WARNING: BUCCANEERS IN ORBIT!
Because Bron Hoddan was a serious electronics
engineer, he didn't want any part of his particular planetary
heritage. For he was from Zan — and Zan's only occupation was spaceship piracy!
So Bron went to Walden, the most civilized
planet of them all. His first step to making himself a good reputation was to
invent a machine that would save the government millions.
But
when instead he was seized and jailed as the most unspeakable criminal in
Walden's history, he realized that there was only one way open to remedy this
"civilized" disaster. And that was by putting into use some of Zan's
old-fashioned buccaneering techniques!
Turn this book over for second complete novel
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Bron Hoddan
He knew what was good for him, but not what
was bad. Nedda
She may have been sweet, but she wasn't nice.
Thai
His
stupidity had a purpose — self-interest.
Don loris
This
sneaky character stopped creeping when he met a bigger sneak.
Lady
Fan!
No one could afford to ignore her, except the
man she loved.
Derec
Because he was Bron's best friend, he had to
betray
him,
THE PIRATES
OF ZAN
by
Murray Leinster
ACE
BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
THE PIRATES OF ZAN Copyright ©, 1959, by Ace Books, Inc. All Rights Reserved
THE MUTANT WEAPON
Copyright
©, 1959, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
It
had not been Impulsive
action when Bron Hoddan had started for the planet Walden by stowing away on a
police ship that had come to his native planet to hang all his relatives. He'd
planned it long before. Getting to Walden had been his long-cherished dream. As
it had turned out, his relatives had not been hanged. This they had avoided
with their usual technique of acting aggrieved and innocent. They had given
proof that they were simple people leading blameless lives. They had made
their would-be executioners feel ashamed and apologetic. And, as soon as the
strangers had left, Bron knew that these "simple, blameless" folk had
returned to their normal way of life, which was piracy.
Bron's
stow-away ride had only taken him partway to Walden. It had taken him a long
time to earn the rest of his passage, since he had to travel from one solar
system to another. But he had held to his idea. Walden was the most civilized
planet in that part of the galaxy. On Walden Bron had intended, (a) to achieve splendid
things as an electronic engineer, (b) to grow satisfyingly rich, (c) to many a
delightful girl, and (d) end his life with the reputation of being a great
man.
He
had spent his first two years on Walden trying to achieve the first of his
objectives.
And
it was only the night before the police broke into his room, that the
accomplishment of his first objective seemed imminent.
He
had gone to bed and slept soundly. He was calmly sure that his ambitions were
about to be realized. At practically any instant his brilliance would be
discovered and he'd be well-to-do; his friend Derec would admire him, and even
Nedda would probably decide to mar' , him right away.
Bron was happy to be on Walden, it was f line world.
Outside
the capital city was the spaceport that received shipments of luxuries and raw
materials from halfway across the galaxy. Its landing-grid reared skyward and
tapped the planet's ionosphere for power with which to hoist ships to
clear-space and pluck down others from emptiness. There was commerce and
manufacturing, wealth and culture, and Walden modestly admitted that its
standard of living was the highest in the Nurmi cluster. Its citizens had no
reason to worry about anything but a supply of tranquilizers to enable them to
stand the boredom of their lives.
Even
Hoddan was satisfied, as of the moment. On his native planet there wasn't even
a landing-grid. The few battered ships the inhabitants owned had to take off
precariously on rockets. They came back blackened and more battered and sometimes
they were accompanied by great hulls whose crews and passengers were
mysteriously missing. These extra ships had to be landed on their emergency
rockets, and of course couldn't take off again, but they always vanished
quickly just the same. And the people of Zan, on which Hoddan had been born,
always affected innocent indignation when embattled spacecraft came and
furiously demanded that they be produced.
There
were some people who said that all the inhabitants of Zan were space-pirates
and ought to be hanged; compared with such a planet, Walden seemed a very fine
place indeed. So on a certain night Bron Hoddan went confidently to bed and
slept soundly until three hours after sunrise. Then the police broke in his
door.
They
made a tremendous crash in doing it, but they were in great haste. The noise
waked Hoddan, and he blinked his eyes open. Before he could stir, four
uniformed men grabbed him and dragged him out of bed. They searched him frantically
for anything like a weapon. Then they stood him against a wall with two
stun-pistols on him, and the main body of cops began to tear his room apart. He
could not guess what they were looking for. Then his friend Derec came
hesitantly to the door and looked at him remorsefully. He wrung his hands.
"I had to do it, Bron," he said
agitatedly. "I couldn't help doing it!"
"What's
happened?" asked Hoddan blankly. "What's this about?"
Derec said miserably:
"You
killed someone, Bron. An innocent man! You didn't mean to, but you did . . . it's terrible!"
"Me, kill somebody! That's ridiculous!" protested Hoddan.
"They
found him outside the power-house," said Derec bitterly. "Outside the
Mid-Continent station that you—"
"Mid-Continent?
Oh!" Hoddan was relieved. It was amazing how much he was relieved. He'd
had a terrible fear for a moment that somebody might have found out he'd been
born and raised on Zan. This would have ruined everything. It was almost
impossible to imagine, but still it was a great relief to find out he was only
suspected of a murder he hadn't committed. And he was only suspected because
his first great achievement as an electronic engineer had been discovered.
"They found the thing at Mid-Continent, eh? But I didn't kill anybody. And
there's no harm done. The thing's been running two weeks, now. I was going to
the Power Board in a couple of days." He addressed the police. "I
know what's up, now," he said. "Give me some clothes and let's go get
this straightened out."
A cop waved a stun-pistol at him.
"One word out of line, and it's pfft!"
"Don't
talk, Bronl" said Derec in panic. "Just keep quietl It's bad enough! Don't make it worse."
A
cop handed Hoddan a garment. He put it on. He became aware that the cop was
scared. So was Derec. Everybody in the room was scared except himself. Hoddan found
himself incredulous. People didn't act this way on
super-civilized, highest-peak-of-culture Walden.
"Who'd I kill?"
he demanded. "And why?"
"You
wouldn't know him, Bron," said Derec mournfully. "You didn't mean to
do murder. But it's only luck that you killed only him instead of
everybody"
"Evert/hodv!" Hoddan
stared.
"No more talk!" snapped the nearest
cop. His teeth were chattering. "Keep quiet or else!"
Hoddan shut up. His clothing was inspected
and then handed to him. He dressed while the cops completed the examination of
his room. They were insanely thorough, though Hoddan hadn't the least idea what
they might be looking for. When they began to rip up the floor and pull down
the walls, the other cops led him outside.
There
was a fleet of police trucks in the shaded street. They piled him in one, and
four cops climbed after him, keeping stun-pistols trained on him during the
maneuver. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Derec climbing into another
truck. The entire fleet sped away. The whole affair had been taken with
enormous seriousness by the police. Traffic was detoured from their route. When
they swung up on an elevated expressway, there was no other vehicle in sight.
They raced on downtown.
They
rolled off the expressway, then down a cleared
avenue. Hoddan recognized the Detention Building. Its gate swung wide. The
truck he rode in went inside. The gate closed. The other trucks went away,
rapidly. Hoddan alighted and saw that the grim, gray wall of the courtyard had a surprising number of guards mustered to sweep the open space with
gunfire if anybody made a suspicious movement.
He
shook his head. Nobody had mentioned Zan, so this simply didn't make sense. His
conscience was wholly clear except about his native planet. This was insanityl
He went curiously into the building and into the hearing-room. His guards
surrendered him to courtroom guards and went away with almost hysterical haste.
Nobody wanted to be near him.
Hoddan
stared about. The courtroom was highly informal. The justice sat at an ordinary
desk. There were comfortable chairs. The air was clean. The atmosphere was that
of a conference room in which reasonable men could discuss differences of
opinion in calm leisure. Only on a world like Walden would a police prisoner be
dealt with in such surroundings.
Derec
came in by another door, with him a man Hoddan recognized as the attorney who'd
represented Nedda's father in certain past interviews. There'd been no mention
of Nedda at these meetings; it had been strictly business.
Nedda's father was chairman of the Power Board, a director of the Planetary
Association of Manufacturers, a committeeman of the Bankers' League, and he
held other important posts. Hoddan had been thrown out of his offices several
times. He now scowled ungraciously at the lawyer who had ordered him thrown
out. He saw Derec wringing his hands.
An agitated man in court
uniform came to his side.
"I'm
the citizen's representative," he said uneasily. "I'm to look after
your interests. Do you want a personal
lawyer?"
"Why?" asked
Hoddan. He felt splendidly confident.
"The
charges . . . Do you wish a psychiatric examination, claiming no
responsibility?" asked the representative anxiously. 'It might—it might
really be best."
"I'm not crazy,"
said Hoddan.
The citizen's representative
spoke to the justice.
"Sir,
the accused waives psychiatric examination, without prejudice to a later claim
of no responsibility."
Nedda's
father's attorney watched with bland eyes. Hoddan said impatiently:
"Let's
get started so this will make some sensel I know what I've done. Now, what
monstrous crime am I charged with?"
"The charges against you," said the
justice politely, "are that on the night of three, twenty-seven last, you,
Bron Hoddan, entered the fenced-in grounds surrounding the Mid-Continent power
receptor station. It is charged that you passed two no-admittance signs. You
arrived at a door marked 'Authorized Personnel Only.' You
broke the lock of that door. Inside, you smashed the power receptor. This power
receptor converts broadcast power for industrial units
by which two hundred thousand men are employed. You smashed the receptor,
imperiling their employment." The justice paused. "Do you wish to
challenge any of these charges as contrary to fact?"
The citizen's representative said hurriedly:
"You have the right to deny any of them,
of course."
"Why
should I?" asked Hoddan. "I did them! But what's this about my
killing somebody? Why'd they tear my place apart looking for something? Who'd I
kill, anyhow?"
"Don't bring that upl" pleaded the
citizen's representative. "Please don't bring that upl You
will be much, much better off if that is not mentioned 1"
"But I didn't kill
anybody!" insisted Hoddan.
"Nobody's
said a word about it," said the citizen's representative, jittering.
"Let's not have it in the record! The record has to be published!" He
turned to the justice. "Sir, the facts are conceded as stated."
"Then,"
said the justice to Hoddan, "do you choose to
answer these charges at this time?"
"Why not?" asked
Hoddan. "Of coursel"
"Proceed," said
the justice.
Hoddan
drew a deep breath. He didn't understand why the man's death, charged to him,
was not mentioned. He didn't like the scared way everybody looked at him.
"About
the burglary business," he said confidently. "What did I do in the
power station before I smashed the receptor?"
The justice looked at
Nedda's father's attorney.
"Why,"
said that gentleman amiably," speaking for the Power Board as complainant,
before you smashed the standard receptor you connected a device of your own
design across the power leads. It was a receptor unit of an apparently
original pattern. It appears to have been a very interesting device."
"I'd
offered it to the Power Board," said Hoddan, with
satisfaction, "and I was thrown out. You had me thrown out! What did it
do?"
"It
substituted for the receptor you smashed," said the attorney. "It
continued to supply some two hundred million kilowatts for the Mid-Continent
industrial area. In fact, your crime was only discovered because the original
receptor had to be regularly serviced. Being set to draw peak power at all
times, the unused power is wasted by burning carbon. Your device adjusted to
the load and did not bum carbon. So when the attendants went to replace the
supposedly burned carbon and found it unused, they discovered what you had
done."
"My receptor saved carbon, then,"
said Hoddan triumphantly. "That means it saved money. I saved the Power
Board plenty while it was connected! They wouldn't believe I could. Now they
know. I did!" The justice said:
"Irrelevant.
You have the charges. In legal terms, you are charged with burglary,
trespassing, breaking and entering, unlawful entry, malicious mischief, breach
of the peace, sabotage, and endangering the employment of citizens. Discuss
the charges, please!"
"I'm
telling you!" protested Hoddan. "I offered the thing to the Power
Board. They said they were satisfied with what they had and wouldn't listen. So
I proved what they wouldn't listen tol That receptor
saved them ten thousand credits' worth of carbon a week! It'll save half a
million credits a year in every power station that uses it! If I know the Power
Board, they're going right on using it while they arrest me for putting it to
workl"
The courtroom, in its entirety, visibly
shivered.
"Aren't they?" demanded Hoddan
belligerently.
"They
are not," said the justice, tight-lipped. "It has been smashed and
melted down."
"Then
they'll look at my patents!" insisted Hoddan. "It's stupid—"
"The
patent records," said the justice with Unnecessary
vehemence," have been destroyed. Your possessions have been searched for
copies. Nobody will ever look at your drawings again—not if they are
wise!"
"Wha-a-at?" demanded Hoddan
incredulously. "Wha-a-at?"
"I
will amend the record of this hearing before it is published," said the
justice shakily. "I should not have made that comment. I ask permission of
the citizen's representative to amend."
"Granted,"
said the representative before he had finished. The justice said quickly:
"The
charges have been admitted by the defendant Since the
complainant does not wish punitive action taken against him—"
"He'd be silly if he did," grunted
Hoddan. "—and merely wishes security against repetition of the offense, I
rule that the defendant may be released upon posting suitable bond for good
behavior in the future. That is, he will be required to post bond which will be
forfeited if he ever again enters a power station enclosure, passes
no-trespassing signs, ignores no-admittance signs, and-or smashes apparatus
belonging to the complainant."
"All
right," said Hoddan indignantly. "I'll raise it somehow. If they're too stupid to save money . . . How much bond?"
"The
court will take it under advisement and will notify the defendant within the
customary two hours," said the justice at top speed. He swallowed.
"The defendant will be kept in close confinement until the bond is posted.
The hearing is ended."
He
did not look at Hoddan. Courtroom guards put stun-pistols against Hoddan's body
and ushered him out.
Presently
his friend Derec came to see him in the tool-steel cell in which he had been
placed. Derec looked white and stricken.
"I'm
in trouble because I'm your friend, Bron," he said miserably, "but I
asked permission to explain things to you. After all, I caused your arrest. I
urged you not to connect up your receptor without permission I"
"I
know," growled Hoddan, "but there are some people so stupid you have
to show them everything. I didn't realize that there are people so stupid you
can't show them anything!"
"You
showed something you didn't intend," said Derec miserably. "Bron, I—I
have to tell you. When they went to charge the carbon bins at the power
station, they—they found a dead man, Bron!"
Hoddan sat up.
"What's that?"
"Your
machine . . . killed him. He was outside the building at the foot of a tree.
Your receptor killed him through a stone wall! It broke his bones and killed
him." Derec wrung his hands. "At some stage of power-drain your
receptor makes death rays!"
Hoddan
had had a good many shocks today. When Derec arrived, he'd been incredulously
comparing the treatment he'd received and the panic about him, with the charges
made against him in court. They didn't add up. This new, previously
undisclosed item left him speechless. He goggled at Derec, who fairly wept.
"Don't
you see?" asked Derec pleadingly. "That's why I had to tell the police it was you. We can't
have death raysl The police can't let anybody go free
who knows how to make theml This is a wonderful world, but there are lots of
crackpots. They'll do anything I The police daren't
let it even be suspected that death rays can be made! That's why you weren't
charged with murder. People all over the planet would start doing research, and
sooner or later would come up with what you discovered. With such a tool in the
hands of the crackpots, life would be cheap, indeed! For the sake of our
civilization your secret has to be suppressed—and you with it. It's terrible
for you, Bron, but there's nothing else to do!"
Hoddan said dazedly:
"But I only have to
put up a bond to be released!"
"The
justice," said Derec tearfully, "didn't name it in court, because it
would have to be published. But he's set your bond at fifty million credits!
Nobody could raise that for you, Bron! And with the reason for it what it is,
you'll never be able to get it reduced!"
"But
anybody who looks at the plans of the receptor will know it can't make death
raysl" protested Hoddan blankly.
"Nobody
will look," said Derec tearfully. "Anybody who knows how to make it
will have to be locked up. They checked the patent examiners. They've
forgotten. Nobody dared examine the device you had working. They'd be jailed if
they understood itl Nobody will ever risk learning how to make death rays—not
on a world as civilized as this, with so many people anxious to kill everybody
else. You have to be locked up forever, Bron. You have to!"
Hoddan said inadequately:
"Oh."
"I
beg your forgiveness for having you arrested," said Derec in absymal
sorrow, "but I couldn't do anything but tell . . ."
Hoddan
stared at his cell wall. Derec went away weeping. He was an admirable,
honorable, not-too-bright young man who had been Hoddan's only friend.
Hoddan
stared blankly at nothing. As an event, it was preposterous, and yet it was
wholly natural. When in the course of human events somebody does something that
puts somebody else to the trouble of adjusting the numb routine of his life,
the adjustee is resentful. The richer he is and the more satisfactory he
considers his life, the more resentful he is at any
change, however minute. And of all the changes which offend people, changes
which require them to think are most disliked. The high brass on the-Power
Board considered that everything was moving smoothly. There was no need to
consider new devices. Hoddan's drawings and plans had simply never been
bothered with, because there was no recognized need for them. And when he
forced acknowledgement that his receptor worked, the unwelcome demonstration
was highly offensive in itself. It was natural, it was inevitable, it should Tiave been infallibly certain that any possible
excuse for not thinking about the receptor would be seized upon. And a single
dead man found near the operating demonstrator . . . Now, if one assumed that
the demonstrator had killed him, why one could react emotionally, feel vast
indignation, frantically command that the device and its inventor be suppressed
together—and then go on living happily without doing any thinking or making any
other change in anything at all.
Hoddan
was appalled. Now that it had happened, he could see that it had to. The world
of Walden was at the very peak of human culture. It had arrived at so splendid
a plane of civilization that nobody could imagine any improvement; unless a
better tranquilizer could be designed to make the boredom more endurable.
Nobody can want anything he doesn't know exists, or that he can't imagine to exist. On Walden nobody wanted anything, unless it was
relief from the tedium of ultra-civilized life. Hoddan's electronic device did
not fill a human need only a technical-one. It had therefore, no value that would
make anybody hospitable to it.
And
Hoddan would spend his life in jail for failing to recognize this fact soon
enough.
He revolted immediately. He wanted something! He wanted out. He set about designing his escape. He
put his mind to work on the problem, simply and directly. And this time he
would not make the mistake of furnishing other people with what they did not
want. He took the view that he must seem, at
least, to give his captors and jailers and—as he saw it—his persecutors, what
they wanted.
They
would be pleased to have him dead, provided their consciences were clear. He
built on that as a foundation.
Very
shortly before nightfall he performed certain cryptic actions. He unraveled
threads from his shirt and put them aside. There would be a vision-lens in the
ceiling of his cell, and somebody would certainly notice what he did. He turned
on a light. He put the threads in his mouth, set fire to his mattress, and lay
down calmy upon it. The mattress was of excellent quality. It would smell very
badly as it smoldered.
It
did. Lying flat, he kicked convulsively for a few seconds. He looked like
somebody who had taken poison. Then he waited.
It was a long time before his jailer came
down the corridor, dragging a fire hose. Hoddan had been correct in assuming
that he was watched. His actions had been those of a man who'd anticipated a
possible need to commit suicide, and who'd had poison in a part of his shirt
for convenience. The jailer did not hurry, because if the inventor of a death
ray committed suicide, everybody would feel better. Hoddan had been allowed a
reasonable time in which to die.
He
seemed impressively dead when the jailer opened his cell door, dragged him out,
removed the so-far-unscorched other furniture, and set up the fire hose to make
an aerosol fog which would put out the fire. He went back to the corridor to
wait for the fire to be extinguished.
Hoddan
crowned him with a stool, feeling an unexpected satisfaction in the act. The
jailer collapsed.
He
did not carry keys. The system was for him to be let out of this corridor by a
guard outside. Hoddan took the fire hose. He turned its nozzle back to make a
stream instead of a mist. Water came out at four hundred pounds pressure. He
smashed open the corridor door with it. He strolled through and bowled over a
startled guard with the same stream. He took the guard's stun-pistol. He washed
open another door leading to the courtyard. He marched out, washed down two
guards who sighted him, and took the trouble to flush them across the pavement
until they wedged in a drain opening. Then he thoughtfully reset the hose to
fill the courtyard with fog, climbed into the driver's seat of a parked truck,
started it, and smashed through the gateway to the street outside. Behind him,
the courtyard filled with dense white mist.
He
was free, but only temporarily. Around him lay the capital city of Walden—the
highest civilization in this part of the galaxy. Trees lined its ways. Towers
rose splendidly toward the skies, with thousands of less ambitious structures
in between. There were open squares and parkways and malls, and it did not
smell like a city at all. But he wasn't loose three minutes before the
communicator in the truck squawked the all-police alarm for him.
It
was to be expected. All the city would shortly be one
enormous man trap, set to catch Bron Hoddan. There was only one place on the planet,
in fact, where he could be safe. And ironically, he wouldn't have been safe
there if he'd been officially charged with murder. But since the police had
tactfully failed to mention murder, he could get at least breathing-time by
taking refuge in the Interstellar Embassy.
He
headed for it, bowling along splendidly. The police truck hummed on its way
until the great open square before the embassy became visible. The embassy was
not that of a single planet, of course. By pure necessity every human-inhabited
world was independent of all others, but the Interstellar Diplomatic Service
represented humanity at large upon each individual globe. Its ambassador was
the only person who Hoddan could even imagine as listening to him, and that
because he came from off-planet, as Hoddan did. B^ut he mainly counted upon a
breathing-space in the embassy, during which to make more plans as yet
unformed and unformable. He began, though, to see some virtues in the simple,
lawless, piratical world on which he had spent his childhood.
Another
police truck rushed frantically toward him down a side street. Stun-pistols
made little pinging noises against the body of his vehicle. He put on more
speed, but the other truck overtook him. It ranged alongside, its occupants
bellowing stern commands to halt. And then, just before they swerved to force
him off the highway, he swung instead and they crashed thunderously. One of his own wheels collapsed. He drove on with the crumpled
wheel producing an up-and-down motion that threatened to make him seasick. Then
he heard yelling behind him. The cops had piled out of the truck and were in
pursuit on foot.
The
tall, stone wall of the embassy was visible, now, beyond the monument to the
first settlers of Walden. He leaped to the ground and ran. Stun-pistol bolts, a
little beyond their effective range, stung like fire. They spurred him on.
The
gate of the embassy was closed. He bolted around the comer and scrambled up the
conveniently rugged stones of the wall. He was well aloft before the cops
spotted him. Then they fired at him industriously and the charges crackled all
around him.
But he'd reached the top and had both arms
over the parapet before a charge hit his legs and paralyzed them. He hung fast,
swearing at his bad luck.
Then
hands grasped his wrists. A white-haired man appeared on the other side of the
parapet. He took a good, solid grip, and heaved. He drew Hoddan over the top of
the wall and helped him down to the walkway.
"A
near thing, that!" said the white-haired man pleasantly. "I was
taking a walk in the garden when I heard the excitement. I got to the wall just
in time." He paused, and added, "I do hope you're not just a common
murderer, we can't offer asylum to such. But if you're a political offender .
. ."
Hoddan
began to try to rub sensation and usefulness back into his legs. Feeling came
back, and was not pleasant.
"I'm
the Interstellar Ambassador," said the white-haired man politely.
"My name," said Hoddan
bitterly," is Bron Hoddan and I'm guilty of trying to save the Power Board
millions of credits a year!" Then he said more bitterly, "If you want
to know, I ran away from Zan to try to be a civilized man and live a civilized
life. It was a mistake! Now I'm to be permanently jailed for
using my brains!"
The ambassador cocked bis
head thoughtfully to one side.
"Zan?"
he said. "The name Hoddan fits with that somehow . . . Oh, yes!
Space-piracy! They say the people of Zan capture and loot a dozen or so ships a year, only there's no way to prove it on them.. And there's a man named
Hoddan who's supposed to head a particularly ruffianly gang."
"My
grandfather," said Hoddan defiantly. "What are you going to do about
it? I'm outlawed! I've defied the planetary government! I'm disreputable by
descent, and worst of all I've tried to use my brains!"
"Deplorable!"
said the ambassador mildly. "I don't mean outlawry is deplorable, you
understand, or defiance of the government, or being disreputable. But trying to
use one's brains is bad business! A serious offense! Are your legs all right
now? Then come on down with me and I'll have you given some dinner and some
fresh clothing. Offhand," he added amiably, "it would seem that using
one's brains would be classed as a political offense rather than a criminal one
on Walden. We'll see."
Hoddan gaped up at him.
"You mean there's a
possibility that—"
"Of
course!" said the ambassador in surprise. "You haven't phrased it
that way, but you're actually a rebel. A revolutionist.
You defy authority and tradition and governments and such things. Naturally the
Interstellar Diplomatic Service is inclined to be on your side! What do you
think it's for?"
CHAPTER II
In
something under
two hours Hoddan was ushered into the ambassador's office. He'd been refreshed,
his torn clothing replaced by more respectable garments, and the places where
stun-pistols had stung him, soothed by ointments. But, more important, he'd
worked out and firmly adopted a new point of view.
He'd been a misfit at home on Zan. He was not
contented with the humdrum and monotonous life as a member of a space-pirate
community. Piracy was a matter of dangerous take-offs in cranky rocket ships,
to be followed by weeks or months of tedious and uncomfortable boredom in
highly unhealthy re-breathed air. No voyage ever contained more than ten
seconds of satisfactory action. All fighting took place just out of the
atmosphere of the embattled planet. Regardless of the result of the fight, the
pirates had to get away fast when it was over, lest overwhelming forces swarm
up from the nearby world. It was intolerably devoid of anything an ambitious
young man would want.
Even
when one had made a good prize—with the lifeboats of the foreign ship darting
frantically for ground—and even after one got back to Zan with the captured
ship, even then there was little satisfaction to a pirate's career. Zan had not
a large population. Piracy couldn't support a large number of people. Zan
couldn't attempt to defend itself against even single, heavily armed ships that
sometimes came in passionate resolve to avenge the disappearance of a rich
freighter or a fast, new liner. So the people of Zan, to avoid being hanged,
had to play innocent. They had to be convincingly simple, harmless folk who
cultivated their fields and lived quiet, blameless lives. They might loot, but
they couldn't use their loot where investigators could find it. They had to
build their own houses and make their own furniture and grow their own food. So
life on Zan was dull. Piracy was not profitable in the sense that one could
live well by it. It simply wasn't a trade for anybody like Hoddan.
So
he'd abandoned all that. He'd studied electronics in books looted from
passenger-ship libraries. Within months after his arrival on a law-abiding
planet, he was able to earn a living at electronics as an honest trade.
And
that was unsatisfactory, too. Law-abiding communities were no more thrilling or
rewarding than piratical ones. A payday now and then did not make up for the
tedium of earning. Even when one had money there was not much to do with it. On
Walden, to be sure, the level of civilization was so high that most people took
to psychiatric treatments so they could stand it, and the neurotics vastly
outnumbered the more normal folk. But on Walden, electronics was only a way to
make a living, like piracy, and there was no more fun to be had out of being
civilized.
What
Hoddan craved, of course, was a sense of achievement. Technically, there were
opportunities all about him. He'd developed one, and it would save millions of
credits a year if it were adopted. But it did not happen to be anything that
anybody wanted. He'd tried to force its use and he was in trouble. Now he saw
clearly that a law-abiding world was no more satisfactory than a piratical one.
The
ambassador received him with a cordial wave of the hand.
