Space Viking · Chapter 12 (2/2)

That was true. What few troops had been left behind, and the police, were unable to cope with the mobs that were pillaging in the wake of the Space Vikings. Everybody seemed to be trying to grab what he could and let the Vikings be blamed for it. He had been able to keep his own people in order. There had been at least a dozen cases of rape and wanton murder, and the offenders had been promptly hanged. None of their shipmates, not even the Space Scourge company, seemed resentful. They felt the culprits had deserved what they’d gotten; not for what they’d done to the locals, but for disobeying orders.

A few troops had been flown in from Stolgoland by the time they had gotten their vehicles stowed and were lifting out. They didn’t seem to be making much headway. Harkaman, who had gotten his load of microbooks stowed and was at the command desk, laughed heartily.

“I don’t know what Pedrosan’ll do. Gehenna, I don’t even know what I’d do, if I’d gotten myself into a mess like that. He’ll probably bring half his army back, leave the other half in Stolgoland, and lose both. Suppose we drop in, in about three or four years, just out of curiosity. If we make twenty percent of what we did this time, the trip would pay for itself.”

After they went into hyperspace and had the ship secured, the parties lasted three Galactic standard days, and nobody was at all sober. Harkaman was drooling over the mass of historical material he had found. Spasso was jubilant. Nobody could call this chicken-stealing. He kept repeating that as long as he was able to say anything. Khepera, he conceded, had been. Lousy two or three million stellars; poo!