It was an automatic pistol, with a belt and holster. The leather was bisonoid-hide; the buckle of the belt was an oval enameled with a crescent, pale blue on black. The pistol was a plain 10-mm military model with grooved plastic grips; on the receiver it bore the stamp of the House of Hoylbar, the firearms manufacturers of Glaspyth. Evidently it was one of the arms Duke Omfray had provided for Andray Dunnan's original mercenary company.
"Tetragrammaton?" He glanced over to the Big Board; there was no previous report from that planet. "How long ago?"
"I'd say about three hundred hours. I came from there directly, less than two hundred and fifty hours. Dunnan's ships had left the planet three days before I got there."
That was practically sizzling hot. Well, something like that had to happen, sooner or later. The Space Viking was asking him if he knew what sort of a place Tetragrammaton was.
Neobarbarian, trying to recivilize in a crude way. Small population, concentrated on one continent; farming and fisheries. A little heavy industry, in a small way, at a couple of towns. They had some nuclear power, introduced a century or so ago by traders from Marduk, one of the really civilized planets. They still depended on Marduk for fissionables; their export product was an abominably-smelling vegetable oil which furnished the base for delicate perfumes, and which nobody was ever able to synthesize properly.
"I heard they had steel mills in operation, now," the half-breed Space Viking said. "It seems that somebody on Rimmon has just re-invented the railroad, and they need more steel than they can produce for themselves. I thought I'd raid Tetragrammaton for steel and trade it on Rimmon for a load of heaven-tea. When I got there, though, the whole planet was in a mess; not raiding, but plain wanton destruction. The locals were just digging themselves out of it when I landed. Some of them, who didn't think they had anything at all left to lose, gave me a fight. I captured a few of them, to find out what had happened. One of them had that pistol; he said he'd taken it off a Space Viking he'd killed. The ships that raided them were the Enterprise and the Yo-Yo. I knew you'd want to hear about it. I got some of the locals' stories on tape."
"Well, thank you. I'll want to hear those tapes. Now, you say you want steel?"
"Well, I haven't any money. That's why I was going to raid Tetragrammaton."
"Nifflheim with the money; your cargo's paid for already. This," he said, touching the pistol, "and whatever's on the tapes."