"Things move fast," he said
cheerfully. "You weren't here half an hour before there was a police
captain at the gate. He explained that an excessively dangerous criminal had
escaped jail and been seen climbing the embassy wall. He very generously
offered to bring some men in and capture you and take you away—with my
permission, of course. He was shocked when I declined."
"I can understand
that," said Hoddan.
"By
the way," said the ambassador. "Young men like yourself
. . . Ah ... is there a girl involved
in this?"
Hoddan considered.
"A
girl's father," he acknowledged, "is the real complainant -against
me."
"Does
he complain," asked the ambassador, "because
you want to many her, or because you don't?"
"Neither,"
Hoddan told him. "She hasn't quite decided that I'm worth defying her rich
father for."
"Goodl"
said the ambassador. "It can't be too bad a mess while a woman is being
really practical. I've checked your story. Allowing for differences of
viewpoint, it agrees with the official version. I've ruled that you are a
political refugee, and so entitled to sanctuary in the embassy. And that's
that."
"Thank you, sir,"
said Hoddan.
"There's
no question about the crime," observed the ambassador, "or that it
is primarily political. You proposed to improve a technical process in a
society which considers itself beyond improvement. If you'd succeeded, the idea
of change would have spread, people now poor would have gotten rich, people now
rich would have gotten poor, and you'd have done what all governments are
established to prevent. So you'll never be able to walk the streets of this
planet again in safety. You've scared people."
"Yes,
sir," said Hoddan. It's been an unpleasant surprise to them, to be
scared."
The ambassador put the tips
of his fingers together.
"Do
you realize," he asked, "that the whole purpose of civilization is to
take the surprises out of life, so one can be bored to death? That a culture in
which nothing unexpected ever happens is in what is called its 'golden age?'
That when nobody can even imagine anything happening unexpectedly, that they
later fondly refer to that period as the 'good old days?*"
"I hadn't thought of
it in just those words, sir."
"It
is one of the most-avoided facts of life," said the ambassador.
"Government, in the local or planetary sense of the word, is an
organization for the suppression of adventure. Taxes are, in part, the
insurance premiums one pays for protection against the unpredictable. And your
act has been an offense against everything that is the foundation of a stable,
orderly and damnably tedious way of life— against civilization, in fact."
Hoddan frowned.
"Yet, you've granted me asylum."
"Naturally!"
said the ambassador. "The Diplomatic Service works for the welfare of
humanity. That doesn't mean stuffiness. A golden age in any civilization is
always followed by collapse. In ancient days savages came and camped outside
the walls of super-civilized towns. They were unwashed, unmannerly, and
unsanitary. Super-civilized people refused even to think about them! So
presently the savages stormed the city walls and another civilization went up
in flames."
"But now," objected Hoddan,"
there are no savages."
"They
invent themselves," the ambassador told him. "My point is that the
Diplomatic Service cherishes individuals and causes which battle stuffiness and
compacency and golden ages and monstrous things like that. Not thieves, of
course. They're degradation, like body-lice. But rebels and crackpots and
revolutionaries who prevent hardening of the arteries of commerce and furnish
wholesome exercise to the body politic —they're worth cherishingl"
"I think I see,
sir," said Hoddan.
"I
hope you do," said the ambassador. "My action on your behalf is pure
diplomatic policy. To encourage the dissatisfied is to insure against the
menace of universal satisfaction. Walden is in a bad way. You are the most
encouraging thing that has happened here in a long time. And you're not a
native."
"No-o-o," agreed
Hoddan. "I come from Zan."
"Never mind." The ambassador turned to a stellar atlas. "Consider yourself a
good symptom, and valued as such. If you could start a contagion, you'd be
doing a service to your fellow citizens. Savages can always invent themselves.
But enough ... let us set about your
affairs." He consulted the atlas. "Where would you like to go, since
you must leave Walden?"
"Not too far,
sir."
"The girl, eh?" The ambassador did not smile. He ran his finger down a page. "The
nearest inhabited worlds are Krim and Darth. Krim is a place of lively
commercial activity, where an electronics engineer should easily find employment.
It is said to be progressive and there is much organized research."
"I
wouldn't want to be a kept engineer, sir," said Hoddan apologetically.
"I'd rather—well—putter on my own."
"Impractical,
but sensible," commented the ambassador. He turned a page. "There's
Darth. Its social system is practically feudal. It's technically backward.
There's a landing-grid, but space-exports are skins and metal ingots and practically
nothing else. There is no broadcast power. Strangers find the local customs
difficult. There is no town larger than twenty thousand people, and few
approach that size. Most settled places are mere villages near some feudal
castle, and roads are so few and bad that wheeled transport is rare."
He
leaned back and said in a detached voice: "I had a letter from there a
couple of months ago. It was rather arrogant. The writer was one Don Loris, and
he explained that his dignity would not let him make a commercial offer, but
an electronic engineer who put himself under his protection would not be the
loser. Are you interested? No kings on Darth, just feudal chiefs." Hoddan
thought it over.
"I'll
go to Darth," he decided. "It's bound to be better than Zan, and it
can't be worse than Walden."
The
ambassador looked impassive. An embassy servant came in and offered an indoor
communicator. The ambassador put it to his ear. After a moment he said:
"Show
him in." He turned to Hoddan. "You did kick up a storm! The Minister
of State, no less, is here to demand your surrender. I'll counter with a formal
request for an exit permit. I'll talk to you again when he leaves."
Hoddan
went out. He paced up and down the other room into which he was shown. Darth
wouldn't be in a golden agel He was wiser now than he'd been just this morning.
He recognized that he'd made mistakes. Now he could see rather ruefully how
completely improbable it was that anybody could put across a technical device
merely bv proving its value, without first making
anybody want it. He shook his head regretfully at the blunder.
The ambassador sent for him.
"I've
had a pleasant time," he told Hoddan genially. "There was a beautiful
row. You've really scared people, Hoddan. You deserve well of the republic.
Every government and every person needs to be thoroughly terrified
occasionally. It limbers up the brain."
"Yes, sir," said Hoddan.
"I've—"
"The planetary government," said
the ambassador wi^1 relish, "insists
that you have to be locked up with thf thrown away. It seems you know how to
make dea;
I
said it was nonsense, and you were a political refugee in sanctuary. The
Minister of State said the Cabinet would consider removing you forcibly from
the embassy if you weren't surrendered. I said that if the embassy were
violated, no ship would, clear for Walden from any other civilized planet. They
wouldn't like losing their off-planet trade! Then he said that the government
would not give you an exit permit, and that he would hold me personally
responsible if you killed everybody on Walden, including himself
and me. I said he insulted me by suggesting that I'd permit such shenanigans.
He said the government would take an extremely grave view of my attitude, and
I said they would be silly if they did. Then he went off with great dignity—but
shaking with panic—to think up more nonsense."
"Evidently,"
said Hoddan in relief, "you believe me when I say that my gadget doesn't
make death rays."
The ambassador looked
slightly embarrassed.
"To
be honest," he admitted, "I've no doubt that you invented it
independently, but they've been using such a device for half a century in the
Cetis cluster. They've had no trouble."
Hoddan winced.
"Did you tell the
minister that?"
"Hardly,"
said the ambassador. "It would have done you no good. You're in open
revolt and have performed overt acts of violence against the police. It was
impolite enough for me to suggest that the local government was stupid. It
would have been most undiplomatic to prove it."
Hoddan did not feel very
proud, just then.
"I'm
thinking that the cops—quite unofficially—might try to kidnap me from the
embassy. They'll deny that they tried, especially if they manage it. But I
think they'll try."
"Very
likely," said the ambassador. "We'll take precautions."
"I'd like to make something—not
lethal—just in case," said Hoddan. "If you can trust me not to make
death rays, I'd like to make a generator of odd-shaped microwaves. They're
described in textbooks. They ionize the air where they strike. That's all. They
make air a high-resistance conductor.
Nothing more than
that." The
ambassador said:
"There
was an old-fashioned way to make ozone . . ." When Hoddan nodded, a little
surprised, the ambassador said, "By all means go aheadl You should be able
to get parts from your room vision-receiver. I'll have some tools given
you." Then he added, Diplomacy has to understand
the things that control events. Once it was social position. For a time it was weapons. Then it was commerce. Now it's technology. But I
wonder how you'll use the ionization of air to protect yourself from kidnapersl
Don't tell mel I'd rather try to guess."
He
waved his hand in cordial dismissal and an embassy servant showed Hoddan to his
quarters. Ten minutes later another staff man brought him tools. He was left
alone.
He
delicately disassembled the set in his room and began to put some of the parts
together in a novel but wholly rational fashion. The
science of electronics, like the science of mathematics, had progressed away
beyond the point where all of it had practical application. One could spend a
lifetime learning things that research had discovered in the past, and industry
had never found a use for. On Zan, industriously reading pirated books, Hoddan
hadn't known where utility stopped. He'd kept on learning long after a practical man would have stopped studying to get a paying job.
Any
electronic engineer could have made the device he now assembled. It only needed
to be wanted, and apparently he was the first person to want it. In this
respect it was like the receptor that had gotten him into trouble. As he put
the small parts together, he felt a certain
loneliness. A man Hoddan's age needed to have some girl
admire him from time to time. If Nedda had been sitting cross-legged
before him, listening raptly while he explained, Hoddan would probably have
been perfectly happy. But she wasn't. It wasn't likely she ever would be.
Hoddan scowled.
Inside
of an hour he'd made a hand-sized, five watt, waveguide projector of waves of
eccentric form. In the beam of that projector, air became ionized. Air became a
high-resistance conductor comparable to nichrome wire, when and where the
projector sent its microwaves.
He
was wrapping tape about the pistol-like hand-grip when a servant brought him a
scribbled note. It had been handed in at the embassy gate by a woman who fled
after leaving it. It looked like Nedda's handwriting. It read like Nedda's
phrasing. It appeared to have been written by somebody in a highly emotional
state. But it wasn't quite—not absolutely —convincing.
He went to
find the ambassador. He handed over the note. The ambassador read it and raised
his eyebrows. "Well?"
"It could be
authentic," admitted Hoddan.
"In
other words," said the ambassador, "you are not sure that it is a booby trap—an invitation to a date with the police?"
"I'm
not sure," said Hoddan. "I think I'd better bite. If I have any
illusions left after this morning, I'd better find it out. I thought Nedda
liked me quite a bit."
"I
make no comment," observed the ambassador. "Can I help you in any
way?"
"I
have to leave the embassy," said Hoddan, "and there's almost a solid
line of police outside the walls. Could I borrow some old clothes, a few
pillows, and a length of rope?"
Half
an hour later a rope uncoiled itself at the very darkest outside corner of the
embassy wall. It dangled clown to the ground. This was at the rear of the
embassy enclosure. The night was bright with stars, and the city's towers glittered
with many lights. But here there was almost complete blackness and that silence
of a city which is sometimes so companionable.
The
rope remained hanging from the wall. No light reached the ground there. The
tiny crescent of Walden's farthest moon cast an insufficient glow. Nothing
could be Seen
by it.
The
rope went up, as if it had been lowered merely to make sure that it was long
enough for its purpose. Then it descended again. This time a figure dangled at
its end.
It
came down, swaying a little. It reached the blackest part of the
shadow at the wall's base. It stayed there.
Nothing
happened. The figure rose swiftly, hauled up in rapid pullings of the rope.
Then the line came down again and again a figure descended. But this figure
moved. The rope swayed and oscillated. The figure came down a good halfway to
the ground. It paused, and then descended with much movement to two-thirds of
the way from the top.
There
something seemed to alarm it. It began to rise with violent writhings of the
rope. It climbed.
There
was a crackling noise. A stun-pistol. The figure
seemed to climb more frantically. More cracklings.
They were stun-pistol charges and there were tiny sparks where they hit. The
dangling figure seemed convulsed. It went limp, but it did not fall. More
charges poured into it. It hung motionless halfway up the wall of the embassy.
Movements
began in the darkness. Men appeared, talking in low tones and straining their
eyes toward the now motionless figure. They gathered underneath it. One went
off at a run, carrying a message. Someone of authority arrived, panting. There
was more low-toned argument. More and still more men appeared. There were forty
or fifty figures at the base of the wall.
One
of those figures began to climb the rope hand over hand. He reached the
motionless object. He swore in a shocked
voice. He was shushed from below. He let the figure drop. It made no sound when
it landed.
Then
there was a rushing, as the guards about the embassy went furiously back to
their proper posts to keep anybody from slipping out. The two men who remained
swore bitterly over a dummy made of old clothes and pillows.
Hoddan
was then some blocks away. He suffered painful doubt about the note ostensibly
from Nedda. The guards about the embassy would have tried to catch him in any
case, but it did seem very plausible that the note had been sent him to get him
to try to climb down the wall. On the other hand, a false descent of a palpably
dummy-like dummy had been plausible too. He'd drawn all the guards to one spot
by his seeming doubt and by testing out their vigilance with a dummy. The only
thing improbable in his behavior had been that after testing their vigilance
with a dummy, he'd made use of it.
A
fair distance away, he turned sedately into a narrow lane between buildings.
This paralleled another lane serving the home of a girl friend of Nedda's. The
note had named the garden behind that other girl's home as a rendezvous. But
Hoddan was not going to that garden. He wanted to make sure. If
the cops had forged the note . . .
He
judged his position carefully. If he climbed this tree . . . kind of the
city-planners of Walden to use trees so lavishly ... if he climbed this tree he could look into the garden where
Nedda, in theory, waited in tears. He climbed it. He sat astride a thick limb
and considered further. Presently he brought out his wave projector. There was
deepest darkness hereabouts. Trees and shrubbery were blacker than their
surroundings. But there was reason for suspicion. Neither in the house of
Nedda's girl friend, nor in the nearer house between, was there a single
lighted window.
Hoddan
adjusted the wave guide and pressed the stud of his instrument. He pointed it
carefully into the nearer garden.
A
man grunted in a surprised tone. There was a stirring. A man swore. The words
seemed inappropriate to a citizen merely taking a breath of evening air.
Hoddan
frowned. The note from Nedda seemed to have been a forgery. To make sure, he
readjusted the wave guide to project a thin but fan-shaped beam. He aimed
again. Painstakingly, he traversed the area in which men would have been
posted to jump him. If Neddavwere there, she would feel no effect. If police
lay in wait, they would notice at once.
They
did. A man howled. Two men yelled together. Somebody bellowed. Somebody
squealed. Someone in charge of the flares made ready to give light for the
police was so startled by a strange sensation that he jerked the cord. An
immense, cold-white brilliance appeared. The garden where Nedda definitely was
not present became bathed in incandescence. Light spilled over the wall of one
garden into the next and disclosed a squirming mass of police in the nearer
garden also. Some of them leaped wildly and ungracefully while clawing behind
them. Some stood still and struggled desperately to accomplish something to
their rear, while others gazed blankly at them until Hoddan swung his
instrument their way, also.
A
man tore off his pants and struggled over the wall to get away from something
intolerable. Others imitated him. Some removed their trousers before they fled,
but others tried to get them off while fleeing! The latter did not fare too
well. Mostly they stumbled and other men fell over them.
Hoddan
let the confusion mount past any unscrambling, and then slid down the tree and
joined in the rush. With the glare in the air behind him, he only feigned to
stumble over one figure after another. Once he grunted as he scorched his own
fingers. But he came out of the lane with a dozen stun-pistols, mostly
uncomfortably warm, as trophies of the ambush.
As
they cooled off he stowed them away in his belt and pockets, strolling away
down the tree-lined street. Behind him, cops realized their trouserless
condition and appealed plaintively to householders to notify headquarters of
their state.
Hoddan
did not feel particularly disillusioned, somehow. It occurred to him, even,
that this particular event was likely to help him get off of Walden. If he was
to leave against the cops' will, he needed to have them at less than top
efficiency. And men who have had their pants scorched off them are not apt to
think too clearly. Hoddan felt a certain confidence increase in his mind. He'd
worked the thing out very nicely. If ionization made air a high-resistance
conductor, then ari ionizing beam would make a high-resistance short between
the power terminals of a stun-pistol. With the power a
s tun-pistol carried, that short would get hot. So would the pistol. It would
get hot enough, in fact, to scorch cloth in contact with it. Which
had happened.
If
the effect had been produced in the soles of policemen's feet, Hoddan would
have given every cop a hot-foot. But since they carried their sun-pistols in
their hip-pockets . . .
The thought of Nedda diminished his
satisfaction. The note could be pure forgery, or the police could have learned
about it through the treachery of the servant she sent to the embassy with it.
It would be worth while to know. He headed toward the home of her father. If
she were loyal to him, it would complicate things considerably. But he felt it
necessary to find out.
He
neared the spot where Nedda lived. This was an especially desirable residential
area. The houses were large and gracefully designed, and the gardens were
especially lush. Presently he heard music ahead. He went on. He came to a place
where strolling citizens had paused under the trees to listen to the melody and
the sound of voices that accompanied it. The music and festivity was in
Nedda's name. She was having a party, on the night of the terrible day in which
he'd been framed for life imprisonment.
It
was a shock. Then there was a rush of vehicles, and police trucks were
disgorging cops before the door. They formed a cordon about the house, and some
knocked and were admitted in haste. Then Hoddan nodded dourly to himself.
His escape from the embassy was now known. No
less certainly, the failure of the trap Nedda's note had baited had been
reported. The police were now turning the whole city into a trap for one Bron
Hoddan. Soon they'd have cops from other cities pouring in to aid in the
search. And certainly and positively they'd take every measure they could to
keep him from getting back to -the embassy.
It
was a situation that would have appalled Hoddan only that morning. Now, though,
he only shook his head sadly. He moved on. Somehow he must get back into the
embassy.
It
was not far from Nedda's house to a public-safety kiosk. He entered it. It was
unattended, of course. It was simply an out-of-door installation where cops
could be summoned, fires reported, or emergencies described by citizens independently
of the regular home communicators. It had occurred to Hoddan that the
planetary authorities would be greatly pleased to hear of a situation, in a
place, that would seem to hint at his presence. There were all sorts of public
services that would be delighted to operate impressively in their own lines.
There were bureaus which would rejoice at a chance to show off their
efficiency.
He
used his micro-wave generator—which at short enough range would short-circuit
anything—upon the apparatus in the kiosk. It was perfectly simple, if one knew
how. He worked with a sort of tender thoroughness, shorting this item, shorting
that, giving this frantic emergency call, stating that baseless he. When he
went out of the kiosk he walked briskly toward an appointment he had made.
And
presently the murmur of the city at night had new sounds added to it. They
began as a faint, confused clamor at the edges of the city. The uproar moved
centralward and grew louder. There were clanging bells and sirens and
beeper-horns warning all non-official vehicles to keep out of the way. On the
raised-up expressway snorting metal monsters rushed with squealing excitement.
On the fragrant lesser streets, smaller vehicles rushed with proportionately
louder howlings. Police trucks poured out of their cubbyholes and plunged
valiantly through the dark. Broadcast units signaled emergency and cut off the
air to make the placid ether waves available to authority.
All
these noises and all this tumult moved toward a single point. The outer parts
of the city regained their former quiet. But in the mid-city area the noise of
racing vehicles clamoring for right-of-way grew louder and louder. The sound
was deafening as the vehicles converged on the large open square in front of
the Interstellar Embassy. From every street and avenue fire-fighting equipment
poured into that square. In between and behind, hooting loudly for precedence,
were the police trucks. Emergency vehicles of all the civic bureaus appeared,
all of them with immense conviction of their importance.
It
was a very large, open square, that space before the embassy. From its edge,
the monument to the first settlers in the center looked small. But even that
vast plaza filled up with trucks of every imaginable variety, from the hose
towers which could throw streams of water four hundred feet straight up, to the
miniature trouble-wagons of Electricity
Supply.
Staff cars of fire and police and sanitary services crowded each other and
bumped fenders with tree-surgeon trucks prepared to move fallen trees, and with public-address trucks ready to lend
stentorian tones to any voice of authority.
But
there was no situation except that there was no situation. There was no fire.
There was no riot. There was not even stray dogs for
the pound-wagons to pursue, nor broken watermains for the water department
technicians to shut off and repair. There was nothing for anybody to do but ask
everybody else what the hell they were doing there, and presently to swear at
each other for cluttering up the way.
The din
of arriving homs and sirens had stopped, and a mutter
of profanity was developing, when a last vehicle arrived. It was an ambulance, an it came purposefully out of a side avenue and swung
toward a particular place as if it knew exactly what it was about. When its way
was blocked, it hooted impatiently for passage. Its lights blinked violently
red, demanding clearance. A giant fire-fighting unit pulled aside. The
ambulance ran past and hooted at a cluster of police trucks. They made way for
it. It blared at a gathering of dismounted, irritated truck personnel. It made
its way through them. It moved in a straight line for the gate of the
Interstellar Embassy.
A
hundred yards from that gate, its horn blatted irritably at the car of the
acting head of municipal police. That car obediently made way for it.
The
ambulance rolled briskly up to the very gate of the embassy. There it stopped.
A figure got down from the driver's seat and walked purposefully in the gate.
Thereafter
nothing happened at all until a second figure rolled and toppled itself out on
the ground from the seat beside the ambulance driver's. That figure kicked and
writhed on the ground. A policeman went to find out what was the matter.
It was the ambulance driver. Not the one
who'd driven the ambulance to the embassy gate, but the one who should have. He was bound hand and foot and not too tightly gagged.
When
released he swore vividly while panting that he had been captured and bound by
somebody who said he was Bron Hoddan and was in a hurry to get back to the
Interstellar Embassy.
There
was no uproar. Those to whom Hoddan's name had meaning were struck speechless
with rage. The fury of the police was even too deep for tears.
But
Bron Hoddan, back in the quarters assigned him in the embassy, unloaded a dozen
cooled-off stun-pistols from his pockets and sent word to the Ambassador that
he was back, and that the note ostensibly from Nedda had actually been a police
trap.
Getting
ready to retire, he reviewed his situation. In some respects it was not too
bad. All but Nedda's share in trying to trap him, and having
a party the same night. He stared morosely at the wall. Then he saw,
very simply, that she mightn't have known even of his arrest. She lived a
highly sheltered life. Her father could have had her kept in complete
ignorance.
He
cheered immediately. This would be his last night on Waiden, if he were lucky. Already vague plans revolved in his mind. Yes . . . he'd achieve splendid things; he'd grow rich; he'd come back and marry
that delightful girl, Nedda; and then end as a great man. Already, today, he'd
done a number of things worth doing, and on the whole he'd done them well.
CHAPTER III
When
dawn broke over the
capital city of Walden, the sight was appropriately glamorous. There were
shining towers and the curving tree-bordered ways, above which innumerable
small birds flew. The dawn, in fact, was heralded by chirpings everywhere.
During the darkness there had been a deep-toned humming sound, audible all over
the city. That was the landing-grid in operation out at the spaceport, letting
down a huge liner from Rigel, Cetis, and the Nearer Rim. Presently it would
take off for Krim, Darth, and the Coal-sack Stars, and if Hoddan were lucky he
would be on it. At the earliest part of the day there was only tranquility over
the city and the square and the Interstellar Embassy.
At
the gate of the embassy enclosure, staff members piled up boxes and bales and
parcels for transport to the spaceport and thence to destinations whose names
were practically songs. There were dispatches to Delil, where the Interstellar
Diplomatic Service had a sector headquarters, and there were packets of
embassy-stamped invoices for Lohala and Tralee and Famagusta. There were boxes
for Sind and Maja, and metal-bound cases for Kent. The early explorers of this
part of the galaxy had christened the huge suns with the names of little
villages and territories back on Earth.
The
sound of the stacking of freight parcels was crisp and distinct in the morning
hush. The dew deposited during the night had not yet dried from the pavement-of
the square. Damp, unhappy figures loafed nearby. They were the secret police,
as yet unrelieved after a night's vigil about the embassy's rugged wall. They
were sleepy, and their clothing stuck soggily to them, and none of them had
anything warm to eat for many hours. They had not, either, anything to look
forward to from their superiors. Hoddan was again in sanctuary inside the
embassy they'd guarded so ineptly through the dark. He'd gotten out without
their leave, and had made a number of their fellows quite uncomfortable. Then
he had made all the police and municipal authorities ridiculous by the manner
of his return. The police guards about the embassy were positively not in a
cheery mood. But one of them saw an embassy servant he knew. He'd stood the man
drinks, in times past, to establish a contact that might be useful. He smiled
and beckoned to the man.
The
embassy servant came briskly to him, rubbing his hands after having put a
moderately heavy case of documents on top of the waiting pile.
"That
Hoddan," said the plainclothesman, attempting hearty ruefulness," he
certainly put it over on us last night!"
The servant nodded.
"Look," said the
plainclothesman," there could be something in it for you if you—hm—wanted
to make a little extra money."
The servant looked
regretful.
"No chance," he
said. "He's leaving today."
The plainclothesman jumped.
^Today?"
"For
Darth," said the embassy servant. "The ambassador's
shipping him off on the spaceliner that came in last night."
The plainclothesman
dithered.
"How's he going to get
to the spaceport?"
"I
wouldn't know," said the servant. "They've figured out some way. I
could use a little extra money, too."
He
lingered, but the plainclothesman was staring at the innocent, inviolable
parcels about to leave the embassy for distant parts. He took note of sizes and
descriptions. No. Not yet. But if Hoddan was leaving, he had to leave the
embassy. If he left the embassy . . .
The
plainclothesman bolted. He made a breathless report by the portable
communicator. He told what the embassy servant had said. Orders came back to
him. Orders were given in all directions. Somebody was going to distinguish
himself by catching Hoddan, and undercover politics worked to decide who it
should be. Even the job of guarding the embassy became desirable. So fresh,
aiert plainclothesmen arrived. They were bright eyed and bushy tailed, and they
took over. Weary, hungry men yielded up their posts. They went home. The man
who'd gotten the clue went home too, disgruntled because he wouldn't be allowed
a share in the credit for Hoddan's actual capture.-But he was glad of it later.
Inside the embassy, Hoddan finished his
breakfast with the ambassador.
"I'm
giving you," said the ambassador, "a letter to that character on
Darth. I told you about him. He's some sort of nobleman and has need of an
electronic engineer. On Darth they're rare to nonexistent. But his letter
wasn't too specific."
"I remember," agreed Hoddan.
"Ill look him up. Thanks."
"Somehow," said the ambassador,
"I cherish unreasonable hopes for you, Hoddan. A psychologist would say
that your group identification is low and your cyclothymia practically a minus
quantity, while your ergic tension is pleasingly high. He'd mean that with
reasonable good fortune you will raise more hell than most. I wish you that
good fortune. And Hoddan—" "Yes?"
"I urge you not to be vengeful,"
explained the ambassador, "but I do hope you won't be too forgiving of
these characters who'd have jailed you for life. You've scared them badly. It's
very good for them. Anything more you can do along that line
will be really a kindness, even though it will positively not be
appreciated. But it'll be well worth doing. I say this because I like the way
you plan things. And any time I can be of service . . ."
"Thanks,"
said Hoddan. "Now I'd better get going for the spaceport." He'd write
Nedda from Darth. "I'll get set for it."
He rose. The ambassador
stood up, too.
"I
like the way you plan things," he repeated appreciatively. "We'll check over that box."
They left the embassy
dining room together.
