ying about _if_ a bust came; now he
was worrying about what would happen _when_ it did. Another good
reason for wanting to get to Koshchei and getting a hypership built;
when the bust came, he and his father would want one, very badly.

In any case, it was time to begin getting an expedition ready for
Barathrum Spaceport. Quite a few of the new companies had large
contragravity craft, and the nascent Planetary Air Navy was
approaching a state of being. He wanted to get out there before
anybody else did.

Maybe if they got the hypership built soon enough, it would start a
second, sound boom that would cushion the crash of the present
speculative market when it came, as come it must.

He talked to Klem Zareff about borrowing a couple of the eighty-foot
gunboats. Zareff's attitude was automatically negative.

"We mustn't weaken our defense-perimeter; we'd be inviting disaster.
Why, this whole country in here is simply swarming with outlaws. They
fired on one of our gunboats, the _Werewolf_, yesterday."

He'd heard about that; somebody had launched a missile from the
ground, and the _Werewolf_ had detonated it with a counter-missile. It
had probably been some legitimate prospecting company who'd taken the
L. E. & S. craft for a pirate.

"And there was a battle down in the Devil's Pigpen day before
yesterday."

That had been outlaws; they had been annihilated by something calling
itself Seekers for Merlin, Ltd., whose stock was still skyrocketing on
the Exchange. He mentioned that.

"These other prospecting companies are doing a lot of our
outlaw-fighting for us, and as long as the country's full of small
independent parties, the outlaws go after them and leave us alone."

"Yes, and I have my doubts about a lot of these prospecting companies,
and a lot of the outlaws, too," Zareff said. "I think a lot of both
are Federation agents; they're waiting till we find Merlin, and then
they'll all jump us."

"Well," Conn adjusted his argument to the old Rebel's obsession, "I'll
admit that, as a possibility. If so, we'll need heavier weapons than
we have. This spaceport on Barathrum might be just the place to get
them."

"Yes. It might. Defense armament, and stored ships' weapons. Say, if
we grab that place and move all the heavy guns and missiles here, we
could stand off anybody." The thought of a fight with minions of the
Terran Federation seemed to have shaved ten years off his age in a
twinkling. "You take the _Lest