is accomplice arrived here."

"Is there anything worth staying for?" That seemed to be the reply
Harkaman was expecting. "Beside poultry, that is?"

Harkaman shook his head. "This is Captain Valkanhayn's planet; his
and Captain Spasso's. Let them be stuck with it."

"But, look; this is a good planet. There's a big local city, maybe
ten or twenty thousand people; temples and palaces and everything.
Then, there are a couple of old Federation cities. The one we're at
is in good shape, and there's a big spaceport. We've been doing
a lot of work on it. And the locals won't give you any trouble.
All they have is spears and a few crossbows and matchlocks--"

"I know. I've been here."

"Well, couldn't we make some kind of a deal?" Valkanhayn asked.
A mendicant whine was beginning to creep into his voice. "I can
get Garvan on screen and switch him over to your ship--"

"Well, we have a lot of Sword-World merchandise aboard," Harkaman
said. "We could make you good prices on some of it. How are you
fixed for robotic equipment?"

"But aren't you going to stay here?" Valkanhayn was almost in a
panic. "Listen, suppose I talk to Garvan, and we all get together
on this. Just excuse me for a minute--"

As soon as he had blanked out, Harkaman threw back his head and
guffawed as though he had just heard the funniest and bawdiest joke
in the galaxy. Trask, himself, didn't feel like laughing.

"The humor escapes me," he admitted. "We came here on a fools' errand."

"I'm sorry, Lucas." Harkaman was still shaking with mirth. "I know
it's a letdown, but that pair of chiseling chicken thieves! I could
almost pity them, if it weren't so funny." He laughed again. "You
know what their idea was?"

Trask shook his head. "Who are they?"

"What I called them, a couple of chicken thieves. They raid planets
like Set and Hertha and Melkarth, where the locals haven't anything
to fight with--or anything worth fighting for. I didn't know they'd
teamed up, but that figures. Nobody else would team up with either
of them. What must have happened, this story of Duke Angus' Tanith
adventure must have filtered out to them, and they thought that if
they got here first, I'd think it was cheaper to take them in than
run them out. I probably would have, too. They do have ships, of a
sort, and they do raid, after a fashion. But now, there isn't going
to be any Tanith base, and they have a no-good planet and they're
stuck with it."

"Can't they make an