It
was well after sunrise when Hoddan finished his breakfast, and the bright and
watchful new plainclothesmen were very much on the alert outside. By this time
the sunshine had lost its early ruddy tint, and the trees about the city were
vividly green, and the sky had become appropriately blue-as the skies on all
human-occupied planets are. There was the beginning of traffic. Some was
routine movement of goods and vehicles. But some was special.
For example, the trucks which came to carry the embassy shipment to the
spaceport.
They were perfectly ordinary trucks, hired in a perfectly ordinary way by the
ambassador's secretary. They came trundling across the square and into the
embassy gate. The ostentatiously loafing plainclothesmen could look in and see
the waiting parcels loaded on them. The first truck load was quite
unsuspicious. There was no package in the lot which could have held a man even
the most impossibly cramped of positions.
But the police took no chances. Ten blocks
from the embassy the cops stopped it and verified the licenses and identities
of the driver and his helper. This was a moderately lengthy business. While it
went on, plainclothesmen walked over the packages in the truck's body and put
stethoscopes to any .of more than one cubic foot capacity.
They
waved the truck on. Meanwhile the second truck was loading up. And those
watching, saw that the last item to be loaded was a large box which hadn't
been' seen before. It was carried with some care, and it was marked fragile,
put into place and wedged fast with other parcels.
The
plaincothesmen looked at each other with anticipatory glee. One of them
reported the last large box with almost lyric enthusiasm. When the second truck
left the embassy with the large box, a police truck came innocently out of
nowhere and just happened to be going the same way. Ten blocks away, again the
truckload of embassy parcels was flagged down and its driver's license and
identity was verified. A plainclothesman put a stethoscope on the questionable
case. He beamed, and made a suitable signal.
The
truck went on, while zestful, Machiavellian plans took effect.
Five
blocks farther, an unmarked empty truck came hurtling out of a side street,
sideswiped the truck from the embassy, and went careening away down the street
without stopping. The trailing police truck made no attempt at pursuit.
Instead, it stopped helpfully by the truck which had been hit. A wheel was
hopelessly gone. So uniformed police, with conspicuously happy expressions,
cleared a space around the stalled truck and stood guard over the parcels under
diplomatic seal. With eager helpfulness, they sent for other transportation
for the embassy's shipment.
A
sneeze was heard from within the mass of guarded freight, and the policemen
shook hands with each other. When substitute trucks came—there were two of
them—they loaded one high with embassy parcels and sent it off to the spaceport
with their blessings. There remained just one, single, large box to be put on
the second vehicle. They bumped it on the ground, and a startled grunt came
from within.
There was an atmosphere of innocent enjoyment
all about as the police tenderly loaded this large box on a second truck.
Strangely, they did not head directly for the spaceport. The police carefully
explained this to each other in loud voices. Then some of them were afraid the
box hadn't heard, so they knocked on it. The box coughed, and it seemed
hilariously amusing to the policemen that the contents of a freight parcel
should cough. They expressed deep concern and—addressing the box—explained
that they were taking it to the Detention Building, where they would give it
some cough medicine.
The
box swore at them, despairingly. They howled with childish laughter, and
assured the box that after they had opened it and given it cough medicine they
would close it again very carefully—leaving the diplomatic seal unbroken— and
deliver it to the spaceport so it could go on its way.
The
box swore again, luridly. The truck which carried it hastened. The box teetered
and bumped and jounced with the swift motion of the vehicle that carried it and
all the police around it. Bitter, enraged, and highly unprintable language came
from within.
The
police were charmed. When the Detention Building gate opened for it, and closed
again behind it, there was a welcoming committee in the courtyard. It included
a jailer with a bandaged head and a look of vengeful satisfaction on his face,
and no less than the three guards who had been given baths by a high-pressure
hose. They wore unamiable expressions.
And
then, while the box swore very bitterly, somebody tenderly loosened a
plank—being careful not to disturb the diplomatic seal—and pulled it away with
a triumphant gesture. Then all the police could look into the box. And they
did.
Then
there was a dead silence, except for the voice that came from a two-way
communicator set inside.
"And
now" said the voice from the box, "and now we take our leave of the
planet Walden and its happy police force, who wave to
us as our spaceliner lifts toward the skies. The next sound you hear will be
that of their lamentations at our departure."
But the next sound was a howl of fury. The
police were very much disappointed to find that it hadn't been Hoddan in the
box, but only one-half of a two-way communication pair. Hoddan had coughed, sneezed and sworn at them, but from the other instrument
somewhere else. Now he signed off.
The
spaceliner was not lifting off just yet. It was still solidly aground in the
center of the landing-grid. Hoddan had bade farewell to his audience from the
floor of the ambassador's car, which at that moment was safely within the
extra-territorial circle about the spaceship. He turned off the set and got up
and brushed himself off. He got out of the car. The ambassador followed him and
shook his hand.
"You
have a touch," said the ambassador sedately. "You seem inspired at
times, Hoddanl You have a gift for infuriating
constituted authority. You may go far!"
He
shook hands again and watched Hoddan walk into the lift which raised him to the
entrance port of the spaceliner.
Twenty
minutes later the forcefields of the giant landing-grid lifted the liner
smoothly out to space. The vessel went out to five planetary diameters, where
its Lawlor drive could take hold of relatively unstressed space. There the ship
jockeyed for line, and then there was that curious, momentary disturbance of
all one's sensations which was the effect of the over-drive field going on.
Then everything was normal again, except that the liner was speeding for the
planet Krim at something more than thirty times the speed of light.
Normalcy
extended through all the galaxy so far inhabited by
men. There were worlds on which there was peace, and worlds on which there was
tumult. There were busy, restful young worlds, and languid, weary old ones.
From the Near Rim to the farthest of occupied systems, planets circled their
suns, and men lived on them, and every man took himself seriously and did not
quite believe that the universe had existed before he was born or would long
survive his loss.
Time
passed. Comets let out vast streamers like bridal veils and swept toward and
around their suns. The liner bearing Hoddan sped throug the void.
In time it made a landfall on the Planet
Krim. He went aground and observed the spaceport city. It was new and bustling
with tall buildings and traffic jams and a feverish conviction that the purpose
of living was to earn more money this year than last. Its spaceport was
chaotically busy. Hoddan had time for swift sight-seeing in one city only. He
saw slums and gracious public buildings, and went back to the spaceport and the
liner which then rose upon the landing-grid's forcefields until Krim was a
great round ball below it. Then there was again a jockeying for line, and the
liner winked out of sight and was again journeying at thirty times the speed of
light.
Again
time passed. In one of the most remote galaxies a super-nova flamed, and on a
rocky, barren world a small living thing squirmed experimentally—to mankind the
one event was just as important as the other.
But
presently the liner from Walden via Krim appeared on Darth as the tiniest of
shimmering pearly specks against the blue. To the north and east and west of
the spaceport, rugged mountains rose steeply. Patches of snow showed here and there, and naked rock reared boldly in spurs and precipices.
But there were trees on all the lower slopes, and there was not really a timber
line.
The
spaceliner increased in size, descending toward the landing-grid. The grid
itself was a monstrous lattice of steel, a half-mile high and enclosing a
circle not less in diameter. It filled the larger part of the level valley
floor, and horned duryas and what Hoddan later learned were horses
grazed in it. The animals paid no attention to the deep humming noise the grid
made in its operation.
The
ship seemed the size of a pea. Presently it was the size of an apple. Then it
was the size of a basketball, and then it swelled enormously and put out
spidery metal legs with large splay metal feet on which it alighted and settled
gently to the ground. The humming stopped.
There
were shoutings. Whips cracked. Straining, horn-tossing duryas heaved and dragged something, very deliberately, out from between
warehouses and under the arches of the grid. There were two dozen of the duryas, and despite the shouts and whip cracking they moved with a stubborn
slowness. It took a long time for the object with the big clumsy wheels to
reach a spot below the spacecraft. Then it took longer, seemingly, for brakes
to be set on each wheel, and then for the draft animals to be arranged to pull
as two teams against each other.
More shoutings and whip-crackings. A long, slanting, ladder-like arm rose. It
teetered, and a man with a vivid purple cloak rose with it at its very end. The
ship's airlock opened and a crewman threw a rope. The purple-cloaked man caught
it and made it fast. From somewhere inside the ship, the line was hauled in.
The end of the landing ramp touched the sill of the airlock. Somebody made
these fast and the purple-cloaked man triumphantly entered the ship.
There
was a pause. Men loaded carts with cargo to be sent to other remote planets. In
the airlock, Bron Hoddan stepped to the unloading-ramp and descended to the
ground. He was the only passenger. He had barely reached a firm footing when
objects followed him. His own shipbag and then parcels,
bales, boxes, and other such nondescript items of freight. For a mere
five minutes the flow of freight continued. Darth was not an important center
of trade.
Hoddan
stared incredulously at the town outside one side of the grid. It was only a
town, and was almost a village. Its houses had steep, gabled roofs, of which
some seemed to be tile and others thatch. Its buildings leaned over the narrow
streets, which Were unpaved. They looked like mud. And there was
not a power-driven ground-vehicle anywhere in sight, nor
anything man-made in the air.
Great
carts trailed out to the unloading-belt. They dumped bales of skins and ingots
of metal, and more bales and more ingots. Those objects rode up to the airlock
and vanished. Hoddan was ignored. He felt that without great care he might be
crowded back into the reversed loading-belt and be carried back into the ship.
The
loading process ended. The man with the purple cloak, who'd ridden the
teetering ladder up, reappeared and came striding grandly down to ground.
Somebody cast off, above. Ropes writhed, fell and dangled. The ship's airlock
door closed.
There
was a vast humming sound. The ship lifted sedately. It seemed to hover
momentarily over the group of duryas and humans in the center of the grid's enclosure. But it was hovering.
It shrank. It was rising in an absolutely vertical line. It dwindled to the
size of a basketball and then an apple. Then to the size of a
pea. And then that pea diminished until the spaceship from Krim, Walden,
Cetis, Rigel and the Nearer Rim had become the size of a dust mote and then
could not be seen at all. But one knew that it was going on to Lohala and
Tralee and Famagusta and the Coalsack Stars.
Hoddan
shrugged and began to trudge toward the warehouses. The durya-drawn landing-ramp began to roll slowly in the same direction. Carts and
wagons loaded the stuff discharged from the ship. Creaking, plodding, with the
curved homs of the duryas rising and falling, the wagons overtook Hoddan and passed him. He saw
his shipbag on one of the carts. It was a gift from the Interstellar Ambassador
on Walden. He'd assured Hoddan that there was a fund for the assistance of
political refugees, and that the bag and its contents was
normal. But in addition to this, Hoddan had a number of stun-pistols, formerly
equipment of the police department of Walden's capital city.
He followed his bag to a warehouse. Arrived
there, he found the bag surrounded by a group of whiskered Darthian characters
wearing felt pants and large sheath knives. They had opened the bag and were in
the act of ferocious dispute about who should get what of its contents.
Incidentally they argued over the stun-pistols, which looked like weapons but
weren't because nothing happened when one pulled the trigger. Hoddan grimaced.
They'd been in store on the liner during the voyage. Normally they picked up a
trickle charge from broadcast power, on Walden, but there was no broadcast
power on the liner, nor on Darth. They'd leaked their
charges and were quite useless. The one in his pocket would be useless, too.
He
grimaced again and swerved to the building where the landing-grid controls must
be. He opened the door and went in. The interior was smoky and vile-smelling,
but the equipmerit was wholly familiar. Two unshaven men in
violently colored shirts, languidly played cards. Only one, a redhead,
paid attention to the controls of the landing-grid. He watched dials. As Hoddan
pushed his way in, he threw a switch and yawned. The ship was five diameters out
from Darth, and he'd released it from the landing-grid fields. He turned and
saw Hoddan.
"What the hell do you want?" he
demanded sharply. "A few kilowatts," said Hoddan. The redhead's
manner was not amiable.
"Get outta here!" he barked.
The
transformers and snaky cables leading to relays outside—all were clear as
print to Hoddan. He moved confidently toward an especially understandable
panel, pulling out his stun-pistol and briskly breaking back the butt for
charging. He shoved the pistol butt to contact with two terminals devised for
another purpose, and the pistol slipped for an instant and a blue spark flared.
"Quit
that!" roared the man. The unshaven men pushed back from their game of
cards. One of them stood up, smiling unpleasantly.
The
stun-pistol clicked. Hoddan withdrew it from charging-contact, flipped the butt
shut, and turned toward the three men. Two of them charged him suddenly—the
redhead and the unpleasant smiler.
The
stun-pistol hummed. The redhead howled. He'd been hit in the hand. His unshaven
companion buckled in the middle and fell to the floor. The third man backed
away in panic, automatically raising his arms in surrender.
Hoddan
saw no need for further action. He nodded graciously and went out of the
control building, swinging the recharged pistol in his hand. In the warehouse,
argument still raged over his possessions. He went in. Nobody looked at him.
The casual appropriation of unguarded property was apparently a social norm,
here. The man in the purple cloak was insisting furiously that he was a
Darthian gentleman and he'd have his share—or else!
"Those things," said Hoddan,
"are mine. Put them back."
Faces turned to him, expressing shocked
surprise. A man in dirty yellow pants stood up with a suit of Hoddan's underwear
and a pair of shoes. He moved to depart with great dignity.
The stun-pistol buzzed. He
leaped and howled and fled.
There
was a concerted gasp of outrage. Men leaped to their feet. Large knives came
out of elaborate holsters. Figures in all the colors of the rainbow—all badly
soiled-roared their indignation and charged at Hoddan. They waved knives as
they came.
He
held down the stun-pistol trigger and traversed the rushing men. The whining
buzz of the weapon was inaudible, at first, but before he released the trigger
it was plainly to be heard. Then there was silence. His attackers formed a very
untidy heap on the floor. They breathed stertorously. Hoddan began to retrieve
his possessions. He rolled a man over, for this purpose; a pair of very blue,
apprehensive eyes stared at him. Their owner had stumbled over one man and been
stumbled over by others. He gazed up at Hoddan, speechless.
"Hand me that,
please," said Hoddan. He pointed.
The
man in the purple cloak obeyed, shaking. Hoddan completed the recovery of all
his belongings. He turned. The man in the purple cloak winced and closed his
eyes.
"Hm,"
said Hoddan. He needed information. He spoke to the man: "I have a letter
of introduction to one Don Loris. Would you have any idea how I could reach him?"
The man in the purple cloak
gaped at Hoddan.
"He
is ... is my chieftian," he
said, aghast. "I—am Thai, his most trusted retainer.
"Then he practically wailed. "You must be the man I was sent
to meetl He sent me to leam if you came on the ship! I should have fought by
your side! This is disgracel"
"It's
disgraceful," agreed Hoddan grimly. But he, who had been born and raised
in a space-pirate community, was not too critical of others. "Let it go.
How do I find him?"
"I
should take you!" complained Thai bitterly. "But you have killed all
these men. Their friends and cnieftians are honor bound to cut your throat! And
you shot Merk, but he ran away, and he will be summoning bis friends to come
and kill you now! This is shame!" Then he said hopefullv, "Your
strange weapon . . . how many men can you fight? If
fifty, we may live to ride away. If more, we may even reach Don Loris' castle. How many?"
"We'll
see what we see," said Hoddan dourly. "But I'd better charge these
other pistols. You can come with me, or wait. I haven't killed these men.
They're only stunned. They'll come around presently."
He
went out of the warehouse, carrying the bag which was again loaded with
uncharged stun-pistols. He went back to the grid's control-room. He pushed it
open and entered for the second time. The redhead swore and rubbed at his hand.
The man who'd smiled unpleasantly lay in a heap on the floor. The second
unshaven man jittered visibly at sight of Hoddan.
"I'm back," said
Hoddan politely, "for more kilowatts."
He
put his bag conveniently close to the terminals at which his pistols could be
recharged. He snapped open a pistol butt and presented it to the electric
contacts.
"Quaint
customs you have here," he said conversationally. "Robbing
a newcomer. Resenting his need for a few watts of
power that comes free from the sky." The stun-pistol clicked. He
snapped the butt shut and opened another, which he placed in contact for
charging. "Making him act," he added acidly, "with manners as
bad as the local ones. Going at him with knives so he has to
be resentful in his turn." The second stun-pistol clicked. He
closed it and began to charge a third. He said severely, "Innocent
tourists—relatively innocent ones, anyhow—are not likely to be favorably
impressed with Darth!" He had the charging process going swiftly now. He
began to charge a fourth weapon. "It's particularly bad manners," he
added sternly, "to stand there grinding your teeth at me while your friend
behind the desk crawls after an old-fashioned chemical gun to shoot me
with."
He
snapped the fourth pistol shut and went after the man who'd dropped down behind
a desk. He came upon that man, hopelessly panicked, just as his hands closed on
a clumsy gun that was supposed to set off a chemical explosive to propel a
metal bullet
"Don't!" said
Hoddan severely. "If I have to shoot you at this range, you'll have
blisters!"
He
took the weapon out of the other man's hands. He went back and finished
charging the rest of the pistols.
He
returned most of them to his bag, though he stuck others in his belt and
pockets to the point where he looked like the fiction-tape version of a
space-pirate. He moved to the door. As a last thought, he picked up the
bullet-firing weapon.
"There's
only one spaceship here a month," he observed politely, "so I'll be
around. If you want to get in touch with me, ask Don Loris. I'm going to visit
him while I look over the professional opportunities on Darth."
He
went out once more. Somehow he felt more cheerful than a half-hour since, when
he'd landed as the only passenger from the spaceliner. Then he'd felt ignored
and lonely and friendless on a strange and primitive world. He still had no
friends, but he had already acquired some enemies and therefore material for
more or less worthwhile achievement. He surveyed the sunlit scene about him
from the control-room door.
Thai,
the purple-cloaked man, had brought two shaggy-haired animals around to the
door of the warehouse. Hoddan later learned that they were horses. He was in
furious haste to mount one of them. As he climbed up, small bright metal disks
cascaded from a pocket. He tried to stop the flow of money as he got feverishly
into the saddle.
From
the small town a mob of some fifty mounted men plunged toward the landing-grid.
They wore garments of yellow and blue and magenta..
They waved huge knives and made bloodthirsty noises. Thai saw them and bolted,
riding one horse and towing the other by a lead rope. It happened that his line
of retreat passed by where Hoddan stood.
Hoddan held up his hand.
Thai reined in.
"Mount!" Thai cried hoarsely.
"Mount and ridel"
Hoddan
passed him the chemical gun. Thai seized it frantically.
"Hurry!"
he panted. "Don Loris would have my throat cut if I deserted youl Mount
and ride!"
Hoddan painstakingly fastened his bag to the
saddle of his horse. He unfastened the lead rope. He'd noticed that Thai pulled
in the leather reins to stop the horse. He'd seen that he kicked it furiously
to urge it on. He deduced that one steered the animal by pulling on one strap
or the other. He climbed clumsily to a seat.
There
was a howl from the racing, mounted men. They waved their knives and yelled in
zestful anticipation of murder.
Hoddan pulled on a rein. His horse turned obediently. He kicked it. The animal broke into a
run toward the rushing mob. The jolting motion amazed Hoddan. One could not
shoot straight while being shaken up like this! He dragged back on the reins.
The horse stopped.
"Come!" yelled
Thai despairingly. "This way! Quick!"
Hoddan
got out a stun-pistol. Sitting erect, frowning a little
in his concentration, he began to take pot shots at the advancing men.
Three
of them got close enough to be blistered when stun-pistol bolts hit them.
Others toppled from their saddles at distances ranging from one hundred yards
to twenty. A good dozen, however, saw what was happening in time to swerve
their mounts and hightail it away. But there were eighteen luridly-tinted heaps
of garments on the ground inside the landing-grid. Two or three of them
squirmed and swore. Hoddan had partly missed, on them. He,
heard the chemical weapon booming thunderously. Now that victory was won, Thai
was shooting. Hoddan held up his hand for cease-fire. Thai rode up beside him,
not quite believing what he'd seen.
"Wonderful"
he said shakily. "Wonderfull Don Loris will be pleased! He will give me
gifts for my help to you. This is a great fight! We will be great men, after
this!"
"Then let's go and
brag," said Hoddan.
Thai was shocked.
"You
need me," he said. "It is fortunate that Don Loris chose me to fight
beside you!"
He
sent his horse trotting toward the unconscious men on the ground. He alighted.
Hoddan saw him happily and publicly pick the pockets of the stun-gun's victims.
He came back beaming.
"We
will be famous!" he said zestfully. "Two against thirty, and some ran
away!" he gloated. "And it was a good haul! We share, of course,
because we are companions."
"Is
it the custom," asked Hoddan mildly, "to loot defenseless men?"
"But
of course!" said Thai. "How else can a gentleman live, if he has no
chieftain to give him presents? You defeated them, so of course you take their
possessions!"
"Ah, yes," said
Hoddan. "To be sure!"
He
rode on. The road was a mere horse track. Presently it was less than that. He
saw a frowning, battlemented stronghold away off to the left. Thai openly hoped
that somebody would come from that castle and try to charge them toll for
riding over their lord's land. After Hoddan had knocked them over with the
stun-pistols, Thai would add to the heavy weight of coins already in his
possession.
It
did not look promising, in a way. But just before sunset, Hoddan saw three tiny
bright lights flash across the sky from west to east. They moved in formation
and at identical speeds. Hoddan knew a spaceship in orbit when he saw one. He
bristled, and muttered under his breath.
"What's that?"
asked Thai: "What did you say?"
"I
said," said Hoddan dourly, "that I've got to
do something about Walden. When they get an idea in their heads . . ."
CHAPTER IV
According
to the fiction-tapes, the
colonized worlds of the galaxy vary wildly from each other. In cold and
unromantic fact, it isn't so. Space travel is too cheap and sol-type solar
systems too numerous to justify the settlement of hostile worlds. Therefore
Bron Hoddan encountered no remarkable features in the landscape of Darth as he
rode through the deepening night. There was grass, bushes, trees, birds, and
various other comonplace living things whose ancestors had been dumped on Darth
some centuries before. The ecological system had worked itself out strictly by
bit-or-miss, but the result was not unusual. There was, though, the unfamiliar
star-pattern. Hoddan tried to organize it in his mind. He knew where the sun
had set, which would be west. He asked the latitude of the Darthian spaceport.
Thai did not know it. He asked about major geographical features—seas,
continents, and so on. Thai had no ideas on the subject.
Hoddan
fumed. He hadn't worried about such things on Walden. Of course, on Walden he'd
had one friend, Derec, and believed he had a sweetheart, Nedda. There he was
lonely and schemed to acquire the admiration of others. He ignored the sky.
Here on Darth he had no friends, but there were a number of local citizens now
recovering from stun-pistol bolts and yearning to carve him up with large
knives. He did not feel lonely, but the instinct to know where he was, was
again in operation.
The
ground was rocky and far from level. After two hours of riding on a small and
wiry horse with no built-in springs, Hoddan hurt in a great many places. He and
Thai rode in an indeterminate direction with an irregular scarp of low
mountains silhouetted against the unfamiliar stars. A vagrant night wind blew.
Thai had said it was a three-hour ride to Don Loris' castle. After something
over two of them, he said meditatively:
"I
think that if you wish to give me a present I will take it and not make a gift
in return. You could give me," he added helpfully, "your share of the
plunder from our victims."
"Why?"
demanded Hoddan. "Why should I give you a present?"
"If
I accepted it," explained Thai, "and make no gift in return, I will
become your retainer. Then it will be my obligation as a Darthian gentleman to
ride beside you, advise, counsel, and fight in your defense, and generally to
uphold your dignity."
"How about Don Loris? Aren't you his retainer?" he asked suspiciously.
"Between the two of us," said Thai,
"he's stingy. His presents are not as lavish as they could be. I can make him a return-present of part of the money we won in combat.
That frees me of duty to him. Then I could accept the balance of the money from
you, and become a retainer of yours."
"Oh," said
Hoddan.
"You
need a retainer badly," said Thai. "You do not know the customs here.
For example, there is enmity between Don Loris and the young Lord Ghek. If the
young Lord Ghek is as enterprising as he should be, some of his retainers
should be lying in wait to cut our throats as we approach Don Loris'
stronghold."
"Hm,"
said Hoddan grimly. But Thai seemed undisturbed. "This system of gifts and
presents sounds complicated. Why doesn't Don Loris simply give you so much a
year, or week, or whatnot?"
Thai made a shocked sound.
"That
would be payl A Darthian gentleman does not serve for pay! To offer it would be
insult!" Then he said, "Listenl"
He
reined in. Hoddan clumsily followed his example. After a moment or two Thai
clucked to his horse and started off again.
"It
was nothing," he said regretfully. "I hoped we were riding into an
ambush."
Hoddan
grunted. It could be that he was being told a tall tale. But back at the
spaceport, the men who came after him waving large knives had seemed sincere
enough.
"Why
should we be ambushed?" he asked. "And why do you hope for it?"
"Your
weapons would destroy our enemies," said Thai placidly, "and the
pickings would be good." He added, "We should be ambushed because the
Lady Fani refused to marry the Lord Ghek. She is Don Loris' daughter, and to
refuse to marry a man is naturally a deadly insult. So he should ravage Don
Loris' lands at every opportunity until he gets a chance to cany off the Lady
Fani and marry her by force. That is the only way the insult can be wiped
out."
"I see," said
Hoddan ironically.
He didn't. The two horses
topped a rise, and far in the distance there was a yellow light, with a mist
above it as of illuminated smoke.
"That
is Don Loris' stronghold," said Thai. He sighed. "It looks like we
may not be ambushed."
They
weren't. It was very dark where the horses forged ahead through brushwood. As
they moved onward, the single light became two. They were great bonfires
burning in iron cages some forty feet up in the air. Those cages projected from
the battlements of a massive, cut-stone wall. There was no light anywhere else.
Thai
rode almost under the cressets and shouted upward. A voice answered. Presently
a gate clanked open and a black, cave-like opening appeared behind it. Thai
rode grandly in, and Hoddan followed.
The
gate clanked shut. Torches waved overhead. Hoddan found that he and Thai had
ridden into a very tiny courtyard. Twenty feet above them, an inner
battlemented wall offered excellent opportunities for the inhabitants of the
castle to throw things down at visitors who, after admission, turned out to be
undesired.
Thai
shouted further identifications, including a boastful and entirely untruthful
declaration that he and Hoddan, together, had slaughtered twenty men in one
place and thirty in another, and left them lying in their gore.
The
voices that replied sounded derisive. Somebody came down a rope and fastened
the gate from the inside. With an extreme amount of creaking, an inner gate
swung wide. Men came out of it and took the horses. Hoddan dismounted, and it
seemed to him that he creaked as loudly as the gate. Thai swaggered, displaying
coins he had picked from the pockets of the men the stun-pistols had disabled.
He said splendidly to Hoddan:
"I go to announce your coming to Don
Loris. These are his retainers. They will give you to drink." He added
amiably, "If you were given food, it would be disgraceful to cut your
throat."
He
disappeared. Hoddan carried his shipbag and followed a man in a dirty pink
shirt to a stone-walled room containing a table and a chair. He sat down,
relieved. The man in the pink shirt brought him a flagon of wine. He
disappeared again.
