of planetbusters and hellburners and annihilators." He lowered his
voice. "Captain Nichols and I were going to fix up something that'd
blow the _Harriet Barne_ up as soon as he got her out of atmosphere."

He talked for a while to Jacquemont and his daughter Sylvie, and to
Nichols and the chief engineer, whose name was Vibart. There was
evidently nothing else at the spaceport of which a spaceship could be
built, but there were foundries and rolling-mills and a
collapsed-matter producer. The _Harriet Barne_ was gutted, half torn
down, and half armored with new collapsium-plated sheet steel. It
might be possible to continue the work on her and take her to space.

Then the two scows floated over the top of the pit and began letting
down. They got the prisoners into them, the combat-effective men in
one and the women and children in the other. At the top, he took over
the remaining jeep, getting Jacquemont, his daughter, and the two
contragravityship officers in with him.

"Up to the top," Jacquemont said. "Take the middle passage, and turn
right at the next intersection."

As they approached the section where the pirates stored their loot,
the sound of guns and explosions grew louder, and they began picking
up radio and screen signals, all of which were scrambled and
incomprehensible. The pirates, in different positions, talking among
themselves. With all that, it ought to be safe to use their own
communication equipment; nobody would notice it.

The treasure room looked like a giant pack rat's nest. Cases and
crates of merchandise, bales, boxes, barrels. Machinery. Household and
industrial robots. The prisoners piled out of the two scows and began
rummaging. Somebody found a case of cigarettes and smashed it open; in
a moment, cartons were being tossed around and opened, and everybody
was smoking. The pirates evidently hadn't issued any tobacco rations
to their prisoners.

And they found arms and ammunition, began ripping open cases, handing
out rifles, pistols, submachine guns. The prisoners grabbed them even
more hungrily than the cigarettes. Sylvie Jacquemont took charge of
the ammunition; she had three men opening boxes for her, while she
passed out boxes of cartridges and made sure that everybody had
ammunition to fit their weapons. A ragged man who might have been a
farm-tramp or a rich planter before his capture had gotten a bale of
cloth open and was tossing rags around while the chief engineer
inspected we