"What sort of a captain is this Teodor Vaghn?" he asked.
"A good one," Harkaman said promptly. "He has a nasty streak—sadistic—but he knows his business and he has a good ship and a well-trained crew. You think he and Dunnan have teamed up?"
"Don't you? I think, now that he has a base, Dunnan is getting a fleet together."
"He'll know we're after him by now," Vann Larch said. "And he knows where we are, and that puts him one up on us."
XVI
So Andray Dunnan was haunting him again. Tiny bits of information came in—Dunnan's ship had been on Hoth, on Nergal, selling loot. Now he sold for gold or platinum, and bought little, usually arms and ammunition. Apparently his base, wherever it was, was fully self-sufficient. It was certain, too, that Dunnan knew he was being hunted. One Space Viking who had talked with him quoted him as saying: "I don't want any trouble with Trask, and if he's smart he won't look for any with me." This made him all the more positive that somewhere Dunnan was building strength for an attack on Tanith. He made it a rule that there should always be at least two ships in orbit off Tanith in addition to the Lamia, which was on permanent patrol, and he installed more missile-launching stations both on the moon and on the planet.
There were three ships bearing the Ward swords and atom-symbol, and a fourth building on Gram. Count Lionel of Newhaven was building one of his own, and three big freighters shuttled across the three thousand light-years between Tanith and Gram. Sesar Karvall, who had never recovered from his wounds, had died; Lady Lavina had turned the barony and the business over to her brother, Burt Sandrasan, and gone to live on Excalibur. The shipyard at Rivington was finished, and now they had built the landing-legs of Harkaman's Corisande II, and were putting up the skeleton.
And they were trading with Amaterasu, now. Pedrosan Pedro had been overthrown and put to death by General Dagró Ector during the disorders following the looting of Eglonsby; the troops left behind in Stolgoland had mutinied and made common cause with their late enemies. The two nations were in an uneasy alliance, with several other nations combining against them, when the Nemesis and the Space Scourge returned and declared peace against the whole planet. There was no fighting; everybody knew what had happened to Stolgoland and Eglonsby. In the end, all the governments of Amaterasu joined in a loose agreement to get the mines reopened and resume production of gadolinium, and to share in the fissionables being imported in exchange.