Hoddan
drank the sour wine and brooded. He was very hungry and very tired, and it
seemed to him that he had been disillusioned in a new dimension. Morbidly, he
remembered a frequently given lecture from his grandfather on Zan.
"It's
no use!" his grandfather used to say. "There's not a bit o' use in
having brainsl All they do is get you into trouble! A
lucky idiot's ten times better off than a brainy man with a jinx on him! A
smart man starts thinkin', and he thinks himself into a jad cell if his luck is
bad, and good luck's wasted on him because it ain't reasonable and he don't
believe in it when it happens! It's taken me a lifetime to keep my brains from
ruin in' me! No, sir! I hope none o' my descendants inherit my brains I pity
'em if they do!"
Hoddan
had been on Darth not more than four hours. In that time he'd found himself
robbed, had been the object of two spirited attempts at assassination, had
ridden an excruciating number of miles on an unfamiliar animal, and now found
himself in a stone dungeon and deprived of food lest feeding him obligate his
host not to cut his throat. And he'd gotten into this by himself! He'd chosen
it! He'd practically asked for it!
He
began strongly to share his grandfather's disillusioned view of brains.
After a long time the door of the cell opened. Thai was back, chastened.
"Don
Loris wants to talk to you," he said in a subdued voice. "He's not
pleased."
Hoddan
took another gulp of the wine. He picked up his shipbag and limped to the door.
He decided painfully that he was limping on the wrong leg. He tried the other.
No improvemnt. He really needed to limp on both.
He
followed a singularly silent Thai through a long stone corridor and up stone
steps until they came to a monstrous hall lit with torches. It was barbarically
hung with banners, but it was not exactly a cheery place. At the far end logs
burned in a great fireplace.
Don
Loris sat in a carved chair beside it; wizened and white-bearded, in a
fur-trimmed velvet robe, with a peevish expression on his face.
"My chieftain," said Thai submissively, "here is the engineer
from Walden."
Hoddan scowled at
Don Loris,
whose expression of peevishness did not lighten. He
did regard
Hoddan with a flicker of
interest, however. A stranger who unfeignedly scowls at a feudal lord
with no superior and many
inferiors, is anyhow a novelty.
"Thai tells me,"
said Don Loris
fretfully, "that you and he,
together, slaughtered some dozens
of the
retainers of my neighbors today. I
consider it unfortunate. They may
ask me to have the two
of you
hanged, and it would be
impolite to refuse."
Hoddan said
truculently:
"I considered it impolite for your
neighbors' retainers to march toward me
waving large knives."
"Yes," agreed Don
Loris impatiently. "I concede that
point. It is natural
enough to act hastily at
such times. But still . .
. How
many did you ldll?"
"None," said Hoddan
curtly. "I shot them with
stun-pistols I'd just charged
in the
control-room of the landing-grid."
Don Loris
sat up
straight.
"Stun-pistols?" he demanded sharply. "You used
stun-pistols on Darth?"
"Naturally on Darth,"
said Hoddan with some tartness.
"I was herel But nobody was killed. One
or two
may be
slightly blistered. All of
them had their pockets picked
by Thai. I understand that is
a local
custom. There's nothing to worry about."
But Don
Loris stared at him, aghast.
"But this is
deplorablel" he protested.
"Stun-pistols used here? It is the one
thing I would have given
strict orders to avoidl My neighbors will
talk about it. Some of
them may even think about itl
You could have
used any other weapon, but of all things why
did you
have to use a stun-pistol?"
"I had
one," said Hoddan briefly.
"Horrible!" said Don Loris peevishly. "The worst thing you
could possibly have done!
I have
to disown
you. Unmistakably! You'll have to
disappear at once. Well blame
it on
Ghek's retainers."
"Disappear? Me?"
Hoddan exclaimed.
"Vanish,"
said Don Loris. "I suppose there's no real necessity to cut your throat,
but you plainly have to disappear, though it would have been much more discreet
if you'd simply gotten killed."
"I was indiscreet to
survive?" demanded Hoddan bristling.
"Extremely
sol" snapped Don Loris. "Here I had you come all the way from Walden to
help arrange a delicate matter, and before you'd traveled even the few miles to
my castle—within minutes of landing on Darth—you spoiled everything! I am a
reasonable man, but there are the facts I You used
stun-pistols, so you have to disappear. I think it generous of me to say only
until people on Darth forget that such things exist. But the two of you—oh, for
a year or so—there are some fairly cozy dungeons."
Hoddan
seethed suddenly. He'd tried to do something brilliant on Walden, and had been
framed into jail for life. He'd defended his life and property on Darth, and
nearly the same thing popped up as a prospect. Hoddan angrily suspected fate
and chance of plain conspiracy against him.
But
there was an interruption. A clanking of arms sounded somewhere nearby. Men
with long, gruesome, glittering spears came through a doorway. They stood
aside. A girl entered the great hall. More spearmen followed her. They stopped
by the door. The girl came across the hall.
She
was a pretty girl, but Hoddan hardly noticed the fact with so many other things
on his mind.
Thai, behind him, said in a
quivering voice:
"My
Lady Fani, I beg you to plead with your father for his most faithful retainer!"
The
girl looked in surprise at him. Her eyes fell on Hoddan. She looked interested.
Hoddan, at that moment, was very nearly as disgusted and as indignant as a man
could be. He did not look romantically at her—which to the Lady Fani, daughter
of that powerful lord, Don Loris, was a novelty. He did not look at her at all.
He ground his teeth.
"Don't
try to wheedle me, Fanil" snapped Don Loris. "I am a reasonable man,
but I indulge you too much—even to allowing you to refuse that young imbecile
Ghek, with no end of inconvenience as a result. But I will not have you
question my decision about Thai and this Hoddan personl" The girl said
pleasantly:
"Of course not, father. But what have
they done?"
"The
two of them," snapped Don Loris again, "fought twenty men today and
defeated all of theml Thai plundered them. Then thirty other men, mounted,
tried to avenge the first and they defeated them alsol Thai plundered eighteen.
And all this was permissible, if unlikely. But they did it with stun-pistols!
Everybody will soon be talking of itl They'll know
that this Hoddan came to Darth to see mel They'll suspect that I imported new
weapons for political purposes! They'll guess at the prettiest scheme I've had
these twenty years!"
"But
did they really defeat so many?" she asked, marvelling. "That's
wonderful! And Thai was undoubtedly fighting in defense of someone you'd told
him to protect, as a loyal retainer should do. Wasn't he?"
"I
wish," fumed her father, "that you would not throw in irrelevancies!
I sent him to get Hoddan this afternoon, npt to massacre my neighbors'
retainers—or rather, not to not massacre them. A little bloodletting would
have done no harm, but stun-pistols—"
"He
was protecting somebody he was told to protect," said Fani. "And this
other man, this—"
"Hoddan,
Bron Hoddan," said her father irritably. "Yes. He was protecting
himself! Doubtless he thought he did me a service in doing that! But if he'd
only let himself get killed quietly, the whole affair would be
simplified!"
The Lady Fani said with
quiet dignity:
"By
the same reasoning, father, it would simplify things greatly if I let the Lord
Ghek kidnap me."
"It's not the same
thing at all."
"At
least," said Fani," I wouldn't have a pack of spearmen following me
about like foul-breathed puppies everywhere I go!"
"It's not the same."
"And it's especially unreasonable," continued the Lady
Fani
with even greater dignity, "when you could put Thai and this Hoddan person
on duty to guard me instead. If they can fight twenty and thirty men at once,
all by themselves, it doesn't seem to me that you think much of my safety when
you want to lock them up somewhere instead of using them to keep your daughter
safe from that particularly horrible Ghek!"
Don Loris swore in a
cracked voice. Then he said.
"To
end the argument I'll think it over. Until tomorrow.
Now go awayl"
Fani,~beaming, rose and kissed him on the forehead. He squirmed.
She turned to leave, and beckoned casually for Thai and Hoddan to follow her.
"My chieftain,"
said Thai tremulously, "do we depart too?"
"Yesl" rasped Don
Loris. "Get out of my sight!"
Thai
moved with agility in the wake of the Lady Fani. Hoddan picked up his bag and
followed. This, he considered darkly, was in the nature of a reprieve only; if
those three spaceships overhead did come from Walden . . . but why three?
The
Lady Fani went out the door she'd entered by. Some of the spearmen went ahead,
and others closed in behind her. Hoddan followed. There were stone steps
leading upward. They were steep and uneven and interminable. Hoddan climbed
on aching legs for what seemed ages.
Stars
appeared. The leading spearmen stepped out on a flagstoned level area. When
Hoddan got there he saw that they had arrived at the battlements of a high part
of the castle wall. Starlight showed a rambling wall of circumvalla-tion, with
peaked roofs inside it. He could look down into a courtyard where a fire burned
and several men busily did things beside it. But there were no other lights.
Beyond the castle wall the ground stretched away toward a nearby range of
rugged low mountains. It was vaguely splotched with different degrees of
darkness, where fields and pastures and woodland copses stood.
"Here's
a bench," said Fani cheerfully, "and you can sit down beside me and
explain things. What's your name, again, and where did you come from?"
"I'm Bron Hoddan," said Hoddan. He
found himself scowling. "I come from Zan, where everybody is a space-pirate.
My grandfather heads the most notorious of the pirate gangs."
"Wonderful!"
said Fani, admiringly. "I knew you couldn't be just an ordinary person and
fight like my father said you did today!"
Thai cleared his throat.
"Lady Fani."
"Hush!"
said Fani. "You're a nice old fuddy-duddy that father sent to the
spaceport because he figured you'd be too timid to get into trouble.
Hush!" To Hoddan she said, "Now, tell me all about the fighting. It
must have been terrible!"
She watched him with her
head on one side, expectantly.
"The
fighting I did today," said Hoddan angrily, "was exactly as dangerous
and as difficult as shooting fish in a bucket. A little more
trouble, but not much."
Even
in the starlight he could see that her expression was more admiring than
before.
"I
thought you'd say something like that!" she said contentedly. "Go
on!"
"That's all,"
said Hoddan.
"Quite
all?"
"I
can't think of anything else," he told her. He added drearily: "I
rode a horse for three hours today. I'm not used to it. I ache. Your father is
thinking of putting me in a dungeon
until some scheme or other of his goes through. I'm disappointed. I'm worried
about three lights that went across the sky at sundown and I'm simply too tired
and befuddled for normal conversation."
"Oh," said Fani.
"If I may take my leave," said
Hoddan querulously, "I'll get some rest and do some thinking when I get
up. I'll hope to have more entertaining things to say."
He got to his feet and
picked up his bag.
"Where do I go?"
he asked.
Fani regarded him
enigmatically. Thai squirmed.
"Thai
will show you." Then Fani said deliberately, "Bron Hoddan, will you
fight for me?"
Thai plucked anxiously at
his arm. Hoddan said politely:
"If at all desirable,
yes."
"Thank you," said
Fani. "I am troubled by the Lord Ghek."
She
watched him move away. Thai, moaning softly, went with him down another
monstrosity of a stone stairway.
"Oh,
what folly!" mourned Thai. "I tried to warn you! You would not pay
attention! When the Lady Fani asked if you would fight for her, you should have
said if her father permitted you that honor. But you said yes! The spearmen
heard you! Now you must either fight the Lord Ghek within a night and day or be
disgraced!"
"I
doubt," said Hoddan tiredly, "that the obligations of Darthian
gentility apply to the grandson of a pirate or an escap—to me."
"But
they do apply!" said Hoddan, shocked. "A man who has been disgraced
has no rights! Any man may plunder him, any man may
kill him at will. But if he resists plundering or kills anybody else in
self-defense, he is hanged!"
Hoddan
stopped short in his descent of the uneven stone steps.
"That's
me from now on?" he asked sardonically. "Of course the Lady Fani
didn't mean to put me on such a spot!"
"You
were not polite," explained Thai. "She'd persuaded her father out of
putting us in a dungeon until he thought of us again. You should at least have
shown good manners! You should have said that you came here across deserts and
flaming oceans because of the fame of her beauty. You might have said you heard
songs of her sweetness beside campfires many worlds away. She might not have
believed you, but—"
"Hold
it!" said Hoddan. "That's just manners? What do you say to a girl you
really like?"
"Oh, then," said
Thai, "you get complimentary!"
Hoddan
went heavily down the rest of the steps. He was not in the least pleased. On a
strange world, with strange customs, and with his weapons losing their charges
every hour, he did not need any handicaps. But if he got into a
worse-than-outlawed category such as Thai described . . .
At the bottom of the stairs he said,
seething:
"When you've tucked me in bed, go back
and ask the Lady
Fani to arrange for me to have a horse and permission to go fight this
Lord Ghek right after breakfast!"
He
was too much enraged to think further. He let himself be led into some sort of
quarters which probably answered Don Loris' description of a cozy dungeon. Thai vanished and came back with ointments for Hoddan's blisters,
but no food. He explained again that if food were given to Hoddan would
make it disgraceful to cut his throat. And Hoddan swore poisonously, but
stripped off his garments and smeared himself lavishly where he had lost skin.
The ointment stung like fire, and he presently lay awake in a sort of dreary
fury. And he was ravenous.
It
seemed to him that he lay awake for aeons, but he must have dozed off because
he was wakened by a yell. It was not a complete yell, only the first part of
one. It stopped in a particularly unpleasant fashion, and its echoes went reverberating
through the stony walls of the castle. Hoddan was out of bed with a stun-pistol
in his hand in a hurry. The first yell was followed by other shouts and
outcries, by the clashing of steel upon steel, and all the frenzied tumult of
combat in the dark. The uproar moved. In seconds the sound of fighting came
from a plainly different direction, as if the striking force were rushing
through only indifferendy de^ fended corridors.
It
would not pass before Hoddan's door, but he growled to himself. On a feudal
world, presumably one might expect anything. But there was a situation in
being, here, in which etiquette required a rejected suitor to carry off a
certain scornful maiden by force. Some young lordling named Ghek had to carry
off Fani or be considered a man of no spirit.
A
chemical gun went off somewhere. It went off again. There was almost an instant
of silence. Then an intolerable screeching of triumph, and
shrieks of another sort entirely, and the excessively loud clash of arms once
more.
Hoddan was now clothed. He jerked on the door
to open
it.
The
door was locked. He raged. He flung himself against it and it barely quivered.
It was barred on the outside. He swore in highly indecorous terms, and tore his
bedstead apart to get a battering-ram.
The
fighting reached a climax. He heard a girl scream, and without question knew
that it was Lady Fani, and equally without question knew that he would fight to
keep any girl from being abducted by a man she didn't want to marry. He swung
the log which was the comer-post of his bed. Something cracked. He swung
again.
The
sound of battle changed to that of a running fight. The objective of the
raiders had been reached. Having gotten what they came for—and it could only be
Fani—they retreated swiftly, fighting only to cover their retreat. Hoddan
swung his bed-leg with furious anger. He heard a flurry of yells and swprdplay,
and a fierce, desperate cry from Fani among them, and a plank in his
guestroom-dungeon door gave way. He struck again. The running raiders poured
past a comer some yards away. He battered and swore, and swore and battered as
the tumult moved, and he suddenly heard a scurrying thunder of horses' hoofs
outside the castle. There were yells of derisive triumph and the pounding,
rumbling sound of horses headed away in the night.
Still
raging inarticulately, Hoddan crashed his small log at the door. He was not
consciously concerned about the distress Don Loris might feel over the
abduction of his daughter. But there is an instinct in most men against the
forcing of a girl to marriage against her will. Hoddan battered at his door.
Around him the castle began to hum like a hive of bees. Women cried out
or exclaimed, and men shouted furiously to one another; off-duty fighting men
came belatedly, looking for somebody to fight, dragging weapons behind them and
not knowing where to find enemies.
Bron
Hoddan probably made as much noise as any four of them. Somebody brought a
light somewhere near. It shone through the cracks in the splintered planks. He
could see to aim. He smote savagely and the door came apart. It fell outward
and he found himself in the corridor outside, being stared at by complete
strangers.
"It's
the engineer," someone explained to someone else. "I saw him when he
rode in with Thai."
"I want Thai," said Hoddan coldly.
"I want a dozen horses.
I
want men to ride them with me." He pushed his way forward. "Which way to the stables?"
But
then he went back and picked up his bag of stun-pistols. His air was purposeful
and his manner furious. The retainers of Don Loris were in an extremely
apologetic frame of mind. The Lady Fani had been carried off into the night by
a raiding-party undoubtedly led by Lord Ghek. The defenders of the castle
hadn't prevented it. So there was no special reason to obey Hoddan, but there
was every reason to seem to be doing something useful.
He
found himself almost swept along by agitated retainers trying to look as if
they were about a purposeful affair. They went down a long ramp, calling
uneasily to each other. They eddied around a place where two men lay quite
still on the floor. Then there were shouts of, "Thai! This way,
Thai!" and Hoddan found himself in a small, stone-walled courtyard. It was
filled with milling figures and many waving torches. And there was Thai,
desperately pale and frightened. Behind him there was Don Loris, his eyes
burning and his hands twitching, literally speechless from fury.
"Pick
a dozen men, Thai!" commanded Hoddan. "Get 'em on horses! Get a horse
for me, dammit! I'll show 'em how to use the stun-pistols as we ridel"
Thai panted, shaking:
"They hamstrung most
of the horses!"
"Get
the ones that are left!" barked Hoddan. He suddenly raged at Don Loris.
"Here's another time stun-pistols get used on Darth! Object to this if you
want to!"
Hoofbeats. Thai on a horse that shied and reared at the flames and confusion.
Other horses, skittish and scared, with the smell of spilled
blood in their nostrils, fighting the men who led them, their eyes rolling.
Thai
called names as he looked about him. There was plenty of light. As he called a
name, a man climbed on a horse. Some of the chosen men swaggered; some looked
woefully unhappy. But with Don Loris glaring frenziedly upon them in the smokv
glare, no man refused.
Hoddan
climbed ungracefully upon the mount that four or five men held for him. Thai,
with a fine sense of drama, siezed a torch and waved it
above his head. There was
a vast
creaking, and an unsuspected
gate opened, and Thai rode
out with a great clattering of hoofs and the
others rode out after him.
There were lights
everywhere about the castle, now.
All along the battlements men had
lighted the fire-baskets and lowered them partway down the
walls, to disclose any attacking
force which might have dishonorable
intentions toward the stronghold. Others waved torches from
the battlements. Streaming smoke,
lighted by the flames, made
weird patterns in the
starlit night.
Thai swung
his torch
and pointed
to the
ground.
"They rode here!"
he called
to Hoddan.
"They ride for Ghek's castle!"
Hoddan said
angrily:
"Put out that
light! Do you want to
advertise how few we are and
what we're doing? Here, ride
close!"
Thai flung down
the torch.
There was confusion and crowding on Hoddan's right-hand side. The smell of
horseflesh was strong. Thai boomed:
"The pickings
should be good, eh? Why
do you
want me?"
"You've got to
leam something," snapped
Hoddan. "Here! This is a stun-pistol.
It's set for single-shot firing only. You hold it
so, with
your fingers along this rod.
You point
your finger at a man and
pull this trigger. The pistol
will buzz briefly. You let the
trigger loose and point at
another man and pull the trigger
again. Understand? Don't try to
use it
over ten yards. You're
no marksman!
And don't
waste charges! Remember what to do?"
There on
a galloping
horse beside Hoddan in the
darkness, Thai zestfully repeated
his lesson.
"Show another
man and
send him to me for
a pistol."
Hoddan commanded curtly. "I'll
be showing
others."
He turned to
the man
who rode
too close
to his
left. Before he had fully instructed
that man, another clamored for
a weapon on his
right. Hoddan checked his instructions
and armed him.
The band of
pursuing horsemen pounded through the
dark night under strangely
patterned stars. Hoddan held on to his saddle and barked out instructions to
teach Darthians how to shoot. He felt very queer. He began to worrv With the lights of Don Loris' castle long vanished behind,
he began to realize how very small his troop of pursuers happened to be. They'd
be outnumbered many times by those they sought to pursue.
Thai
had said something about horses being hamstrung. There must, then, have been
two attacking parties. One swarmed into the stables and drew all defending
retainers there. Then the other poured over a wall or in through a bribed-open
sally port, and rushed for the Lady Fani's apartments. The point was that the
attackers had made sure there could be only a token pursuit. They knew they
were many times stronger than any who might come after them. It would be absurd
for them to flee.
Hoddan
kicked his horse and got up to the front of the column of riders.
"Thai!"
he snapped. "They'll be idiots if they keep on running away, now they're
too far off to worry about men on foot. They'll stop and wait for us . . . most
of them anyhow. We're riding into an ambush!"
"Good
pickings, eh?" said Thai enthusiastically. "It would be disgrace not
to fight them. The plunder—"
"Idiot!"
yelped Hoddan. "These men know you. You know what I can do with
stun-pistolsl Tell them we're riding into ambush. They're to follow close
behind us two! Tell them they're not to shoot at anybody more than five yards
off and not coming at them, and if any man stops to plunder I'll kill him
personally!"
Thai gaped at him.
"Not stop to plunder?"
"Ghek
won't!" snapped Hoddan. "He'll take Fani on to his castle, leaving
most of his men behind to massacre us! We've got to catch up to him before he
shuts his castle gate in our faces!"
Thai
reined aside and Hoddan pounded on at the head of the tiny troop. This was the
second time in his life he'd been on a horse. He held on doggedly, riding with
all the grace and spirit of a sack of cement. This adventure was not
exhilarating.
He
was badly worried about innumerable things that could go wrong. Even if
everything went right he'd still have plenty of troubles! It came into his
mind, depressingly, that supposedly stirring action like this was really no
more satisfying than piracy or the practise of electronics as a business. It
was something one got into and had to go through with. Fani, for example, had
tricked him into a fix in which he had to fight Ghek or be disgraced—and to be
disgraced on Darth was equivalent to suicide.
His
horse started up a gentle rise in the ground. It grew steeper.
The horse slacked in its galloping. The incline grew steeper still. The horse
slowed to a walk. Soon the dim outline of trees appeared overhead.
"Perfect place for an
ambush," Hoddan reflected dourly.
He got
out a stun-pistol. He set the stud for continuous fire—something he hadn't
dared trust to the others.
His
horse breasted the rise. There was a yell
ahead and dim figures plunged toward him.
He
painstakingly made ready to swing his stun-pistol from his extreme right all
the way to the extreme left. The pistol should be capable of continuous fire
for four seconds. But it was operating on stored charge. He didn't dare count
on more than three.
He
pulled the trigger. The stun-pistol hummed; its noise was inaudible through the
yells of the charging partisans of the Lord Ghek.
CHAPTER V
Hoddan swore from the depths of a very considerable
vocabulary.
"You"
(censored), "get back on your horses or 111 blast you and leave you for Ghek's men to handle
when they're able to move about again! Get back on those horses!"
The men got back on their
horses.
"Now
go on ahead," rasped Hoddan. "All of youl I'm going to count
you!"
The
dozen horsemen from Don Loris' stronghold rode reluctantly on ahead. He did
count them. He rode on, shepherding them before him.
"Ghek,"
he told them in a blood-curdling tone, "has a bigger prize than any cash
you'll plunder from one of his shot-down retainers! He's got the Lady Fani! He
won't stop before he has her behind castle walls! We've got to catch up with
him! Do you want to try to climb into his castle by your fingernails? You'll do
it if he gets there first!"
The
horses moved a little faster. Thai said with surprising humility:
"If
we force our horses too much, they'll be exhausted before we can catch
up."
"Figure it out,"
snapped Hoddan. "We have to catch up!"
He
settled down to more of the acute discomfort that riding was to him. Hoddan
knew that his party was slowed down by him. Presently he began to feel bitterly
sure that Ghek would reach his castle before he was overtaken.
"This
place he's heading for," he said discouragedly to Thai, "any chance
of our rushing it?"
"Oh,
no!" said Thai dolefully. "Ten men could hold it against a
thousand!"
"Then can't we make
better time?"
Thai said resignedly:
"Ghek
probably had fresh horses waiting, so he could keep on at top speed in his
flight. I doubt that we will catch him, now."
"The
Lady Fani," said Hoddan bitterly, "has put me in a fix so if I don't
fight him I'm ruined!"
"Disgraced,"
corrected Thai. He added mournfully, "It's the same thing."
Gloom
descended on the whole party as it filled their leaders. Insensibly, the pace
of the horses slackened still more. They had done well. But a horse that can
cover fifty miles a day at its own gait, can be
exhausted in ten or less, if pushed. By the time Hoddan and his men were within
two miles of Ghek's castle, their mounts were extremely reluctant to move
faster than a walk. At a mile, they were kept in motion only by kicks.
The
route they followed was specific. There was no choice of routes, here in the
hills. They could only follow every twist and turn of the trail, among steep
mountain flanks and minor peaks. But suddenly they came to a clear, wide
valley; yellow cressets burned at its upper end, no more than a half mile distant. They showed a castle gate, open, with the last of a party of horsemen filing into it.
Even as Hoddan swore, the gate closed. Faint shouts of triumph came from inside
the castle walls.
"I'd
have bet on this," said Hoddan miserably. "Stop here, Thai. Pick out
a couple of your more hangdog characters and fix them up with their hands
apparently tied behind their backs. We take a breather for five minutes."
He
would not let any man dismount.-He shifted himself about on his own saddle,
trying to find a comfortable way to sit. He failed. At the end
of five minutes he gave orders. There were still shouts occasionally from
within Ghek's castle. They had that unrhythmic frequency which suggested that
they were responses to a speech. Ghek was making a fine, dramatic spectacle of his capture of an
unwilling bride. He was addressing his retainers and saying that through their
fine loyalty, co-operation and willingness to risk all for their chieftain,
they now had the Lady Fani to be their chatelaine. He thanked them from the
bottom of his heart and they were invited to the official wedding, which would
take place some time tomorrow, most likely.
Before
the speech was quite finished, however, Hoddan and his weary followers rode up
into the patch of light cast by the cressets outside the walls. Thai bellowed
to the battlements.
"Prisoners!"
he roared, according to instructions from Hoddan. "We caught some
prisoners in the ambush! They got fancy news! Tell Lord Ghek he'd better get
their story right off! No time to waste! Urgent!"
Hoddan
played the part of one prisoner, just in case anybody noticed from above that
one man rode as if either entirely unskilled in riding or else injured in a
fight.
He
heard shoutings, over the walls. He glared at his men and they drooped in their
saddles. The gate creaked open and the horsemen from Don Loris' castle filed
inside. They showed no elation, because Hoddan had promised to ram a spear down
the throat of any man who gave away his strategy ahead of time. The gate closed
behind them. Men came to take their horses. This could have revealed that the
newcomers were strangers, but Ghek would have recruited new and extra
retainers for the emergency of tonight. There would be many strange faces in
his castle just now.
"Good
fight, eh?" bellowed an ancient, long-retired retainer with a wine bottle
in his hand.
"Good fight!"
agreed Thai.
"Good plunder, eh?" bellowed the
ancient above the heads of younger men. "Like the good old days?" "Better!" boomed Thai.
At
just this instant the young Lord Ghek's personal servant appeared.
"What's
this about prisoners with fancy news?" he demanded. "What is
it?"
"Don Loris!"
whooped Thai. "Long live the Lady Fani!"
