiles, and a lot of
ground-defense missiles."

"What was he buying them with? Trading machinery?"

"No. Gold."

"Yes. Lothar Ffayle found out that a lot of gold was transferred to
Dunnan from banks in Glaspyth and Didreksburg," Grauffis said. "He
got that aboard when he took the ship, evidently."

"All right," Trask said. "We can't be sure of anything, but we have
some reasons for thinking he went to Tanith, and that's more than
we have for any other planet in the Old Federation. I won't try to
estimate the odds against our finding him there, but they're a good
deal bigger anywhere else. We'll go there, first."

VII

The outside viewscreen, which had been vacantly gray for over
three thousand hours, was now a vertiginous swirl of color, the
indescribable color of a collapsing hyperspatial field. No two
observers ever saw it alike, and no imagination could vision the
actuality. Trask found that he was holding his breath. So, he
noticed, was Otto Harkaman, beside him. It was something, evidently,
that nobody got used to. Even Guatt Kirbey, the astrogator, was
sitting with his pipe clenched in his mouth, staring at the screen.

Then, in an instant, the stars, which had literally not been there
before, filled the screen with a blaze of splendor against the black
velvet backdrop of normal space. Dead in the center, brighter than
all the rest, Ertado's Star, the sun of Tanith, burned yellowly.
The light from it was ten hours old.

"Pretty good, Guatt," Harkaman said, picking up his cup.

"Good,