Free Hunt the Space-Witch! by Robert Silverberg

your dwelling. I’ve wasted too much time as it is and—”
    Dovirr leaped forward, grinning, and clamped one powerful hand on Lackresh’s wrist. Twisting downward, he forced the officer to release the neuron-whip. He grabbed the weapon and shoved Lackresh back a few feet.
    â€œGo,” Dovirr ordered hoarsely. “Get moving, Lackresh—or I’ll whip you right into the water!”
    â€œYou’re crazy!” Lackresh whispered.
    â€œMaybe so—but that’s not your affair. Go!” He tuned the aperture of the neuron-whip down to Low Intensity and flashed a stinging force-beam at the officer. Lackresh quivered under the blow, seemed almost ready to burst into tears—and then, recovering himself, he stared evenly at Dovirr.
    â€œYou’ve beaten me,” he said. “I’ll leave you here—and may the Seaborn pick your bones!”
    â€œI’ll worry about that,” Dovirr called laughingly, as Lackresh retreated. The officer scrambled without much dignity up the carven stone stairs that led from the piers to the city proper, and vanished into the tumult of winding streets that was Vythain.
    Dovirr turned and planted one foot on the very rim of the sea-wall. The sea rolled on—the endless sea, the sea that covered all of Earth save where the floating cities of the conquering Dhuchay’y broke the pathless waves.
    The Sea-Lord ship made for the harbor. Dovirr could almost hear the raucous chanting as the rough kings of the sea hove to, drawing back the oars. He narrowed his eyes. The black sail billowed, and the ship was close enough to count the banks of oars.
    There were four. It was a quadrireme—that meant the Thalassarch himself was coming to collect the gold! Almost sick with impatience, Dovirr waited for the ship to arrive.
    Gowym, Thalassarch of the Western Sea, was a tall, heavy man with the thick, brutal jaw of a ruthless leader. He wore a tunic of green wool—wool, the precious product of the floating city of Hicanthro—and affected a curling black beard that extended from his thin, hard lips to the middle of his chest.
    The Thalassarch stood six-feet-six; around him were his underlings, buskin-clad, all of them over six feet. They were a proud group. The Sea-Lord vessel lay at anchor in the suddenly quiet harbor at Vythain, while tethered to the side of the pier was Gowyn’s richly-carved dinghy. Dovirr, squatting down out of sight, squinted at the letters inscribed on the black ship’s prow: Garyun .
    He smiled. Dovirr Stargan, Master of the Ship Garyun. It was a worthy title, a noble ambition.
    The rulers of Vythain now came in solemn procession to greet the waiting Gowyn. Dovirr watched them scornfully; eight doddering oldsters, led by Councilman Morgrun. They advanced, bearing the coffers.
    Gold—gold laboriously dredged from the sea by the painstaking hydride process. A year’s work to reclaim a few handfuls of the precious metals—and the Thalassarch claimed what was his due, in payment for guarding the seas.
    Some said there were no pirates, that the Sea-Lords had created them as a convenient fiction for the purpose of keeping the floating cities subservient. That was as may be; it yet remained that ships did disappear, whether at pirate hand or Sea-Lord. And the inter-city commerce was vital to the existence of the floating cities.
    Vythain produced vegetables; Korduna, meat. From Hicanthro came treasured wool, from Dimnon rubber, from Lanobul machined goods. No city was self-sufficient; each of the floating communities that drifted on the great panthalassa, anchored securely to the sunken ancient world of lost Terra beneath the sea, required the aid of the Sea-Lords’ ships to survive.
    â€œThe tribute, sire,” Councilman Morgrun said unctuously. He knelt, soiling his costly robes in the dirt before Gowyn the Thalassarch. His seven confreres came forward, set the coffers of gold before the