Hoddan
carefully opened fire with the continuous-fire stud of this pistol—his third
tonight—pressed down. The merrymakers in the courtyard wavered and went down
in windrows. Thai opened fire with a stun-pistol. The others bellowed and
began to fling bolts at every living thing they saw.
"To
the Lady Fani!" rasped Hoddan, getting off-his horse with as many
creakings as the castle gate.
His
followers now dismounted. They fired with reckless abandon. A stun-pistol,
which does not kill, imposes few restraints upon its user. If you shoot
somebody who doesn't need to be shot, he may not like it but he isn't
permanently harmed. So the twelve who'd followed Hoddan poured in what would
have been a murderous fire if they'd been shooting bullets, but was no worse
than devastating as matters stood.
There were screams and flight and utterly
hopeless defiances by sword-armed and spear-armed men. In instants
Hoddan
went limping into the castle with Thai by his side, searching for Fani and Lord
Ghek. Hoddan's men went raging happily through corridors and halls. They used
their stun-pistols with zest. Hoddan heard Fani scream angrily and he and Thai
went swiftly to see. They came upon the young Lord Ghek trying to let Fani down
out of a window on a rope. He undoubtedly intended to follow her and complete his
abduction on the run. But Fani bit him, and Hoddan said vexedly:
"Look
here! It seems that I'm disgraced if I don't fight you somehow—"
The
young Lord Ghek rushed him, sword out, eyes blazing in a fine frenzy of
despair. Hoddan brought him down with a buzz of the stun-gun.
One of Hoddan's followers came hunting for him.
"Sir,"
he sputtered, "we got the garrison- cornered in their quarters, and we've
been picking them off through the windows, and they think they're dropping dead
and want to surrender. Shall we let 'em?"
"By
all means," Hoddan said irritably. "And Thai, go get something
heavier than a nightgown for the Lady Fani to wear, and then do what plundering
is practical. But I want to be out of here in a half-liour. Understand?"
"I'll
attend to the costume," said the Lady Fani vengefully. "You cut his
throat while I'm getting dressed."
She
nodded at the unconscious Lord Ghek on the pavement. She disappeared through a doot nearby. Hoddan could guess that Ghek would have prepared something
elaborate in the way of a trousseau for the bride he was to carry screaming
from her home. Somehow it was the sort of thing a Darthian would do. Now Fani
would enjoyably attire herself in the best of it.
"Thai,"
said Hoddan, "help me get this character into a closet somewhere. He's not
to be killed. I don't like him, but at this moment I don't like anybody very
much, and I won't play favorites."
Thai
dragged the insensible young nobleman into the next room. Hoddan locked the
door and pocketed the key as Fani came into view again. She was splendidly
attired, now, in brocade and jewels. Ghek had evidently hoped to placate her
after marriage by things of that sort and had spent lavishly for.them.
Now,
throughout the castle there were many and diverse noises. Sometimes—not
often—there was still the crackling hum of a stun-pistol. There were many more exuberant shoutings. They apparently had to do
with loot. There were some squealings in female voices, but many more
gigglings. '
"I
need not say," said the Lady Fani with dignity, "that I thank you
very much. But I do say so."
"You're quite
welcome," said Hoddan politely.
"And what are you
going to do now?"
"I
imagine," said Hoddan, "that well go down into the courtyard where
our horses are. I gave my men a half-hour to loot in. During that half-hour I
shall sit down on something which will, I hope, remain perfectly still. And I
may," he added morbidly, "I may eat an apple. I've had nothing to eat
since I landed on Darth. People don't want to commit themselves to not cutting
my throat. But after one half-hour we'll leave."
The Lady Fani looked sympathetic.
"But
the castle's surrendered to you," she protested. "You hold itl Aren't
you going to try to keep it?"
"There
are a good many unpleasant characters out yonder," said Hoddan, waving his
hand at the great outdoors, "who've reason to dislike me very much.
They'll be anxious to express their emotions, when they feel up to it. I want
to dodge them. And presently the people in this castle will realize that even
stun-pistols can't keep on shooting indefinitely here. I don't want to be
around when it occurs to them."
He
offered his arm with a reasonably grand air and went limping with her down to
the courtyard just inside the gate. Two of Don Loris' retainers staggered into
view as they arrived, piling up plunder which ranged from a quarter-keg of wine
to a mass of frothy stuff which must be female garments. They went away and
other men arrived loaded down their own accumulations of loot. Some of the
local inhabitants looked on with uneasy indignation.
Hoddan found a bench and sat down. He
conspicuously displayed one of the weapons which had captured the castle.
Ghek's defeated retainers looked at him darkly.
"Bring
me something to eat," commanded Hoddan. "Then if you bring fresh
horses for my men, and one extra for each to carry his plunder on, I'll take
them away. Ill even throw in the Lord Ghek, who is now
unharmed, but with his life in the balance. Otherwise—"
He
moved the pistol suggestively. The normal inhabitants of Ghek's castle moved
away, discussing the situation in subdued voices.
The Lady Fani sat down
proudly on the bench beside him.
"You are
wonderful!" she said with conviction.
"I used to cherish
that illusion myself," said Hoddan.
"But
nobody before in all Darthian history has ever fought twenty men, and then
thirty men, and destroyed an ambush, and captured a castle,' all in one
day!"
"And
without a meaL" said Hoddan darkly, "and with a lot
of blisters."
He
considered. Somebody came running with bread and cheese and wine. He bit into
the bread and cheese. After a moment he said, his mouth full:
"I
once "saw a man perform the unparalleled feat of jumping over nine
barrels placed in a row. It had never been done before. But I didn't envy him.
I never wanted to jump over nine barrels in a row! In the same way, I never
especially wanted to fight other men or break up ambushes or capture casdes. I
want to do what I want to do, not what other people happen to admire."
"Then what do you want
to do?" she asked aelmiringly.
"I'm
not sure now," said Hoddan gloomily. He took a fresh bite. "But a
little while ago I wanted to do some interesting and useful things in
electronics,, and get reasonably rich, and marry a
delightful, girl, and become a prominent citizen on Walden. I think I'll settle
for another planet, now."
"My
father will make you rich," said the girl proudly. "You saved me from
being married to Ghek!"
Hoddan shook his head.
"I've
got my doubts," he said. "He had a scheme to import a lot of
stun-pistols and arm his retainers with them. Then he meant to rush the
spaceport and have me set up a broadcast power unit that'd keep them charged
all the time. Then he'd sit back and enjoy life. Holding the spaceport, nobody
else could get stun-weapons, and nobody could resist his retainers who had 'em.
So he'd be top man on Darth. He'd have exactly as much power as he chose to
sieze. I think he cherished that little idea; but now I've given advance publicity
to stun-pistols. Now he hasn't a ghost of a chance of pulling it off. I'm
afraid he'll be displeased with me."
"I
can take care of thatl" said Fani confidently. She did not question that
her father would be displeased.
"Maybe
you can," said Hoddan, "but though he's kept
a daughter he's lost a dream. And that's bereavementl I know!"
Horses
came plodding into the courtyard with Ghek's retainers driving them. They were
anxious to get rid of their conquerors. Hoddan's men came trickling back, with
armfuls of plunder to add to the piles they'd previously gathered. Thai took
charge, commanding the exchange of saddles from tired to fresh horses and that
the booty be packed on the extra mounts. It was time.
Nine of the dozen looters were at work on the task when there was a tumult back
in the castle. Yellings and the clash of steel. Hoddan
shook his head.
He conjectured that somebody's pistol went
empty and the local boys found it out.
He
beckoned to a listening, tense, resentful inhabitant of the castle. He held up
the key of the room in which he'd locked young Ghek.
"Now
open the castle gate," he commanded, "and fetch out my last three
men, and we'll leave without setting fire to anything. The Lord Ghek would like
it that way. He's locked up in a room that's particularly inflammable."
The
last statement was a guess, only, but Ghek's retainer looked horrified. He
bellowed. There was a subtle change in the bitterly hostile atmosphere. Men
came angrily to help load the spare horses. Hoddan's last three men came out of
a corridor, wiping blood from various scratches and complaining plaintively
that their pistols had shot empty and they'd had to defend themselves with
knives.
Three minutes later the cavalcade rode out of
the castle gate and away into the darkness. Hoddan had arrived here when Ghek
was inside with Fani as his prisoner, when there were only a dozen men without
and at least a hundred inside to defend the walls. And the casde was considered
impregnable.
In a
half-hour Hoddan's followers had taken the castle, rescued Fani, looted it
superficially, gotten fresh horses for themselves and spare ones for their
plunder, and were headed away again. In only one respect were they worse off
than when they arrived. Some stun-pistols were empty.
Hoddan
searched the sky and pieced together the star pattern he'd noted before.
"Hold
itl" he said sharply to Thai. "We don't go back the same way we came!
The gang that ambushed us will be stirring around again, and we haven't got
full stun-pistols nowl We make a wide circle around
those characters!"
"Why?"
demanded Thai. "There are only so many passes. The only other one is three
times as long. And it is disgraceful to avoid a fight."
"Thai!"
snapped an icy voice from beside Hoddan. "You have an order! Obey
it!"
Even in the darkness,
Hoddan could see Thai jump.
"Yes,
my Lady Fani," said Thai shakily. "But we go a long distance
roundabout."
The
direction of motion through the night now changed. The long line of horses
moved in deepest darkness, lessened only by the light of many stars. Even so,
in time one's eyes grew accustomed and it was a glamorous spectacle.
Presently
they came to a narrow defile which opened out before them. And there, far, far
away, they could see the sky as vaguely brighter. As they went on, indeed, a
glory of red and golden colorings appeared at the horizon.
And
out of that magnificence three bright lights suddenly darted. In strict
V-formation, they flashed from the sunrise toward the west. They went overhead,
more brilliant than the brightest stars, and when partway down to the horizon
they suddenly winked out.
"What on Earth are they?" demanded
Fani. "I never saw anything like that before!"
"They're
spaceships in orbit," said Hoddan. He was as astounded as the girl, but
for a different reason. "I thought they'd be landed by now!"
It
changed everything. He could not see what the change amounted to, but the
change was there.
"We're
going to the spaceport," he told Thai curtly. "Well recharge our
stun-pistols there. I thought those ships had landed. They haven't. Now well
see if we can keep them aloft! How far to the
landing-grid?"
"You
insisted," complained Thai, "that we not go back to Don Loris' castle
by the way we left it. There are only so many passes through the hills. The
only other one is very long. We are only four miles—"
"Then
we head there right now!" snapped Hoddan. "And we step up the
speed!"
He
barked commands to his followers. Thai, puzzled but in dread of acid comment
from Fani, bustled up and down the line of men, insisting on a faster pace.
Finally even the led horses, loaded with loot, managed to get up to a respectable
ambling trot. The sunrise proceeded. Dew upon the straggly grass became
visible. Separate drops appeared as gems upon the grass blades, and then began
gradually to vanish as the sun's disk showed itself. Then the angular metal
framework of the landing-grid rose dark against the sunrise .sky.
When they rode up to it, Hoddan reflected
that it was the only really civilized structure on the planet. Architecturally
it was surely the least pleasing. It had been built when Darth was first
settled on, and when ideas of commerce and interstellar trade seemed
reasonable. It was a half-mile high and built of massive metal beams. It loomed
hugely overhead when the double file of shaggy horses trotted under its lower
arches and across the grass-grown space within it. Hoddan headed purposefully
for the control shed. There was no sign of movement anywhere. The steeply
gabled roofs of the nearby town showed only the fluttering of tiny birds. 'No
smoke rose from chimneys. Yet the slanting morning sunshine was bright.
As Hoddan actually reached the control shed,
he saw a sleepy man in the act of putting a key in the door. He dismounted
within feet of that man, who turned and blinked sleepily at him, and then
immediately looked the reverse of cordial. It was the same man he'd stung with
a stun-pistol the day before.
"I've come back,"
said Hoddan, "for a few more kilowatts."
The red-headed man swore
angrily.
"Hushl" said
Hoddan gently. "The Lady Fani is with us."
The
red-headed man jerked his head around and paled. Thai glowered at him. Others
of Don Loris' retainers shifted their positions significantly, to make their
oversized knives handier.
"We'll
come in," said Hoddan. "Thai, collect the pistols and bring them
inside."
Fani
swung lightly to the ground and followed him in. She looked curiously at the
cables and instrument boards and switches inside. On one wall a red light
pulsed, and went out, and pulsed again. The red-headed man looked at it.
"You're being called,"
said Hoddan. "Don't answer it."
The
red-headed man scowled. Thai came in with an armful of stun-pistols in various
stages of discharge. Hoddan briskly broke the butt of one of his own and
presented it to the terminals he'd used the day before.
"He's
not to touch anything, Thai," said Hoddan. To the red-headed man he
observed, "I suspect that call's been coming in all night. Something was
in orbit at sundown. You closed up shop and went home early, eh?"
"Why
not?" rasped the red-headed man. "There's only one ship a month I"
"Sometimes,"
said Hoddan, "there are specials. But I commend your negligence. It was
probably good for me."
He
charged one pistol, and snapped its butt shut, and snapped open another, and
charged it. There was no difficulty, of course. In minutes all the pistols he'd
brought from Walden were ready for use again.
He
tucked away as many as he could conveniently carry on his person. He handed the
rest to Thai. He went competently to the pulsing red signal. He put headphones
to his ears. He listened. His expression became extremely strange, as if he did
not quite understand nor wholly believe what he heard.
"Odd," he said mildly. He
considered for a moment or two. Then he rummaged around in the drawers of
desks. He found wire clippers. He began to snip wires in half.
The red-headed man started forward
automatically.
"Take care of him,
Thai," said Hoddan.
He
cut the microwave receiver free of its wires and cables. He lifted it
experimentally and opened part of its case to make sure the thermo battery that
would power it in an emergency was there and in working order. It was.
"Put
this on a horse, Thai," commanded Hoddan. "We're taking it up to Don
Loris'."
The
red-headed man's mouth dropped open. He said stridently:
"Hey!
You can't do that!" Hoddan glared at him. The redhead then said sourly:
"All right, you can. I'm not trying to stop you with all those hardcases
outside!"
"You
can build another in a week," said Hoddan kindly. "You must have
spare parts."
Thai
carried the communicator outside. Hoddan opened a cabinet, threw switches, and
painstakingly cut and snipped and snipped at a tangle of wires within.
"Just
your instrumentation," he explained. "You won't use the grid until
you've got this fixed, too. A few days of harder work than
you're used to". That's all!"
He
led die way out again, and on the way explained to Fani:
"Pretty old-fashioned job, this grid. They make simpler ones nowadays. They'll be
able to repair it,-though, in time. Now we go back to your father's castle. He
may not be pleased, but he should be mollified."
He
saw Fani mount lightly into her own saddle and shook his head gloomily. He climbed
clumsily into his own. They moved off to return to Don Loris' stronghold.
Hoddan suffered.
They
reached the castle before noon, and the sight of the Lady Fani produced
enthusiasm and loud cheers. The loot displayed by the returned wayfarers
increased the rejoicing.
There
was envy among the men who had stayed behind. There were respectfully admiring
looks cast upon Hoddan. He had displayed, in furnishing opportunities for
plunder, the most-admired quality a leader of feudal fighting men could show.
The
Lady Fani beamed as she, Thai, and Hoddan, all very dusty and travel-stained,
presented themselves to her father in the castle's great hall.
"Here's
your daughter, sir," said Hoddan, and yawned. "I hope there won't be
any further trouble with Ghek. We took his castle and looted it a little and
brought back some extra horses. Then we went to the spaceport. I recharged my
stun-pistols and put the landing-grid out of order for the time being. I
brought away the communicator there." He yawned again. "There's something
highly improper going on, up just beyond atmosphere. There are three ships up
there in orbit, and they were trying to call the spaceport in non-regulation
fashion, and it's possible that some of your neighbors would be interested. So
I postponed everything until I could get some sleep. It seemed to me that when
better skulduggeries are concocted, that Don Loris and his associates ought to
concoct them. And if you'll excuse me—"
He
moved away practically dead on his feet. If he had been accustomed to horseback
riding, he wouldn't have been so exhausted. But now he yawned, and yawned, and
Thai took him to a room quite different from the guestroom-dungeon to which
he'd been taken the night before. He noted that the door, this time, opened
inward. He braced chairs against it to make sure that nobody could open it from
without. He lay down and slept heavily.
He
was awakened by loud poundings. He roused himself enough to say sleepily:
"Whaddyawant?"
"The
lights in the skyl" cried Fani outside the door. "The ones you say
are spaceships! It's sunset again, and I just saw them. But there aren't three,
anymore. Now there are nine!"
"All
right," said Hoddan. He iay down his head again and thrust it into his
pillow. Then he was suddenly very wide awake. He sat up with a start.
Nine spaceships? That wasn't possible! That would be a spacefleetl And
there were no spacefleets! Walden would certainly have never sent more than one
ship to demand his surrender to its police. The Space Patrol never needed more
than one ship anywhere. Commerce wouldn't cause ships to travel in company. Piracy? There couldn't be a pirate fleet! There'd never be enough loot anywhere
to keep it in operation. Nine spaceships at one time.
All traveling in orbit around a primitive planet like Darth.
It
couldn't happen! Hoddan couldn't conceive of such a thing. But a recently developed pessimism
suggested that since everything else, to date, had been to his disadvantage,
this was probably a catastrophe also.
He groaned and lay down to
sleep again.
CHAPTER VI *
When frantic hangings on the propped-shut door awakened
him next morning, he confusedly imagined that they were noises in the
communicator headphones,
But
suddenly he opened his eyes. Somebody banged on the door once more. A voice
cried angrily:
"Bron
Hoddan! Wake up or I'll go away and let whatever happens to you, happen! Wake
upl"
It
was the voice of the Lady Fani, at once indignant, tearful, solicitous and
angry.
"Hello. I'm awake.
What's up?"
"Come
out of there!" cried Fani's voice, simultaneously exasperated and filled
with anxiety. "Things are happening! Somebody's here from Walden! They
want you!"
Hoddan
could not believe it. It was too unlikely. But he opened the door and Thai came
in, and Fani followed.
"Good morning," said Hoddan
automatically.
Thai said mournfully:
"A bad morning, Bron Hoddan! A bad morning! Men from Walden came riding over the hills."
"How many?"
"Two,"
said Fani angrily. "A fat man in a uniform, and a
young man who looks like he wants to cry. They had an escort of retainers from
one of my father's neighbors. They were stopped at the gate, of course, and
they sent a written message to my father, and he had them brought inside right
away!"
Hoddan shook his head.
"They
probably said that I'm a criminal and that I should be sent back to Walden.
How'd they get down? The landing-grid isn't working."
"They
landed in something that used rockets," Fani said viciously. "It came
down close to a castle over that way—only six or seven miles from the
spaceport. They asked for you. They said you'd landed from the last liner from
Walden. And because you and Thai fought so splendidly, why
everybody's talking about you. So the chieftain over there accepted a present of money from them, and gave them horses as a return gift, and
sent them here with a guard. Thai talked to the guards. The men from Walden
have promised huge gifts of money if they help take you back to the thing that
uses rockets."
"I
suspect," said Hoddan, "that it would be a spaceboat. Yes. With a built-in, tool-steel cell to keep me from telling
anybody how to make—" He stopped and grimaced. "They'd take me to the
spaceport in a soundproof can and I'd be hauled back to Walden. Fine!"
"What are you going to
do?" asked Fani anxiously.
Hoddan's
ideas were not clear. But Darth was not a healthy place for him. It was
extremely likely, for example, that Don Loris would feel that the very bad jolt
he'd given that astute schemer's plans, by using stun-pistols at the spaceport,
had been neatly cancelled out by his rescue of Fani. He would regard Hoddan
with a mingled gratitude and aversion that would
amount to calm detachment. Don Loris could not be counted on as a really warm,
personal friend.
On
the other hand, the social system of Darth was not favorable to a stranger with
an already lurid reputation for fighting. Another disadvantage was that his
weapons would be useless unless frequently recharged; he couldn't count on
always being able to do that.
As a
practical matter, his best bet was probably to investígate the nine inexplicable ships overhead. They
hadn't co-operated with the Waldenians. It could be inferred that no
confidential relationship existed up there. It was even possible that the nine
ships and the Waldenians didn't know of each other's presence. There is a lot
of room in space. If both called on ship-frequency and listened on
ground-frequency, they would not have picked up each others' summons to the
ground.
"You've
got to do something!" insisted Fani. "I saw father talking to them!
He looked happy, and he never looks happy unless he's planning some
skulduggery!"
"I
think," said Hoddan, "that 111 have some breakfast, if I may. As soon as I fasten up my shipbag."
Thai said mournfully:
"If
anything happens to you, something will happen to me too, because I helped
you."
"Breakfast
first," said Hoddan. "That, as I understand it, should make it
disgraceful for your father to have my throat cut. But beyond that . . ."
He said gloomily, "Thai, get a couple
of horses outside the walL We may need to ride somewhere.
I'm very much afraid we will. But first I'd like to have some breakfast."
"But
aren't you going to face them? You could shoot them!" Fani said.
Hoddan shook his head.
"It wouldn't solve anything. Anyhow a practical man like your father won't sell me out before he's sure I
can't pay off better. I'll bet on a conference with me
before he makes a deal."
Fani stamped her foot.
"Outrageous! Think
what you saved me from!"
But she did not question
the possibility. Hoddan observed.
"A practical man can always make what he
wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal
inclinations to the welfare of the community." Hoddan commented. "Now
I've decided that I've got to be practical myself, and that's one of the rules.
How about breakfast?"
He
strapped the shipbag shut on the stun-pistols his pockets would not hold. He
made a minor adjustment to the communicator. It was not ruined, but nobody else
could use it without much labor finding out what he'd done. This was the sort
of thing his grandfather on Zan would have advised. His grandfather's views
were explicit.
"Helping
one's neighbor," the old man had said frequently, "is all right as a
two-way job. But maybe he's laying for you. You get a chance to fix him so he
can't do you no harm and you're a lot better off and
he's one hell of a better neighbor!"
This
was definitely true of the men from Walden. Hoddan guessed that Derec was one
of them. The other would represent the police or the planetary government. It
was probably just as true of Don Loris and others.
Hoddan
found himself disapproving of the way the cosmos was designed.
As
he sat at breakfast, Fani looked at him with interesting anxiety; he was filled
with forebodings. The future looked dark. Yet what he asked of fate and chance
was so simple! He asked only a career, riches, and a delightful girl to marry
and the admiration of his fellow citizens. Trivial things! But it looked like
he'd have to do battle for even such minor gifts of destiny!
Fani watched him eat.
"I
don't understand you,"
she complained. "Anybody else would be proud of what he'd' done and angry
with my father. Or don't you think he'll act ungratefully?"
"Of course I do!" said Hoddan.
"Then why aren't you angry?"
"I'm hungry," said Hoddan.
"And
you take it for granted that I want to" be properly grateful," said
Fani in one breath, "and yet you haven't shown the least appreciation of
my getting two horses over in that patch of woodland yonder!" she pointed
and Hoddan nodded. "Besides having Thai there with orders to serve you
faithfully—"
She stopped short. Don Loris appeared,
beaming, at the top of the steps leading from the great hall where the conferences
took place. He regarded Hoddan benignly.
"This
is a very bad business, my dear fellow," he said benevolently. "Has
Fani told you of the people who arrived from Walden in search of you? They tell
me terrible things about you!"
"Yes,"
said Hoddan. He prepared a roll for biting. He continued, "One of them, I
think, is named Derec. He's to identify me so good money isn't wasted paying
for the wrong man. The other man's a policeman, isn't he?" He reflected a
moment. "If I were you, I'd start talking at a million credits. You might
get half that."
He bit into the roll as Don
Loris looked shocked.
"Do
you think," he asked indignantly," that I would give up the rescuer
of my daughter to emissaries from a foreign planet, to be locked in a dungeon
for life?"
"Not
in those words," conceded Hoddan. "But after all, despite your deep
gratitude to me, there are such things as one's duty to humanity as a whole.
And while it would cause you bitter anguish if someone dear to you represented
a danger to millions of innocent women and children—still, under such
circumstances you might feel it necessary to do violence to your own
emotions."
Don
Loris looked at him with abrupt suspicion. Hoddan waved the roll.
"Moreover,"
he observed, "gratitude for actions done on Darth does not entitle you to
be judge of my actions on Walden. While you might and even should feel obliged
to defend me in all things I have done on Darth, your obligation to me does not
extend to uphold my acts on Walden."
Don Loris looked extremely
uneasy.
"I
may have thought something like that," he admitted. "But-"
"So that," continued Hoddan,
"while your debt to me cannot and should not be overlooked,
nevertheless—" Hoddan put the roll into his mouth and spoke less clearly
"—nevertheless you feel that you should give consideration to the claims
of Walden to inquire into my actions while there."
He chewed, swallowed, and
said gravely:
"And can I make death rays?"
Don
Loris brightened. He drew a deep
breath of relief. He said complainingly:
"I
don't see why you're so sarcastic! Yes. That is a rather important question.
You see, on Walden they don't know how to. They say you do. They're very
anxious that nobody should be able to. Because, while in unscrupulous hands
such an instrument of destruction would be most unfortunate . . . Ah . . .
under proper control . . ."
"Yours," said Hoddan.
"Say
ours," said Don Loris hopefully. "With my
experience of men and affairs, and my loyal and devoted retainers—"
"And
cosy dungeons," said Hoddan. He wiped his mouth. "No."
Don
Loris started violently. "No, what?"
"No death rays," said Hoddan.
"I can't make 'em. Nobody can. If they could be made, some star somewhere
would be turning them out, or some natural phenomenon would let them loose from
time to time. If there were such things as death rays, all living things would
have died, or else would have adjusted to their weaker manifestations and
developed immunity so they wouldn't be death days any longer. As a matter of fact, that's probably been the
case, some time in the past. So far as the gadget goes that they're talking
about, it's been in use for a half-century in the Cetis cluster. Nobody's died
of it yet."
Don Loris looked bitterly
disappointed.
"That's
the truth?" he asked unhappily. "Honestly? That's your last word on
it?"
"Much,"
said Hoddan, "much as I hate to spoil the prospects of profitable
skulduggery, that's my last word and it's true."
"But
those men from Walden are very anxious!" protested Don Loris. "There
was no ship available, so their government got a liner that normally wouldn't
stop here to take an extra lifeboat aboard. It came out of overdrive in this
solar system, let out the lifeboat, and went on its way again. Those two men
are extremely anxious!"
"Ambitious, maybe," said Hoddan.
"They're prepared to pay to overcome your sense of gratitude to me.
Naturally, you want all the traffic will bear. I think you can get a
half-million."
Don Loris looked suspicious
again.
"You
don't seem worried," he said fretfully. "I don't understand
youl"
"I
have a secret," said Hoddan. "What is it?"
"It will
develop," said Hoddan.
Don
Loris hesitated, and essayed to speak, and thought better of it. He shrugged
his shoulders and went slowly back to the flight of stone steps. He descended.
The Lady Fani started to wring her hands. Then she said hopefully:
"What's your
secret?"
"That
your father thinks I have one," said Hoddan. "Thanks for the
breakfast. Should I walk out the gate, or—"
"It's
closed," said the Lady Fani forlornly. "But I have a rope for you.
You can go down over the wall."
"Thanks,"
said Hoddan. "It's been a pleasure to rescue you."
"Will you . . ." Fani hesitated.
"I've never known anybody like you before. Will you ever come back?"
Hoddan shook his head at her.
"Once
you asked me if I'd fight for you, and look what it got me into! No
commitments."
He
glanced along the battlements. There was a fairly large coil of rope in view.
He picked up his bag and went over to it. He checked the fastening of one end
and tumbled the other over the wall.
Ten
minutes later he trudged up to Thai, waiting in the nearby woodland with two
horses.
"The
Lady Fani," he said "has the kind of brains I like. She pulled up the
rope again."
Thai
did not comment. He watched morosely as Hoddan made the perpetually present
shipbag fast to his saddle and then distastefully climbed aboard the horse.
"What
are you going to do?" asked Thai unhappily. "I didn't make a
parting-present to Don Loris, so I'll be disgraced if he finds out I helped
you. And I don't know where to take you."
"Where,"
asked Hoddan, "did those characters from Walden come down?"
Thai
told him. At the castle of a powerful feudal chieftain, on the plain, some four
miles from the mountain range, and six miles this side of the spaceport.
"We
ride there," said Hoddan. "Liberty is said to be sweet, but the man
who said that didn't have blisters from a saddle. Let's go."
They
rode away. There would be no immediate pursuit, and possibly none at all. Don
Loris had left Hoddan at breakfast on the battlements. The Lady Fani would make
as much confusion over his disappearance as she could. But there'd be no search
for him until Don Loris had made his deal.
Hoddan
was sure that Fani's father would have an enjoyable morning. He would relish
the bargaining session. He'd explain in great detail how valuable had been
Hoddan's service to him, in rescuing Fani from an abductor who would have been
an intolerable son-in-law. He'd grow almost tearful as he described his
affection for Hoddan, and how he loved his daughter. He would observe grievedly
that they were asking him to betray the man who had saved for him the solace of
his old age. He would mention also that the price they offered was an affront
to his paternal affection and his dignity. Either they'd come up or the deal
was off!
But
meanwhile Hoddan and Thai rode industriously toward the place from which those
emissaries had come.
All
was tranquil. All was calm. Once they saw a dust cloud, and Thai turned aside
to a providential wooded copse, in which they remained while a cavalcade went
by. Thai explained that it was a feudal chieftain on his way to the spaceport
town. It was simple discretion for them not to be observed, said Thai, because
they had great reputations as fighting men. Whoever defeated them would become
prominent at once. So somebody might try to pick a quarrel under one of the
finer points of etiquette when it would be disgrace to use anything but
standard Darthian implements for massacre. Hoddan admitted that he did not feel
quarrelsome.
They
rode on after a time, and in late afternoon the towers
and battlements of the castle they sought appeared. The ground here was only
gently rolling. They approached it with caution, following the reverse slope of
hills. At last they penetrated horse-high brush to the point where they could
see it clearly.
If
Hoddan had been a student of early terrestrial history, he might have remarked
upon the re-emergence of ancient architectural forms to match the revival of
primitive social systems. As it was, he noted in this feudal castle the use of
bastions for flanking fire upon attackers; he recognized the value of
battlements for the protection of defenders while allowing them to shoot, and
the tricky positioning of sally ports. He even grasped the reason for the
massive, stark, unornamented keep. But his eyes did not stay on the castle for
long. He saw the spaceboat in which Derec and his more authoritative companion
had arrived.
It lay on the ground a half-mile from the castle walls. It was
a chubby, clumsy, flattened shape some forty feet long and nearly fifteen wide.
The ground about it was scorched where it had descended upon its rocket flames.
There were several horses tethered near it, and men who were plainly retainers
of the nearby castle reposed in its shade.
Hoddan reined in.
"Here
we part," he told Thai. "When we first met I enabled you to pick the
pockets of a good many of your fellow countrymen. I never asked for my split of
the take. I expect you to remember me with affection."
Thai clasped both of
Hoddan's hands in his.
"If
you ever return," he said with mournful warmth, "I am your
friend!"
Hoddan nodded and rode out of the brushwood
toward the spaceboat lifeboat that had landed the emissaries from Walden. That
it landed so close to the spaceport, of course, was no accident. It was known
on Walden that Hoddan had taken space-passage to Darth. He'd have landed only
two days before his pursuers could reach the planet. And on a roadless,
primitive world like Darth he couldn't have gotten far from the spaceport. So
his pursuers would have landed close by, also. But it must have taken
considerable courage. When the landing-grid failed to answer, it must have
seemed likely that Hoddan's death rays had been at work.
Here
and now, though, there was no uneasiness. Hoddan rode heavily, without haste,
through the slanting sunshine. He was seen from a distance and watched without
apprehension by the loafing guards about the boat. He looked hot and thirsty.
He was both. So the posted guard merely looked at him without too much interest
when he brought his dusty mount up to the shadow the lifeboat cast, and
apparently decided that there wasn't room to get into it.
He grunted a greeting and looked at them
speculatively.
"Those
two characters from Walden," he observed, "sent me to get something
from this thing, here. Don Loris told 'em I was a very honest man."
He
painstakingly looked like a very
honest man. After a moment there were responsive grins.
"If
there's anything missing when I start back," said Hoddan, "I can't
imagine how it happened! None of you would take anything. Oh, no! I bet you'll
blame it on me!" He shook his head and said, "Tsk. Tsk. Tsk."
One of the guards sat up and said
appreciatively:
"But it's locked. Good."
"Being
an honest man," said Hoddan amiably, "they told me how to unlock
it."
He
got off his horse. He removed the bag from his saddle. He went into the
grateful shadow of the metal hull. He paused and mopped his face and then went
to the boat's port. He put his hand on the turning-bar. Then he painstakingly
pushed in the locking-stud with his other hand. Of course the handle turned.
The port opened. The two from Walden would have thought everything safe because
it was under guard. On Walden that protection would have been enough. On Darth,
the spaceboat had not been looted simply because locks, there, were not made
with separate vibration-checks to keep vibration from loosening them. On
spaceboats such a precaution was usual.
"Give me two minutes," said Hoddan
over his shoulder. "I have to get what they sent me for. After that
everybody starts even."
He
entered and closed the door behind him. Then he locked it. By the nature of
things it is as needful to be able to lock a spaceboat from the inside as it is
unnecessary to lock it from without.
He
looked things over. Standard equipment everywhere. He
checked everything, even to the fuel supply. There were knockings on the port.
He continued to inspect. He turned on the vision screens, which provided the
control-room and the rest of the boat with an unobstructed view in all directions.
He was satisfied.
The
knocks became hangings. Something approaching indignation could be deduced.
The guards around the space-boat felt that Hoddan was taking an unfair amount
of time to pick the cream of the loot inside.
He got a glass of water. It
was excellent. A second.
The hangings became violent
hammerings.
Hoddan
seated himself leisurely in the pilot's seat and turned small knobs. He waited.
He touched a button. There was a mildly thunderous bang outside, and the
lifeboat reacted as if to a slight shock. The vision screens showed a cloud of
dust at the spaceboat's stern, roused by a deliberate explosion in the rocket
tubes. It also showed the retainers in full flight.
He
waited until they were in safety.and made the standard take-off preparations. A horrific roaring started up outside. He touched controls
and a monstrous weight pushed him back in his seat. The rocket swung, lifted,
and shot skyward with greater acceleration than before.
It
went up at a lifeboat's full fall-like rate of climb, leaving a trail of
blue-white flame behind it. All the surface of Darth seemed to contract swiftly
below. The spaceport and the town rushed toward a spot beneath the spaceboat's
tail. They shrank and shrank. He saw other places. Mountains.
Castles. He saw Don Loris' stronghold. Higher, he saw
the sea.
The
sky turned purple. It went black with specks of star-shine in it. Hoddan swung
to a westward course and continued to rise, watching the star images as they
shifted on the screens. The image of the sun, of course, was automatically
diminished so that it was not dazzling. The rockets continued to roar, though
in a minor fashion because there was no longer air outside in which a bellow
could develop.
Hoddan
painstakingly made use of those rule-of-thumb methods of astrogation which his
piratical fathers had developed and which a boy on Zan absorbed without being
aware. He wanted an orbit around Darth. He didn't want to take time to try to
compute it. So he watched the star-images ahead and astern. If the stars ahead
rose above the planet's edge faster than those behind sank down below it, he
would be climbing. If the stars behind sank down faster than those ahead rose
up, he would be descending. If all the stars rose equally he'd be climbing
straight up, and if they all dropped equally he'd be moving straight down. It
was not a complex method, and it worked.
Presently
he relaxed. He sped swiftly toward the sunrise line on Darth. This was the
reverse of a normal orbit, but it was the direction followed by the ships up
here. He hoped his orbit was lower than theirs. If it was, he'd overtake them
from behind. If he were higher, they'd overtake him.
He
turned on the spacephone. Its reception indicator was piously placed at ground. He shifted it to space, so that it would pick up calls going planetward,
instead of listening vainly for replies from the non-operative landing-grid.
Instantly
voices boomed in his ears. Many voices. An impossibly large number of voices. Many, many, many more
than nine transmitters were in operation nowl
"Idiot!"
said a voice in quiet passion, "sheer off or you'll get in our
drive-field!" A high-pitched voice said, "—and group two take second
orbit position." Somebody bellowed, "But why don't they answer?"
And another voice still, said formally, "Reporting group five, but four
ships are staying behind with tanker, Toya, which
is having stabilizer trouble."
Hoddan's
eyes opened very wide. He turned down the sound while he tried to think. But
there wasn't anything to think. He'd come aloft to scout three ships that had
turned to nine, because he was in such a fix on Darth that anything strange
might be changed into something useful. But this was more than nine
ships—itself an impossibly large space-fleet. There was no reason why ships of
space should ever travel together. There were innumerable reasons why they
shouldn't. There was a limit to the number of ships that could be accommodated
at any spaceport in the galaxy. There was no point, no profit, no purpose in a number of ships traveling together.
Darth's sunrise-line appeared far ahead. The
lifeboat would soon cease to be a bright light in the sky, now. The sun's image
vanished from the rear screens. The boat went hurtling onward through the
blackness of the planet's shadow while voices squabbled, wrangled, and formally
reported.
During the period of darkness, Hoddan racked
his brains for the vaguest of ideas on why so many ships should appear about an
obscure and unimportant world like Darth. Presently the sunset-line appeared
ahead, and far away he saw moving lights which were the hulls of the volubly
communicating vessels. He stared, blankly. There were tens. Scores.
He was forced to guess at the stark impossibility of more than a hundred spacecraft
in view. As the boat rushed onward he had to raise the guess. It couldn't be,
but—
He turned on the outside telescope, and the
image on its screen was more incredible than the voices and the existence of
the fleet itself. The scope focused first on a bulging, monster. It was an
antiquated freighter that had not been built for a hundred years. The second
view was of a passenger-liner with the elaborate ornamentation that in past
generations was considered suitable for space. There was a bulk-cargo ship,
with no emergency rockets at all and the crew's quarters in long blisters built
outside the gigantic tank which was the ship itself. There was a needle-like
spaceyacht. More freighters, with streaks of rust on their
sides where they had Iain aground for tens of years.
The fleet was an anomaly, and each of its
component parts was a separate freak. It was a gathering together of all the
outmoded and obsolete hulks and monstrosities of space. One would have to
scavenge half the galaxy to bring together so many crazy, over-age derelicts
that should have been in junk yards.
Then
Hoddan drew an explosive deep breath. It was suddenly clear what the fleet was
and what its reason must be. Why it stopped here, he could not yet guess.
Hoddan
watched absorbedly. There was some emergency. It could be in the line of what
an electronic engineer could handle.
CHAPTER VII
The spaceboat floated on upon a collision course with the
arriving fleet. That would not mean, of course, actual contact with any of the
strange vessels- themselves. Crowded as the sunlit specks might seem from
Darth's night-side shadow, they were sufficiently separated. It was more than
likely that even with ten-mile intervals the ships would be considered much too
crowded. But they came pouring out of emptiness to go into a swirling, plainly
pre-intended orbit about the planet from which Hoddan had risen less than an
hour before.
It
was a gigantic traffic tangle, and Hoddan's boat drifted toward and into it.
He'd counted a hundred ships long before. His count now passed two hundred and
continued. Before he gave up, he'd numbered two hundred forty-seven of the
oddities swarming to make a whirling band—a ring-around the planet Darth.
He
was fairly sure that he knew what they were, now. But he could not possibly
guess where they came from. And most mysterious of all was the question of why
they'd come out of faster-than-light drive to make of themselves a celestial
feature about a planet which had practically nothing to offer to anybody.
Presently the spaceboat was in the very thick
of the fleet. His communicator spouted voices whose tones ranged from basso
profundo to high tenor, and whose ideas of proper astrogation seemed to vary
more widely still.
"You
there!" boomed a voice with deafening volume. "You're in our
clear-space! Sheer off!"
The
volume of a signal in space varies as the. square of
the distance. This voice was thunderous. It came apparently from a nearby,
potbellied ship of ancient vintage.
Hoddan's
spaceboat floated on. The relative position of the two ships changed slowly.
Another voice said indignantly:
"That's
the same thing that missed us by less than a mile! You, there! Stop acting like
a squig! Get on your own course!"
A third voice:
"What boat's that? I don't recognize it!
I thought I knew all the freaks in this fleet, too!" A fourth voice said
sharply:
"That's
not one of us! Look at the design! That's not us!" Other voices broke in.
There was babbling. Then a harsh voice roared:
"Quiet!
I order it!" There was silence. The harsh voice said heavily; "Relay
the image to me." There was a pause. The same voice said grimly: "It
is not of our fleet. You, stranger! Identify yourself! Who are you and why did
you slip secretly among us?"
Hoddan pushed the transmit button.
"My name is Bron Hoddan," he said.
"I came up to find out why three ships, and then nine ships, went into
orbit around Darth. It was somewhat alarming. Our landing-grid's disabled,
anyhow, and it seemed wisest to look you over before we communicated and
possibly told you something you might not •believe." The harsh voice said as grimly as before:
"You come from the planet below us? Darth? Why is your ship so small? The smallest of ours is
greater."
"This is a lifeboat," said Hoddan
pleasantly. "It's supposed to be carried on larger ships in case of
emergency."
"If you will come to our leading
ship," said the voice,
"we will answer all your questions. I will have a smoke flare
set off to guide you." Hoddan said to himself:
No threats and no offers. I can guess why there are no threats. But they should offer somethingl
He
waited. There was a sudden, huge eruption of vapor in space some two hundred
miles away. Perhaps an ounce of explosion had been introduced into a rocket
tube and fired. The smoke particles, naturally ionized, added their self-repulsion
to the expansiveness of the explosive's gases. A cauliflower-like shape of
filmy whiteness appeared and grew larger and thinner.
Hoddan
drove toward the spot. He swung the boat around and killed its relative
velocity. The leading ship was a sort of gigantic, shapeless, utterly
preposterous ark-like thing. Hoddan could neither imagine a purpose for which
it could have been used, nor a time when men would have built anything like it.
Its huge sides seemed to be made exclusively of great doorways now tighdy
closed.
One
of those doorways gaped wide. It would have admitted a good-sized modern ship.
A nervous voice essayed to give Hoddan directions for getting the spaceboat inside
what was plainly an enormous hold now pumped empty of air. He grunted and made
the attempt. It was tricky. He sweated when he cut off his power. But he felt
fairly safe. Rocket flames would burn down such a door, if necessary. He could
work havoc if hostilities began.
The
great door swung shut. The outside-pressure needle swung sharply and stopped at
thirty centimetres of mercury pressure. There was a clanging. A smaller door
evidently opened somewhere. Lights came on. Then figures appeared through a door
leading to some other part of this ship.
Hoddan
nodded to himself. The costume was odd. It was awkward. It was even primitive,
but not in the fashion of the soiled, gaudily-colored garments of Darth. These
men wore unrelieved black, with gray shirts. There was no touch of color about
them. Even the younger ones wore beards. And of all unnecessary things, they
wore flat-brimmed hats—in a spaceship!
Hoddan
opened the door and said politely: "Good morning. I'm Bron Hoddan. You
were talking to me.
The
oldest and most fiercely bearded of the men said harshly:
"I
am the leader here. We are the people of Colin." He frowned when Hoddan's
expression Remained unchanged. "The people of Colinl" he repeated
more loudly. "The people whose forefathers settled that
planet, and made it a world of peace and plenty, and then foolishly welcomed
strangers to their midst!"
"Too
bad," said Hoddan. He knew what these people were doing, he believed, but
putting a name to where they'd come from told him nothing of whatthey wanted of
Darth.
"We
made it a fair world," said the bearded man fiercely. "But it was my
great-grandfather who destroyed it. He believed that we should share it. It
was he who persuaded the Synod to allow strangers to settle among us, believing
that they would become like us."
Hoddan
nodded expectantly. These people were in some sort of trouble or they wouldn't
have come out of overdrive. But they'd talked about it until it had become an
emotionalized obsession that couldn't be summarized. When they encountered a
stranger, they had to picture their predicament passionately and at length.
This
bearded man looked at Hoddan with burning eyes. When he went on, it was with
gestures as if he were making a speech, But it was a special sort of speech.
The first sentence told what kind.
"They
clung to their sins!" said the bearded man bitterly. "They did not
adopt our ways! Our example went for naught! They brought others of their kind
to Colin. After a little they laughed at us. In a little more they outnumbered
us! Then they ruled that the laws of our Synod should not govern them. And they
lured our young people to imitate them-frivolous, sinful, riotous folk that
they were!"
Hoddan
nodded again. There were elderly people on-Zan who
talked like this. Not his grandfather! If you listened long enough
they'd come to some point or other, but they had
arranged their thoughts so solidly that any attempt to get quicklv at their
meaning would only produce confusion.
"Twenty
years since," said the bearded man with an angry gesture, "we made a
bargain. We held a third of all the land of the planet, but our young men were
falling away from the ways of their fathers. We made a bargain with the newcomers.
We would trade our lands, our cities, our farms, our highways, for ships to
take us to a new world, and food for the journey and machines for the taming of
the planet we would select. We sent some of our number to find a world to which
we could move. Ten years back, they returned. They had found it. The planet Thetis."
Again Hoddan had no
reaction. The name meant nothing.
"We
began to prepare," said the old man, his eyes flashing. "Five years
since, we were ready. But we had to wait three more before the bargainers were
ready to complete the trade. They had to buy and collect the ships. They had to
design and build the machinery we would need. They had to collect the food
supplies. Two years ago we moved our animals into the ships, and loaded our
food and our furnishings, and took our places. We set out. For two years we
have journeyed toward Thetis."
Hoddan
felt an instinctive respect for people who would undertake to move themselves,
the third of the population of a planet, over a distance that meant years of
voyaging. They might have tastes in costume that he did not share, and they
might go in for elaborate oratory instead of matter-of-fact statements, but
they had courage.
"Yes,
sir," said Hoddan. "I take it this brings us up to the present."
"No,"
said the old man. "Six months ago we considered that we might well begin
to train the operators of the machines we would use on Thetis. We uncrated
machines. We found ourselves cheated I"
Hoddan
found that he could make a fairly dispassionate guess of what
advantage—say—Nedda's father would take of people who would not check on his
good faith for two years and until they were two years' journey away.
"How badly were you
cheated?" asked Hoddan.
"Of our lives!" said the angry old
man. "Do you know machinery?"
"Some kinds," admitted Hoddan.
"Come," said the
leader of the fleet.
With
a sort of dignity that was theatrical only because he was aware of it, the
leader of thé people of Colin showed the way. The hold was packed tighüy with
cases of machinery. One huge crate had been opened and its contents fully
disclosed. Others had been hacked at enough to show their contents.
The
uncrated machine was a jungle plow. It was a powerful piece of equipment which
would attack jungle on a thirty-foot front, knock down all vegetation up to
trees of four-foot diameter, shred it, loosen and sift the soil to a three-foot
depth, and leave behind it smoothed, broken, pulverized dirt mixed with
ground-up vegetation ready to break down into humus. Such a machine would clear
tens of acres in a day, turning jungle into farm land ready for
crops.
"We
ran this for five minutes," said the bearded man fiercely as Hoddan
nodded. He lifted a motor hood.
The
motors were burned out. Worthless insulation. Gears
were splintered and smashed, Low-grade metal castings. Assembly-bolts had
parted. Tractor treads were bent and cracked. It was not a machine except in
shape. It was a mock-up in worthless materials which probably
cost its maker the twentieth part of what an honest jungle plow would cost to
build.
Hoddan
felt the anger any man feels when he sees betrayal of that honor a competent
machine represents.
"It's not all like
this!" he said incredulously.
"Some
is worse," said the old man, with dignity. "There are crates which
are marked to contain turbines. Their contents are ancient, worn-out
brick-making machines. There are crates marked to contain generators. They are
filled with corroded irrigation pipes and broken castings. We have shiploads
of crush-baled, rusted sheet-metal trimmings! We have been cheated of our
fives!"
Hoddan
found himself sick with honest fury. The population
of one-third of a planet, packed into spaceships for two years and more, would
be appropriate subjects for sympathy at the best of times. But it was only
accident that had kept these people from landing on Thetis by rocket—since none
of their ships would be expected ever to rise again—and from having their men
go out and joyfully hack at alien jungle to make room for their machines to
land—and then find out they'd brought scrap metal for some thousands of
light-years to no purpose.
They'd
have starved outright. In fact, they were in not much better case right now.
Because there was nowhere else that they could go! There was no new colony
which could absorb so many people, with only their bare hands for equipment to
live by. There was no civilized, settled world which could admit so many
paupers without starving its own population. There was nowhere for these
people to go!
Hoddan's
anger took on the feeling of guilt. He could do nothing, and something had to
be done.
"Why—why
did you come to Darth?" he asked. "What can you gain by orbiting
here? You can't expect—"
The old man faced him.
"We
are beggars," he said with bitter dignity. "We stopped here to ask
for charity ... for the old and
worn-out machines the people of Darth can spare us. We will be grateful for
even a single rusty plow. Because we have to go on. We
can do nothing else. We will land on Thetis. And one plow can mean that a few
of us will live who would otherwise die.
Hoddan
ran his hands through his hair. This was not his trouble, but he could not
ignore it.
"But
again, why Darth?" he asked helplessly. "Why not stop at a world with
riches to spare? Darth's a poor place."
"Because
it is the poor who are generous," said the bearded man evenly.
Hoddan
paced up and down. Presently he said jerkily: "With all the good will in
the world . . . Darth is poverty-stricken. It has no industries. It has no
technology. It has not even roads! It is a planet of little villages and tiny
towns. A ship from elsewhere stops here only once a month. Ground
communications are almost non-existent. To spread the word of your need over
Darth would require months. But to collect what might be given, without roads
or even wheeled vehicles —it's impossiblel And I have
the only space-vessel on the planet, and it's not fit for a journey between
suns."
The bearded man waited with
a sort of implacable despair.
"But,"
continued Hoddan grimly, "I have an idea. I have contacts on Walden. The
government of Walden does not regard charity with favor. The need for charity
seems a— ah—a criticism of the Waldenian standard of living."
The bearded man said
coldly:
"I can understand that. The hearts of
the rich are hardened. The existence of the poor is a reproach to them."
But Hoddan began suddenly to see real possibilities.
This was not a direct move toward the realization of his personal ambitions.
But on the other hand, it wasn't a movement away from them. Hoddan suddenly
remembered an oration he'd heard his grandfather give many, many times in the
past.
Straight thinkin, the old man had said obstinately, is a delusion. You think things out clear and
simple, and you can see yourself ruined and your family starving any day! Real
things ain't simple! Any time you try to figure things out so they's simple and
straightforward, you're goin against nature and you're going to get 'em mixed
up! So when something happens and you're in a straightforward, hopeless fix,
why, you go along with nature! Make it as complicated as you can, and the
people who want you in trouble will get hopeless confused and you can get out!
Hoddan adverted to his grandfather's wisdom,
not making it the reason for doing what he could, but accepting the fact that
it might possibly apply. He saw one possibility right away. It looked fairly good. After a
minute's examination it looked better. It was astonishing how plausible . . .
"Hmmmmmm," he said. "I have
planned work of my own, as you may have guessed. I am here because of—ah—people
on Walden. If I could make a quick trip to Walden my— hm—present position might
let me help you. I cannot promise very much, but if I can borrow even the
smallest of your ships for the journey my spaceboat can't make, why, I may be
able to do something. Much more than can be done on Darth!"
The bearded man looked at
his companions.
"He
seems frank," he said, "and we can lose nothing. We have stopped our
journey and are in orbit. We can wait. Our people should not go to Walden.
Fleshpots—"
"I
can find a crew," said Hoddan cheerfully. Inwardly he was tremendously relieved.
"If you say the word, I'll go down to ground and come back with them. I'll
want a very small shipl"
"It will be,"
said the old man. "We thank you."
"Get
it inboard, here," suggested Hoddan, "so I can come inside as before,
transfer my crew without spacesuits, and leave my boat in your care until I
come back."
"It
shall be done," said the old man firmly. He added gravely, "You must
have had an excellent upbringing, young man, to be willing to live among the
poverty-stricken people you describe, and to be willing to go so far to help
strangers like ourselves."
"Eh?"
Then Hoddan said enigmatically. "What lessons I shall apply to your
affairs, I learned at the knee of my beloved grandfather."
Of
course, his grandfather was head of the most notorious gang of pirates on the
disreputable planet Zan, but Hoddan found himself
increasingly respectful of the old gentlemen as he gained experience on various
worlds.
He
went briskly back to his spaceboat. On the way he made verbal arrangements for
the enterprise he'd envisioned so swiftly. It was remarkable how two sets of
troubles could provide suggestions for their joint alleviation. He actually saw
possible achievement before him. Even in electronics!
By
the time the cargo-hold was again pumped empty and the great door opened to the
vastness of space, Hoddan had a very broad view of things. He'd said that same
day to Fani that a practical man can always make what he wants to do look like
a sacrifice for others' welfare. He began to suspect, now, that the welfare of
others can often coincide with one's own.
He needed some rather extensive changes in
the relationship of the cosmos to himself. Walden was prepared to pay bribes
for him. Don Loris felt it necessary to have him confined somewhere. There
were a number of Darthian gentlemen who would assuredly like to slaughter him
if he weren't kept out of their reach in some cosy dungeon. But up to now there
had been not even a practical way to leave Darth, to act upon Walden, or even
to change his status in the eyes of Darthians.
He
backed out of the big ship and consulted the charts of the lifeboat. They had
been consulted before, of course, to locate the landing-grid which did not
answer calls. He found its position. He began to compare the chart with what he
saw from out here in orbit above Darth. He identified a small ocean, with
Darth's highest mountain chain just beyond its eastern limit. He identified a
river system, emptying into that sea. And here he began to get rid of his
excess velocity, because the landing-grid was not very far distant.
To a
scientific pilot, his maneuvering from that time on would have been a complex
task. The advantage of computation over astrogation by ear, however, is
largely a-matter of saving fuel. A perfectly computed course for landing will
get down to ground with the use of the least number of centigrams of fuel. But
fuel-efficient maneuvers are rarely time-efficient ones.
Hoddan
hadn't the time or the data for computation. He swung the spaceboat end for end, very judgematically used rocketpower to slow himself to
a suitable east-west velocity, and at the last and proper instant applied full
power for decelleration and went down practically like a stone. One cannot
really learn this. It has to be absorbed through the pores of one's skin. That
was the way Hoddan had absorbed it, on Zan.
Within
minutes, then, the stronghold of Don Loris was startled by a roaring mutter in
the. sky overhead. Helmeted sentries on the
battlements stared upward. The mutter rose to a howl, and the howl to the
volume of thunder, and the thunder to a very great noise which made loose
pebbles dance and quiver.
Then there was a speck of white cloudiness in
the late afternoon sky. It grew swiftly in size, and a winking blue-white light
appeared in its center. That light grew brighter and the noise managed somehow
to increase and presently the ruddy sunlight was diluted by light from the
rockets.
Then,
abruptly, the rockets cut off, and something dark plunged downward, and the
rockets flamed again and a vast mass of steam arose from scorched ground. The
space-boat lay in a circle of wildly smoking, carbonized Darthian soil. The
return of tranquility after so much tumult was startling.
Absolutely
nothing happened. Hoddan unstrapped himself from the pilot's seat, examined his
surroundings thoughtfully, and turned off the vision apparatus. He went back
and examined the feeding arrangements of the boat. He'd had nothing to eat
since breakfast in this same time zone. The food in store was extremely easy to
prepare and not especially appetizing. He ate with great deliberation, continuing
to make plans which linked the necessities of the emigrants from Colin to his
own plans and predicaments. He also thought very respectfully about his
grandfather's opinions on many subjects, including space-piracy. Hoddan found
himself much more in agreement with his grandfather than he'd believed
possible.
Outside
the boat, birds which had dived to ground and cowered there during the boat's
descent now flew about again, their terror forgotten. Horses
which had galloped wildly in their pastures, or kicked in panic in the castle
stalls, returned to their oats and hay.
And
there were human reactions. Don Loris had been in an excessively fretful state
of mind since the conclusion of his deal with the pair from Walden. Hoddan had
estimated that Don Loris ought to get a half-million credits for delivering him
to Derec and the Waldenian police. But actually Don Loris had been unable to
get the cop to promise more than half so much. But he'd closed the deal and
sent for Hoddan— and Hoddan was gone.
Now
the landing of this spaceboat roused a lively uneasiness in Don Loris. It
might be new bargainers for Hoddan. It might be anything. Hoddan had said he
had a secret. This might be it. Don Loris vexedly tried to contrive some useful
skulduggery without the information to base it on.
Fani
looked at the spaceboat with bright eyes. Thai was back at the castle. He'd
told her of Hoddan riding up to the spaceboat near another chieftain's castle,
entering it, and then taking to the skies in an aura of flames, smoke and
thunder. Fani hoped that he might have returned. But she worried while she
waited for him to do something.
Hoddan did nothing. The spaceboat gave no
sign of life.
The
sun set, and the sky twinkled with darting lights
which flew toward the west and vanished. Twilight followed, and more lights
flashed across the heavens as if pursuing the sun. Fani had learned to
associate three and then nine such lights with spacecraft, but she could not
dream of a fleet of hundreds. She dismissed the lights from her mind, being
much more concerned with Hoddan. He would be in as bad a fix as ever if he came
out of the boat.
Twilight
remained, a half-light in which all things looked much
more charming than they really were. And Don Loris, reduced to peevish
sputtering, summoned Thai. It should be remembered that Don Loris knew nothing
of the disappearance of the spaceboat from his neighbor's land. He knew
nothing of Thai's journey with Hoddan. But he did remember that Hoddan had
seemed unwom'ed at breakfast and explained his calm by saying that he had a
secret. The feudal chieftain was worried that this spaceboat contained Hoddan's
secret.
"Thai," said Don Loris peevishly, sitting beside the great fireplace
in the enormous hall. "Thai, you know this Bron Hoddan better than anybody else."
Thai breathed heavily. He turned pale.
"Where is he?" demanded Don Loris.
"I don't know," said Thai. It was
true. So far as he was concerned, Hoddan had vanished into the sky.
"What does he plan to do?" demanded
Don Loris.
"I don't know," said Thai
helplessly.
"Where does that—that thing outside the
castle come from?"
"I don't know,"
said Thai.
Don Loris drummed on the arm of his
intricately carved chair.
"I don't like people who don't know
things!" he said fretfully. "There must be somebody in that thing. Why don't they show themselves? What are they here for? Why did they
come down, especially here? Because of Bron Hoddan?"
"I don't know,"
said Thai humbly.
"Then
go find out!" snapped Don Loris. "Take a reasonable guard with you.
The thing must have a door. Knock on it and ask who's
inside and why they came here. Tell them I sent you to ask."
Thai
saluted. With his teeth chattering, he gathered a half-dozen of his fellows and went tramping out the castle gate. Some of
the half-dozen had been involved in the rescue of the Lady Fani from Ghek. They
were still in a happy mood because of the plunder they'd brought back. It was
much more than a mere retainer could usually hope for in a year.
"What's
this all about, Thai?" demanded one of them as Thai arranged them in two
lines to make a proper military appearance, spears dressed upright and shields
on their left arms.
"Frm-d harch!" barked Thai, and they swung into motion. Thai said gloomily, "Don
Loris said to find out who landed that thing out yonder. He keeps asking about
Bron Hoddan, too."
He strode in step with the others. The seven
men made an impressively soldierly group, tramping away from the castle wall.
"What happened to him?" asked a rear-file man. He marched on, eyes front, chest out, spear swinging
splendidly in time with his marching. "That lad has a nose for loot! Don't
take it himself, though. If he set up in business as a chieftain, now—"
"Hup, two, three, four," muttered Thai. "Hup, two, three—" "Don Loris's a hard chieftain," growled the
right-hand man in the second file. "Plenty of grub and
beer, but no fighting and no loot. I didn't get to go with you the other
day, but what you brought back . . ."
"Wasn't half of what was there,"
mourned a front-file man. "Wasn't half! Those
pistols he issued got shot out and we had to get outta there fast! Hm . . .
here's this thing, Thai. What do we do with it?"
"Hrrrmp,
haltl" barked Thai. He stared at the motionless, seemingly lifeless, shapeless
spaceboat. He'd seen one like it earlier today. That one spouted fire and went
up out of sight. He was wary of this one. He grumbled. "Those pipes in the
back of it, steer clear of 'em. They spit fire. No
door on this side. Don Loris said knock on the door. We go around the front.
Frrrrd hatch! two, three, four, hup, two, three, four. Left turn here and mind those rocks. Don Loris'd give
us hell if somebody feU down. Left turn again, Hup, two, three,
four."
The seven men tramped splendidly around the
front of the lifeboat. On the far side, its bulk hid even Don Loris' castle
from view. The six spearmen, with Thai, came to a second halt.
"Here
goes," rumbled Thai. "I tell you, boys, if she starts to spit fire,
you get the hell away!"
He
marched up to spaceboat's port. He knocked on it. There was no response. He
knocked again.
Hoddan opened the door. He
nodded cheerfully to Thai.
"Afternoon, Thai! Clad to see you. I've
been hoping you'd come over this way. Who's with you?" He peered through
the semi-darkness. "Some of the boys, eh? Come
in!" He beckT oned and said casually, "Lean your spears
against the hull, there."
Thai hesitated and was lost. The others
obeyed. There were clatterings as the spears came to rest against the metal
hull. Six of Don Loris' retainers followed Thai admiringly into the spaceboat's
interior, to gaze at it and at Bron Hoddan who so recently had given them the
chance to loot a nearby castle.
"Sit down!" said Hoddan cordially.
"If you want to feel what a spaceboat's really like, clasp the seat-belts
around you. You'll feel exactly like you're about to make a journey out of
atmosphere. That's it, lean back. You notice there are no viewports in the
hull? That's because we use these vision screens to see around with."
He
flicked on the screens. Thai and his companions were charmed to see the
landscape outside portrayed on screens. Hoddan shifted the sensitivity point
toward infrared, and details came out that would have been invisible to the
naked eye.
"With
the port closed," said Hoddan, "like this," the port clanged
shut and grumbled for half a second as the locking-dogs went home, "we're
all set for take-off. I need only get into the pilot's seat . . ." he did
so, "and throw on the fuel pump." A tiny humming sounded. "And
we move when I advance this throttlel"
He
pressed the firing-stud. There was a soul-shaking roar. There was a terrific
pressure. The seven men from Don Loris' stronghold were pressed back in their
seats with an overwhelming, irresistible pressure which held them absolutely
helpless. Their mouths dropped open. Appalled protests tried to come out, but
were pushed back by the seemingly ever-increasing acceleration.
The screens, showing the outside, displayed a
great and confused tumult of smoke and fumes and dust to rearward. They showed
only stars ahead. Those stars grew brighter and brighter, as the roar of the
rockets diminished to a deafening sound. Suddenly the disk of the local sun
appeared, rising above the horizon to the west. The spaceboat, naturally, overtook
it as it rose into an orbit headed east to west instead of the other way about.
Presently Hoddan-tumed off
the fuel pump. He turned to look thoughtfully at the
seven men. They were very pale. They all sat very still, because they could see
in the vision-screens that a strange, mottled, again-sunlit surface flowed past
them with an appalling velocity. They were very much afraid that they knew what
it was. They did. It was the surface of the planet Darth.
"I'm glad you boys came
along," said Hoddan. "We'll catch up with the fleet in a moment or
two. The pirate fleet, you know! I'm very pleased with you. Not many
groundlings would volunteer for space-piracy, not even with the loot there is
in it."
Thai
choked slightly, but no one else made a sound. No one even protested. Protests
would have been no use. There were looks of anguish, but nothing else. Hoddan
was the only one in the spaceboat who had the least idea of how to get it down
again. His passengers had to go along for the ride, no matter where it led.
Numbly, they waited for
what would befall.
CHAPTER VIII
Hoddan did not worry about his captive-followers.
Soon he saw the weird spacefleet.
The
spaceboat drew up alongside the gigantic, hulk of the leader's ship. The seven
Darthians were still numbed by their kidnaping and the situation in which they
found themselves. They looked with dull eyes at the mountainous object they
approached. It had actually been designed as a fighter-carrier of space,
intended to carry smaller craft. It must have been sold for scrap a couple of
hundred years since, and patched up for this emigration..
Hoddan
waited for the huge door to open. It did. He headed into the opening, noticing
as he did so that an object two or three times the size of the spaceboat was
already there. It cut down the room for maneuvering, but a thing once done is
easier thereafter. Hoddan got the boat inside, and there was a very small
scraping and the great door closed before the boat could drift out again.
Hoddan
turned to his victim-followers once the spaceboat was still.
"This," he said in a manner which
could only be-described as one of smiling ferocity, "this is a pirate
ship, belonging to the pirate fleet we passed through on the way here. It's
manned by characters so murderous that their leaders don't dare land anywhere
away from their home star-cluster, or all the galaxy would combine against
them, to exterminate them or be exterminated. You've joined that fleet. You're
going to get out of this boat and march over to that ship yonder. Then you're
going to be space-pirates under me." They quivered, but did not protest.
"I'll
try you for one voyage," he told them. "There will be plunder. There
will be pirate revels. If you serve faithfully and fight well, I'll return you
to Don Loris' stronghold with your loot after the one voyage. If you
don't—" He grinned mirthlessly at them, "if you don't, out the
airlock with you, to float forever between the stars. Understand?"
The last was pure savagery. They cringed. The
outside-pressure meter went up to normal. Hoddan turned off the vision screens,
so ending any views of the interior of the hold. He opened the port and went
out. Sitting in something like continued paralysis in their
seats, the seven spearmen of Darth heard his voice in conversation outside the
boat. They could catch no words, but Hoddan's tone was strictly businesslike.
He came back.
"All right," he
said shortly. "Thai, march 'em over."
Thai
gulped. He loosened his seat-belt. The enlistment of the seven in the pirate
fleet was tacitly acknowledged. They were unarmed save for the conventional
large knives at their belts.
"Frrrd, harch!" rasped Thai with a lump in his throat. "Two,
three," four, Hup, two, three, four. Hup . . ."
Seven men marched dismally out of the
spaceboat and down to the floor of the huge hold. Eyes front, chests out,
throats dry, they marched to the larger but still small vessel that shared this
hold compartment. They marched into that ship. Thai barked,
"Hmmmmm halt!" and they stopped. They waited.
Hoddan came in very matter-of-factly only
moments later. He closed the entrance port, so sealing the ship. He nodded
approvingly.
"You can break ranks now," he said.
"There's food and such stuff around. The ship's yours. But don't turn knobs
or push buttons."
He went forward, and a door
closed behind him.
He
looked at the control board, and could have done with a little information
himself. When the ship was built, generations ago, there'd been controls
installed which would be quite1 useless now. When the present
working instruments were installed, it had been done so hastily that the wires
and relays behind them were not concealed, and it was these that gave him the
clues to understand them.
The
space-ark's door opened. Hoddan backed his ship out. Its rockets had surprising
power. He reflected that the Lawlor drive wouldn't have been designed for this
present ship, either. There'd probably been a quantity order for so many Lawlor
drives, and they'd been installed on whatever needed a modern drive-system,
which was every ship in the fleet. But since this was one of the smallest craft
in the lot, with its low mass it should be fast.
"We'll see," he said to nobody in
particular.
Out in emptiness, but naturally sharing the
orbit of the ship from which it had just come, Hoddan tried it out tentatively.
He got the feel of it. Then as a matter of simple, rule-of-thumb astrogation,
he got from a low orbit to a five-diameter height where the Lawlor drive would
hold by mere touches of rocketpower. It was simply a matter of stretching the
orbit to extreme eccentricity as all the ships went round the planet. After the
fourth go round he was fully five diameters out at aphelion. He touched the
drive button and everybody had that very peculiar disturbance of all their
senses which accompanies going into overdrive. The small craft sped through
emptiness at a high multiple of the speed of fight.
Hoddan's knowledge of astrogation was
strictly practical. He went over his ship. From a look at it outside he'd
guessed that it once had been a yacht. Various touches inside verified that
idea. There were two staterooms. All the space was for living and supplies.
None was for cargo. He nodded. There was a faint mustiness about it. But
there'd been a time when it was some rich man's pride.
He
went back to the control-room to make an estimate. From the pilot's seat one
could see a speck of brightness directly ahead. Infinitesimal dots of
brightness appeared swiftly brighter and then darted outward. As they darted
they disappeared because their motion became too swift to follow. There were,
of course, methods of measuring this phenomenon so that one could get an
accurate measure of one's speed in overdrive. Hoddan had no instrument for the
purpose. But he had the feel of things. This was a very fast ship indeed, at
full Lawlor thrust.
Presently
he went out to the central cabin. His followers had found provisions. There
were novelties—hydroponic fruit, for instance—and they'd gloomily stuffed
themselves. They were almost resigned, now. Memory of the loot he'd led them to
at Ghek's castle inclined them to be hopeful. But they looked uneasy when he
stopped where they were gathered.
"Well?" he said
sharply.
Thai swallowed.
"We
have been companions, Bron Hoddan," he said unhappily. "We fought
together in great battles, two against fifty, and we plundered the slain."
"True
enough," agreed Hoddan. If Thai wanted to edit his memories of the
fighting at the spaceport, that was all right with him. "Now we're headed
for something much better."
"But
what?" asked Thai miserably. "Here we are
high above our native world—"
"Oh,
no!" said Hoddan. "You couldn't even pick out its sun, >from where
we are now!"
Thai gulped.
"I
do not understand what you want with us," he protested. "We are not
experienced in space! We are simple men . . ."
"You're
pirates now," Hoddan told him with a sort of genial bloodthirstiness.
"You'll do what I tell you until we fight. Then you'll fight well or die.
That's all you need to know!"
He left them. When men are to be led it is
rarely wise to discuss policy or tactics with them. Most men work best when
they know only what is expected of them. Then they can't get confused and they
do not get ideas of how to do diings better.
Hoddan
inspected the yacht more carefully. There were still traces of decorative
features which had nothing to do with spaceworthiness. But the mere antiquity
of the ship made Hoddan hunt more carefully. He found a small compartment
packed solidly with supplies. A supply cabinet did not belong where it was. He
hauled out stuff to make sure. It was—it had been—a machine shop in miniature.
In the early days, before space-phones were long-range devices, a yacht or a
ship that went beyond orbital distance was strictly on its own. If there were a
breakdown it was strictly of private concern. It had to be repaired by its own,
or else. So all early spacecraft carried amazingly complete
equipment for repairs. Only liners had been equipped that way in recent
generations, and it is almost unheard of for their tool shops to be used.
But
there was the remnant of a shop on the yacht that Hoddan was using for his
errand to Walden. He'd told the emigrant leaders that he went to ask for
charity. He'd just assured his followers that their Journey was for piracy. Now . . .
He began to empty the cubbyhole of all the
items that had been packed into it for storage. It had been very ingenious,
this miniature repair shop. The lathe was built in with strength-members of the
walls as part of its structure. The drill press was recessed. The welding
apparatus had its coils and condensers under the floor. The briefest of examinations
showed the condensers to be in bad shape, and the coils might be hopeless. But
there was good material used in the old days. Hoddan began to have quite
unreasonable hopes.
He went back to the
control-room to meditate.
He'd
had a reasonably sound plan of action for the pirating of a spaceliner, even
though he had no weapons mounted on the ship nor
anything more deadly than stun-pistols for his reluctant crew. But he
considered it likely that he could make the same sort of landing with this
yacht that he'd already done with the spaceboat. Which
should be enough.
If he waited off Walden until a liner went
down to the planet's great spaceport, he could try it. He would go into a close
orbit around Walden which would bring him, very low, over the landing-grid
within an hour or so of the liner's landing. He'd turn the yacht end for end
and apply full rocketpower for deceleration. The yacht would drop like a stone
into the landing-grid. Everything would happen too quickly for the grid crew to
think of clapping a forcefield on it, or for them to manage it if they tried.
He'd be aground before they realized it.
The
rest was simply fast action. Hoddan and seven Darth-ians, stun-pistols humming,
would tumble out of the yacht and dash for the control-room of the grid. Hoddan
would smash the controls. Then they'd rush the landed liner, sieze it, shoot
down anybody who tried to oppose them, and seal up the ship.
And
then they'd take off on the liner's rockets, which were carried for emergency
landing only, but could be used for a single take-off. After one such use
they'd be exhausted. And with the grid's controls smashed, nobody could even
try to stop them.
It
wasn't a bad idea. He had a good deal of confidence in it. It was the reason
for his Darthian crew. Nobody'd expect such a thing to be tried, so it almost
certainly could be done. But it did have the drawback that the yacht would have
to be left behind, a dead loss, when the liner was seized.
Hoddan
thought it over soberly. Long before he reached Walden, of course, he could
have his own crew so terrified that they'd fight like fiends for fear of what
he might do to them if they didn't. But if he could keep the spaceyacht also ...
He nodded gravely. He liked the new
possibility. If it didn't work, there was the first plan in reserve. In any
case he'd get a modern spaceliner and suitable cargo to present to emigrants of
Colin.
There
were certain electronic circuits which were akin. The Lawlor drive unit formed
a forcefield, a stress in space, into which a nearby ship necessarily moved.
The faster-rhan-light angle came from the fact that it worked like a donkey
trotting after a carrot held in front of him by a stick. The ship moving into
the stressed area moved the stress. The force-fields of a landing-grid were
similar. A tuning principle was involved, but basically a landing-grid clamped
an area of stress around a spaceship, and the ship couldn't move out of it. When the landing-grid moved the stressed area up or down—why—that
was it.
All
this was known to everybody. But a third trick had been evolved on Zan. It was
based on the fact that ball lighting could be generated by a circuit
fundamentally akin to the other two. Ball lightning was an area of space so
stressed that its energy content could leak out only very slowly, unless it
made contact with a conductor, when all bets were off. It blew. And the Zan
pirates used ball lightning to force the surrender of their victims.
Hoddan
began to draw diagrams. The Lawlor drive unit had been installed long after the
yacht was built. It would be modem, with no nonsense about it. With
such-and-such of its electronic components cut out, and such-and-such other
ones cut in, it would become a perfectly practical ball-lightning generator,
capable of placing bolts wherever one wanted them. This was standard Zan practice.
Hoddan's grandfather had used it for years. It had the advantage that it could
be used inside a gravity field, where a Lawlor drive could not. It had the
other advantage that commercial spacecraft could not mount such gadgets for
defense, because the insurance companies objected to meddling with Lawlor
drive installations.
Hoddan
set to work with the remnants of a tool shop on the ancient yacht and some
antique coils and condensers and such. He became filled with zest. He almost
forgot that he was the skipper of an elderly craft which should have been
junked before he was born.
But
even he grew hungry, and he realized that nobody offered him food. He went
indignantly into the yacht's central saloon and found his seven crew members
snoring stertorously, sprawled in stray places here and there.
He
woke them with great sternness. He set them furiously to work on
housekeeping—including making meals.
He went back to work. Suddenly he stopped and
meditated afresh, and ceased his actual labor to draw a diagram which he
regarded with great affection. He returned to his adaptation of the Lawlor
drive to the production of ball lightning.
Once
finished, he examined the stars. The nearby suns were totally strange in their
arrangement. But the Coalsack area was a spacemark good for half a sector of
the galaxy. There was a condensation in the Nearer Rim for a second bearing.
And a certain calcium cloud with a star-cluster behind it which was as good as
a highway sign for locating oneself.
He
lined up the yacht again and went into overdrive once more. Two days later he
came out, again surveyed the cosmos, again went into overdrive, again came out,
once more made a hop in faster-than-Iight travel, and finally he was in the
solar system of which Walden was the ornament and pride.
He
used the telescope and contemplated Walden on its screen. The spaceyacht moved
briskly toward it. His seven Darthian crewmen, aware of coming action,
dolefully sharpened their two-foot knives. They did not know what else to do,
but they were far from happy.
Hoddan
shared their depression. Such gloomy anticipations before stirring events are
proof that a man is not a fool. Hoddan's grandfather had been known to observe
that when a man can imagine all kinds of troubles and risks and disasters ahead
of him, he is usually right. Hoddan shared that view. But it would not do to
back out now.
He
examined Walden painstakingly while the yacht sped towards it. He saw an ocean
come out of the twilight zone of dawn. By the charts, the capitol city and the
spaceport should be on that ocean's western shore. After a suitable and very
long interval, the site of the capitol city came around the edge of the planet.
From
a bare hundred thousand miles, Hoddan stepped up magnification to its limit and
looked again. Then Walden more than filled the telescope's field. He could see
only a very small fraction of the planet's surface. He had to hunt before he
found the capitol city again. Then it was very clear. He saw the curving lines
of its highways and the criss-cross pattern of its streets. Buildings as such,
however, did not show. But he made out the spaceport and the shadow of the landing-grid, and in the very center of that grid there was
something silvery which cast a shadow of its own. A ship.
A liner.
Then
the silvery thing moved visibly across other objects, and its shadow ceased to
be. It was thrust surely and ever more swiftly skyward by the grid. The liner
was rising to outer space.
There was a tap on the control-room door. Thai.
"Anything happening?" he asked
uneasily.
"I just sighted the ship we're going to
take," said Hoddan.
Thai
looked unhappy. He withdrew. Hoddan plotted out the extremely roundabout course
he must take to end up with the liner and the yacht traveling in the same
direction and the same speed, so capture would be possible. It could not be
attempted in clear space. Five diameters out, the liner could whisk into
overdrive and be gone forever. On the other hand, within five diameters the
yacht couldn't use its drive, either. And yet again, the liner and the yacht
had to be moving away from the planet at the time of capture, with enough
velocity to attain clear space on their momentum, or there'd be no point in the
attack. If the yacht did not float on out past the five-diameter limit, it
could be gathered in by the landing-grid and brought to ground for such
measures which might seem appropriate.
Hoddan
worked out the angles and the speeds. He had to dive past Walden, swing around
its farther side, and come back like a boomerang so his and the liner's speed
and line of motion would match up into a collision course. Then rockets . . .
He
put the yacht on the line required. He threw on full power. Actually, he headed
partly away from his intended victim. The little yacht plunged forward. Nothing
seemed to happen. Time passed. Hoddan had nothing to do but worry. He worried.
Thai tapped on the door again.
"About time to get ready to fight?"
he asked dolefully. "Not yet," said Hoddan. "I'm running away
from our victim, now."
Another half-hour. The course ohanged.
The yacht was around behind Walden. The whole planet lay between it and its
intended prey. The course of the small ship curved, now. It would pass almost
close enough to clip the topmost tips of Walden's atmosphere. There was nothing
for Hoddan to do but think morbid thoughts. He thought them.
The
Lawlor drive began to burble. He cut it off. He sat gloomily in the
control-room, occasionally glancing at the nearing expanse of rushing mottled
surface presented by the now-nearby planet. Its attraction bent the path of the
yacht. It was now a parabolic curve.
Presently
the surface diminished a little. The yacht was increasing its distance from it.
Hoddan used the telescope. He searched the space ahead with full-width field.
He found the liner. It rose steadily. The grid still thrust it upward with an
even, continuous acceleration. It had to be not less than forty thousand miles
out before it could take to overdrive. But at that distance it would have an
outward velocity which would take it on out indefinitely. At ten thousand
miles, certainly, the grid-fields would let go.
They
did. Hoddan could tell because the liner wabbled slightly. It was free. It was
no longer held solidly. From now on it floated up on momentum.
Hoddan
nibbled at his fingernails. There was nothing to he done for forty minutes more.
Presently there was nothing to be done for thirty. For
twenty. Ten. Five. Three. Two—
The
liner was barely twenty miles away when Hoddan fired his rockets. They made a
colossal cloud of vapor in emptiness. The yacht stirred faintly, shifted
deftly, lost just a suitable amount of velocity—which now was nearly straight
up from the planet—and moved with precision and directness toward the liner.
Hoddan stirred his controls and swung the whole small ship. He flipped a switch
that cut out certain elements of the Lawlor unit and cut in those others which
made the modified drive unit into a ball-lightning projector.
A
flaming speck of pure incandescence sped from the yacht through emptiness. It
would miss . . . No! Hoddan swerved it. It struck the liner's hull. It would
momentarily paralyze every bit of electric equipment in the ship. It would
definitely not go unnoticed.
"Calling
liner," said Hoddan painfully into a microphone. "Calling linerl We are pirates, attacking your ship. You have ten seconds to
get into your lifeboats or we will hull you!"
He
settled back, again nibbling at his fingernails. He was acutely disturbed. At
the end of ten seconds the distance between the two ships was perceptibly less.
He
flung a second baU-lightning bolt across the diminished space. He sent it
whirling round and round the liner in a tight spiral. He ended by having it
touch the liner's bow. Liquid light ran over the entire hull.
"Your
ten seconds are up," he said worriedly. "If you don't get out—"
But
then he relaxed. A boat-blister on the liner opened.' The boat did not release itself. It could not possibly take on its complement of
passengers and crew in so short a time. The opening of the blister was a sign
of surrender.
The
two first ball-hghtning bolts were miniatures. Hoddan now projected a
full-sized ball. It glittered viciously in emptiness. It sped toward the liner
and hung off its side, menacingly. The yacht from Darth moved steadily closer.
Five miles. Two.
"All
out," said Hoddan regretfully. "We can't wait any longer!"
A
boat darted away from the liner. A second. A third and fourth and fifth. The last boat lingered
desperately. The yacht was less than a mile away when it broke free and plunged
frantically toward the planet it had left a little while before. The other
boats were already streaking downward, trails of rocket fumes expanding behind
them. The crew of the landing-grid would pick them up for safe and gentle
landing.
Hoddan
sighed in relief. He played delicately upon the yacht's rocket controls. He
carefully maneuvered the very last of the novelties he had build
into the originally simple Lawlor drive unit. The two ships came together with
a distinct clanking sound. It seemed horribly loud.
Thai jerked open the door, ashen white.
"W-we hit something! Wh-when do we
fight?"
"I forgot. The fighting's over,"
Hoddan said ruefully. But bring your stun-pistols. Nobody'd stay behind, but
somebody might have gotten left."
He rose, to take over the
captured ship.
CHAPTER IX
Normally, at
overdrive cruising speed, it would be a week's journey from Walden to the
planet Krim. Hoddan made it in five days. There was reason. He wanted to beat
the news of his piracy to Krim. He could endure suspicion, and he wouldn't mind
doubt, but he did not want certainty of his nefarious behavior to interfere
with the purposes of his call.
The
spaceyacht, sealed tightly, floated in an orbit far out in emptiness. The big
ship went down alone by landing-grid. It glittered brightly as it descended.
When it touched ground and the grid's forcefields cut off, it looked very
modern and very crisp and strictly businesslike. Actually, the capture of this
particular liner was a bit of luck, for Hoddan. It was not one of the giant
inter-cluster ships which make runs of thousands of light-years and deign to
stop only at very major planets. It was a medium ship of five thousand tons,
designed for service in the Horsehead Nebula region. It was brand-new and on
the way from its builders to its owners when Hoddan interfered. Naturally,
though, it carried cargo on its maiden voyage.
Hoddan spoke curtly to the
control-room of the grid.
"I'm
non-sked," he explained. "New ship. I got a
freak charter-party over on Walden for from here for Darth and I have to get
rid of my cargo. How about shifting me to a delay space until I can talk to
some brokers?"
The
forcefields came on again and the liner moved very delicately to a position at
the side of the grid's central space. There it would be out of the way.
Hoddan dressed himself carefully in garments
found in the liner's skipper's cabin. He found Thai wearing an apron and an
embittered expression. He ceased to wield a mop as Hoddan halted before him.
"I'm
going ashore," said Hoddan crisply. "You're in charge until I get
back."
"In
charge of what?" demanded Thai bitterly. "Of
a bunch of male housemaidsl I run a mopl And me a
Darthian gentleman! I thought I was being a pirate! What do I do? I scrub
floors! I wash paint! I stencil cases in cargo-holds! I paint over names and
put others in their places! Me, a Darthian gentleman!"
"No,"
said Hoddan. "A pirate. If you don't get back,
you and the others can't work this ship, and presently the police of Krim will
ask why. They'll re-check my careful forgeries, and you'll all be hung for
piracy. So don't let anybody in. Don't talk to anybody. If you do, pfftl"
He
drew his finger across his throat, and nodded, and went cheerfully out the
crew's landing-door in the v.ery base of the ship. He went across the tarmac
and out between two of the gigantic steel arches of the grid. He hired a car.
"Where?" asked
the driver.
"Hm,"
said Hoddan. "There's a firm of lawyers ...
I can't remember the names . .
."
"There's
millions of 'em," said the driver.
"This
is a special one," explained Hoddan. "It's so dignified they won't
talk to you unless you're a great-grandson of a client. They're so ethical they
won't touch a case of under a million credits. They've got about nineteen names
in the firm-title and—"
"Oh!"
said the driver. "That'll be—Hell! I can't remember the name, either. But
I'll take you there."
He
drove out into traffic. Hoddan relaxed. Then he tensed again. He had not been
in a city since he stopped briefly in this one on the way to Darth. The traffic
was abominable. And he, who'd been in various pitched battles on Darth and had
only lately captured a ship in space—Hoddan grew apprehensive
as his cab charged into the thick of hooting, rushing, squealing vehicles. When
the car came to a stop he was relieved.
"It's
yonder," said the driver. "Youll find the name on the
directory."
Hoddan
paid and went inside the gigantic building. He looked at the directory and
shrugged. He went to the downstairs guard. He explained that he was looking
for a firm of lawyers whose name was not on the directory Hst.
They were extremely conservative and of the highest possible reputation. They
didn't seek clients.
"Forty-two
and forty-three," said the guard, frowning. "I ain't supposed to give
it out, but—floors forty-two and-three."
Hoddan
went up. He was unknown. A receptionist looked at him with surprised aversion.
"I
have a case of space-piracy," said Hoddan politely. "A member of the
firm, please."
Ten
minutes later he eased himself into a fluffy
chair. A gray-haired man of infinite dignity said:
"Well?"
"I am," said Hoddan modestly,
"a pirate. I have a ship in the spaceport with very convincing
papers and a cargo of Rigellian furs, jewelry from the Cetis planets, and a
rather large quantity of bulk melacynth. I want to dispose of the cargo and
invest a considerable part of the proceeds in conservative stocks on
Krim."
The
lawyer frowned. He looked shocked. Then he said carefully:
"You made two statements. One was that
you are a pirate. Taken by itself, that is not my concern. The other is that
you wish to dispose of certain cargo and invest in reputable businesses on
Krim. I assume that there is no connection between the two facts."
He
paused. Hoddan said nothing. The lawyer went on, with dignity:
"Of
course our firm is not in the brokerage business. However, we can represent
you in your dealing with local brokers. And obviously we can advise you."
"I
also wish to buy," said Hoddan, "a complete shipload of agricultural
machinery, a microfilm technical library, machine tools, vision-tape technical
instructors and libraries of tape for them, generators, and such things."
"Hm,"
said the lawyer, "I will send one of our clerks to examine your cargo so
he can deal properly with the brokers. You will tell him more in detail what
you wish to buy."
Hoddan stood up.
Til
take him to the ship now."
He
was mildly surprised at the smoothness with which matters proceeded. He took a
young clerk to the ship. He showed him the ship's papers as edited by himself.
He took him through the cargo holds. He discussed in some detail what he wished
to buy.
When the clerk left, Thai
came to complain again.
"Look
herel" he said bitterly, "we've scrubbed this dam' ship from one end
to the other! There's not a speck or a fingermark on it. And we're still
scrubbing! We captured this ship! Is this pirate revels?"
Hoddan said:
"There's money coming. I'll let you boys
ashore with some cash in your pockets presently."
Brokers came, escorted by the lawyer's clerk.
They squabbled furiously with him. But the dignity of the firm he represented
was extreme. There was no suspicion—no overt suspicion anyhow—and the furs
went. The clerk painstakingly informed Hoddan that he could draw so much. More
brokers came. The jewelry went. The lawyer's clerk jotted down figures and told
Hoddan the net. The bulk melacynth was taken over by a group of brokers, none
of whom could handle it alone.
Hoddan drew cash and sent his Darthians
ashore with a thousand credits apiece. With bright and shining faces, they
headed for the nearest bars.
"As soon as my ship's
loaded," Hoddan told the clerk, "I'll want to get them out of
jail."
The clerk nodded. He brought salesmen of
agricultural machinery. Representatives of microfilm
libraries. Manufacturers of generators, vision-tape
instructors and allied lines. Hoddan bought, painstakingly. Delivery was
promised for the next day.
"Now," said the clerk, "about
the investments you wish to make with the balance?"
"I'll
want a reasonable sum in cash," said Hoddan reflectively. "But—well
. . . I've been told that insurance is a fine, conservative business. As I
understand it, most insurance organizations are divided into divisions which
are separately incorporated. There will be a life insurance division, a
casualty division, and so on. Is that right? And one may invest in any of them
separately?"
The clerk said impassively:
"I
was given to understand, sir, that you are interested in risk insurance.
Perhaps especially risk insurance covering piracy. I was given quotations on
the risk insurance divisions of all Krim companies. Of course those are not
very active stocks, but if there were a rumor of a
pirate ship acting in this part of the galaxy, one might anticipate . . ."
"I
do," said Hoddan. "Let's see . . . my cargo brought so much . . . hm
. . . my purchases will come to so much. My legal fees, of course ... I mentioned a sum in cash. Yes. This
will be the balance, more or less, which you will put in the stocks you've
named. But since I anticipate activity in them, I'll want to leave some special
instructions."
He
gave a detailed, thoughtful account of what he anticipated
might be found in news. reports of later dates. The
clerk noted it all down, impassively. Hoddan added instructions.
"Yes, sir," said the clerk without
intonation when he was through. "If you will come to the office in the
morning, sir, the papers will be drawn up and matters can be concluded. Your
new cargo can hardly be delivered before then, and if I may say so, sir, your
crew won't be ready. I'd estimate two hours of festivity for each man, and
fourteen hours for recovery."
"Thank you," said
Hoddan. "I'll see you in the morning."
He
sealed up the ship when the lawyer's clerk departed. Then he felt lonely. He
was the only living thing in the ship. His footsteps echoed hollowly. There was
nobody to speak to. Not even anybody to threaten. He'd done a lot of threatening
lately.
He went forlornly to the cabin once occupied
by the liner's former skipper. His loneliness increased; he began to have
self-doubts. Today's actions were the ones which bothered his conscience. He
felt that they were not quite adequate. The balance left in the lawyer's hands
would not be nearly enough to eover a certain deficit which in justice he felt
himself bound to make up. It had been his thought to make this enterprise
self-liquidating—everybody concerned making a profit, including the owners of
the ship and cargo he had pirated. But he wasn't sure.
He
reflected that his grandfather would not have been disturbed about such a
matter. That elderly pirate would have felt wholly at ease. It was his
conviction that piracy was an essential part of the working of the galaxy's
economic system. Hoddan, indeed, could remember him saying:
"I
tell y', piracy's what keeps the galaxy's business thriving. Everybody knows
business suffers when retail trade slacks down. It backs up the movement of
inventories. Thev get too big. That backs up orders to the factories. They lay
off men. And when men are laid off they don't have money to spend, so retail
trade slacks off some more, and that backs up inventories some more, and that
backs up orders to factories and makes unemployment and hurts retail trade
again. It's a feedback. See?" It was Hoddan's grandfather's custom, at
this point, to stare shrewdly at each of his listeners in turn. "But
suppose somebody pirates a ship? The owners don't lose. It's insured. They
order another ship built right away. Men get hired to build it and they're paid
money to spend in retail trade and that moves inventories and industry picks
up. More'n that, more people insure against piracy. Insurance companies hire
more clerks and bookkeepers. They get more money for retail trade and to move
inventories and keep factories going and get more people hired. Y'see . . .
it's piracy that keeps business in this galaxy goin'I"
Hoddan
had doubts about this, but it could not be entirely wrong. He'd put a good
part of the proceeds of his piracy in risk-insurance stocks, and he counted on
them to make all his actions as benevolent to everybody concerned as his
intentions had been, and were. But it might not be true enough. It might be
less than—well—sufficiently true in a particular instance. And therefore-Then
he saw how things could be worked out so that there could be no doubt. He began
to work out the details. He drifted off to sleep in the act of composing a
letter in his head to his grandfather on the pirate planet Zan.
When
morning came on Krim, catawheel trucks came bringing
gigantic agricultural machines. There came generators, turbines and tanks of
plastic; another bevy of trucks brought vision-tape instructors and great boxes
full of tape for them. There were machine tools and cutting-tips—these last in
vast quantity—and very many items that the emigrants of Colin probably would
not expect, and might not even recognize. The cargo holds of the liner filled.
He
went to the office of his attorneys. He read and signed papers, in an
atmosphere of great dignity and ethical purpose. The lawyer's clerk attended
him to the police office, where seven dreary Darthians with over-sized
hangovers tried dismally to cheer themselves by memories of how they- got that
way. He got them out and to the ship. The lawyer's clerk produced a rather
weighty if small box with an air of extreme solemnity.
"The currency you wanted, sir."
"Thank you," said Hoddan.
"That's the last of our business?"
"Yes,
sir," said the clerk. He hesitated, and for the first time showed a trace
of human curiosity. "Could I ask a question, sir, about piracy?"
"Why not?" asked Hoddan. "Go
ahead."
"When
you—ah—captured this ship, sir," said the clerk
hopefully, "did you—ah—shoot the men and keep the women?"
Hoddan sighed.
"Much,"
he said regretfully, "much as I hate to spoil an enlivening theory—no.
These are modern days. Efficiency has invaded even the pirate business. I used
my crew for floor scrubbing and cooking."
He
closed the port gently and went up to the control-room tp call the landing-grid
operators. In minutes the captured liner, loaded down again, lifted toward the
stars.
And all the journey
back to Darth was as anticlimatic as that. There was no trouble finding the
spaceyacht in its remote orbit. Hoddan sent out an unlocking signal, and a keyed transmitter began to send a signal on
which to home. When the liner nudged alongside it, Hoddan's last contrivance
operated and the yacht clung fast to the larger ship's hull. There were four
days in overdrive. There were three or four pauses for position-finding. The
stopover on Krim had cost some delay, but Hoddan arrived back at a positive
sight of Darth's sun within a day or so. Then there was little or no time lost
in getting into orbit with the junk yard spacefleet of the emigrants. Shortly
thereafter he called the leader's ship with only mild worries about possible
disasters that might have happened while he was away. v
"Calling the leader's ship," he said crisply. "Calling the
leader's shipl This is Bron Hoddan, reporting back
from Walden with a ship and machinery contributed for your use!"
The
harsh voice of the bearded old leader of the emigrants seemed somehow broken
when he replied. He called down blessings on Hoddan, who could use them. Then
there was the matter of getting the emigrants on board the new ship. They
didn't know how to use the lifeboat tubes. Hoddan had to demonstrate. But shortly after, there were twenty, thirty, fifty of the folk
from Colin, feverishly searching the ship and incredulously reporting what they
found.
"It's
impossible!" said the old man. "It's impossible!"
"I
wouldn't say that," said Hoddan. "It's unlikely, but it's happened.
I'm only afraid it's not enough."
"It
is many times more than what we hoped," said the old man humbly.
"Only— he stopped. "We are more grateful
than we can say."
Hoddan took a deep breath.
"I'd
like to take my crew back home," he explained. "And come back.
Perhaps I can be useful explaining things. And I'd like to ask a great favor of
you—for my own work."
"But
naturally," said the old jnan. "Of course.
We will await your return."
Hoddan
was relieved. There seemed to be a strange limitation to the happiness of the
emigrants. They were passionately rejoiceful over the agricultural machinery.
But they seemed dutifully rather than truly happy over the microfilm library.
The vision-tape instructors were the objects of polite comment only. Hoddan
felt a vague discomfort. There seemed to be a sort of secret desperation in the
atmosphere, which they would not admit or mention. But he was coming back. Of course.
He brought the spaceboat over to the new
liner. He hooked onto a lifeboat blister and his seven Darthians crawled
through the lifeboat tube. Hoddan pulled away quickly before somebody thought
to ask why there were no lifeboats in the places so plainly made for them.
He headed downward when the landmarks on
Darth's surface told him that Don Loris' castle would shortly come over the
horizon. He was just touching atmosphere when it did. The boat's tanks had been
refilled, and he burned fuel recklessly to make a dramatic landing within a
hundred yards of the battlements where Fani had once thoughtfully had a coil of
rope ready for him.
Heads peered at the lifeboat over those same
battlements now, but the gate was closed. It stayed closed. There was somehow
an atmosphere of suspicion amounting to enmity. Hoddan felt unwelcome.
"All right, boys," he said
resignedly. "Out with you and to the castle. Here's your loot from the
voyage." He counted out for each of them rather more actual cash than any
of them really believed in. "And I want you to take this box to Don Loris.
It's a gift from me. And I want to consult with him about co-operation between
the two of us in some plans I have. Ask if I may come and talk to him."
His
seven former spearmen tumbled out. They marched gleefully to the castle gate.
Hoddan saw them make a tantalizing display of the large sums of cash to the
watchers above them. Thai held up the box for Don Loris. It was the box the
lawyer's clerk had turned over to him, with a tidy sum in cash in it. The sum
was partly depleted, now. Hoddan had paid off his involuntary crew with it. But
there was still more in it than Don Loris would have gotten from Walden for
selling him out.
The castle gate opened, as
if grudgingly. The seven went
Time passed. Much time.
Hoddan went over the arguments he meant to use on Don Loris. He needed to make
up a very great sum, and it could be done thus-and-so, but thus-and-so required
occasional pirate raids, which called for crews, and if Don Loris would
encourage his retainers . . . He could have gone to another Darthian chieftain,
of course, but he knew what kind of scoundrel Don Loris was. He'd have to find
out about another man.
Nearly
an hour elapsed before the castle gate opened again. Two files of spearmen
marched out. There were eight men with a sergeant in command. Hoddan did not
recognize any of them. They came to the spaceboat. .The sergeant formally
presented an official message. Don Loris would admit Bron Hoddan to his
presence, to hear what he had to say.
Hoddan
felt excessively uncomfortable. Waiting, he'd thought about that secret despair
in the emigrant fleet. He worried about it. He was concerned because Don Loris
had not welcomed him with cordiality, now that he'd brought back his retainers
in good working order. In a sudden gloomy premonition, he checked his
stun-pistols. They needed charging. He managed it from the lifeboat unit.
He
went with foreboding toward the castle with the eight spearmen surrounding him
as cops had once surrounded him on Walden. He did not like to be reminded of
it. He frowned to himself as he went in the castle gate, and along a long stone
passage, and up stone stairs into the great hall of state. Don Loris, as once
before, sat peevishly by the huge fireplace. This time he was almost inside it,
with its hood and mantel actually over his head. The Lady Fani sat there with
him.
Don
Loris seemed to put aside his peevishness only a little to greet Hoddan.
"My
dear fellow," he said complainingly, "I don't like to welcome you
with reproaches, but do you know that when you absconded with that spaceboat,
you made a mortal enemy for me? It's a factl My
neighbor, on whose land the boat descended, was deeply hurt. He considered it
his property. He had summoned his retainers for a fight over it when I heard
of his resentment and partly soothed him with apologies and presents. But he
still considers that I should return it to him, whenever you appear here with
it!"
"Oh," said
Hoddan. "That's too bad."
Things
looked ominous. The Lady Fani looked at him strangely. As if she were trying to tell him something without speaking. She
looked as if she had wept lately.
"To
be sure," said Don Loris fretfully, "to be sure you gave me a very
pretty present just now." But my retainers tell me that you came back with
a ship. A very fine ship. What became of it? The
landing-grid has been repaired at last and you could have landed there. What
happened to it?"
"I
gave it away," said Hoddan. He saw what Fani was trying to tell him.
Leading into the great hall was a corridor filled with spearmen. His tone
turned sardonic. "I gave it to a poor old man."
Don Loris shook his head.
"That's
not right, Hoddan! That fleet overhead, now. If they are pirates and want some
of my men for crews, they should come to me! I don't take kindly to the idea of
your kidnaping my men and carrying them off on piratical excursions! They must
be profitable! But on the other hand, if you can afford to give me presents like
this, and be so lavish with my retainers—why maybe . . ."
Hoddan grimaced.
"I came to arrange a
deal on that order," he observed.
"I
don't think I like it," said Don Loris peevishly. "I prefer to deal
with people direct. I'll arrange about the landing-grid, and for a regular
recruiting service which I will conduct, of course. But you—you are
irresponsible! I wish you well, but when you carry my men off for pirates, and
make my neighbor's into my enemies, and infect my daughter with strange
notions and the government of a friendly planet asks me in so many words not to
shelter you any longer—why, that's the end, Hoddan. So with great regret . .
."
"The
regret is mine," said Hoddan. Thoughtfully, he aimed a stun-pistol at a
slowly opening corridor door. He pulled the trigger. Yells followed its
humming, because not everybody it hit was knocked out. Nor did it hit
everybody in the corridor. Men came surging out of one door, and then two.
Then
a spear went past Hoddan's face and missed him only by inches. It buried its
point in the floor. A whirling knife spun past his nose. He glanced up. There
were balconies all around the great hall, and men popped up from behind the
railings and threw things at him. They popped down out of sight instantly.
There was no rhythm involved. He could not anticipate their rising, nor shoot
them through the balcony-front. And more men infiltrated the hall, getting
behind heavy chairs and tables. More spears and knives flew.
"Bron!" cried the
Lady Fani, throatily.
He thought she had an exit
for him. He sprang to her side.
"I—I didn't want you
to come," she wept.
There
was a singular pause in the clangings and clashings of weapons on the floor.
Then one man popped up and hurled a knife. The clang of its fall was a very
lonely one. Don Loris fairly howled at him.
"Idiot! Think of the Lady Fani!"
The Lady Fani suddenly
smiled tremulously.
"Wonderful!"
she said. "They don't dare do anything while you're as close to me as
this!"
"Do you suppose,"
asked Hoddan, "I could count on that?"
"I'm certain of
it!" said Fani. "And I think you'd better."
"Then, excuse
me," said Hoddan with great politeness.
He
swung her up and over his shoulder. With a stun-pistol in his free hand he
headed down the hall.
"Outside,"
she said zestfully, "get out the side door and
turn left, and nobody can jump down on your neck. Then left
again to the gate."
He
obeyed. Now and again he got in a pot-shot with his pistol. Don Loris had
turned the castle into a very pretty trap. The Lady Fani said plaintively:
"This
is terribly undignified, and I can't see where we're going. Where are we
now?"
"Almost
at the gate," panted Hoddan. "At it, now."
He swung out of the massive entrance to Don Loris' stronghold. "I'll put
you down now."
"I wouldn't," said the Lady Fani.
"I think you'd better make for the spaceboat exactly as we are."
Again
Hoddan obeyed, racing across the open ground. Howls of fury followed him. It
was evidently the opinion of the castle that the Lady Fani was to be abducted
in the place of the seven returned spearmen.
Hoddan,
breathing hard, reached the spaceboat. He put Fani down and said anxiously:
"You're
all right? I'm very much in your debt! I was in a spot!" Then he nodded
toward the casde. "They're upset, aren't they? They must think I mean to
kidnap you."
The Lady Fani beamed.
"It
would be terrible if you did," she said hopefully. "I couldn't do a
thing to stop you! And a successful public abduction's a legal marriage, on
Darth! Wouldn't it be terrible?"
Hoddan mopped his face and patted her
reassuringly on the shoulder.
"Don't
worry!" he said warmly. "You just got me out of an awful fix! You're my friend! And anyhow I'm going to marry a girl on Walden, named Nedda. Goodbye, Fani! Keep clear of the rocket
blast."
He
went into the boat's port, turned to smile paternally back at her, and shut the
port behind him. Seconds later the spaceboat took off. It left behind clouds of
rocket smoke.
And,
though Hoddan hadn't the faintest idea of it, he had left behind the maddest
girl in several solar systems.
CHAPTER X
It is the custom of all men, everywhere, to be obtuse
where women are concerned: Hoddan went skyward in the space-boat with feelings
of warm gratitude toward the Lady Fani. He had not the slightest inkling that
she, had anything but the friendliest of feelings toward him.
As Hoddan drove on up and up, the sky became
deep purple and then black velvet set with flecks of fire. He was relieved by
the welcome he'd received earlier today from the emigrants, but he remained
slightly puzzled by a very faint impression of desperation remaining. He felt
very virtuous on the whole, however, and his plans for the future were
specific. He'd already composed a letter to his grandfather, which he'd ask the
emigrant fleet to deliver. He had another letter in his mind, a form letter—practically
a public-relations circular—which he hoped to whip into shape before the emigrants
got too anxious to be on their way. He considered that he needed to earn a
little more of their gratitude so he could make everything come out even;
everybody being satisfied and happy but himself.
For
himself he anticipated only the deep satisfaction of accomplishment. He'd
wanted to do great things since he was a small boy. He'd gone to Walden in the
hope of achievement. There, of course, he failed because in a free economy, industrialists
consider that freedom is the privilege of being stupid without penalty. But
Hoddan now believed himself in the fascinating situation of having knowledge
and abilities which were needed by other people.
It
was only when he'd made contact with the fleet, and was in the act of
maneuvering toward a boat-blister on the liner he'd brought back, that doubts
again assailed him. He had done a few things—accomplished little. He'd devised
a broadcast-power receptor and a microwave projector and he'd turned a Lawlor
drive into a ball-lightning projector and worked out a few little things like
that. But the first had been invented before by somebody in the Cetis cluster,
and the second could have been made by anybody and the third was standard
practise on Zan. He stLU had to do something significant.
When
he made fast to the liner and crawled through the tube to its hull, he was in a
state of doubt which passed very well for modesty.
The
bearded old man received him in the skipper's quarters, which Hoddan himself
had occupied for a few days. He looked very weary. He seemed to have aged, in
hours.
"We grow more astounded by the
minute," he told Hoddan heavily, "by what you have brought us. Ten
shiploads like this and we would be better equipped than we believed ourselves
in the beginning. It looks as if some thousands of us will now be able to
survive our colonization of the planet Thetis."
Hoddan gaped at him. The old man put his hand
on Hod-dan's shoulder.
"We
are grateful," he said with a pathetic attempt at warmth. "Please do
not doubt thatl It is only that . . . that. . . I cannot help wishing very
desperately that . . . that instead of unfamiliar tools for metal-working and
machines with tapes which show pictures—I wish that even one more jungle plow
had been included!"
Hoddan's
jaw dropped. The people of Colin wanted planet-subduing machinery. They wanted
it so badly that they did not want anything else. They could not even see that
anything else had any value at all. Most of them could only look forward to
starvation when the ships' supplies were exhausted, because not enough ground
could be broken and cultivated early enough to grow food enough in time.
"Would
it," asked the old man desperately, "would it be possible to exchange
these useless machines for others that will be useful?"
"Let
me talk to your mechanics, sir," said Hoddan unhappily. "Maybe
something can be done."
He
restrained himself from tearing his hair as he went to where the mechanics of
the fleet looked over their new equipment. He'd come up to the fleet again to
gloat and do great things for people who needed him and knew it. But he faced
the hopelessness of people to whom his utmost effort seemed mockery because it
was so far from being enough.
He
gathered together the men who'd tried to keep the fleet's ships in working
order during their flight. They were competent men, of course. They were
resolute. But now they had given up hope. Hoddan began to lecture them. They
needed machines. He hadn't brought the machines they wanted, perhaps, but he'd
brought the machines to make them with. Here were automatic shapers, turret
lathes, dicers. He'd brought these because they already had the raw material—the
ships themselves 1 Even some of the junk they carried in crates was good metal,
merely worn out in its present form. They could make anything they needed with
what he'd brought them. For example, he'd show them how to make a lumber saw.
He
showed them how to make the slender, rapier-like revolving tool with which a
man stabbed a tree and cut outward with the speed of a hot knife cutting
butter. And one could mount it so, and cut out planks and beams for temporary
bridges and such constructions.
They
watched, baffled. They gave no sign of hope. They did not want lumber saws.
They wanted jungle-breaking machinery.
"I've
brought you everything!" he insisted. "You've got a civilization,
compact, on this ship! You've got life instead of starvation! Look at this.
I'll make a water pump to irrigate your fields!"
Before
their eyes he turned out an irrigation pump on an automatic shaper. He showed
them that the shaper went on, by itself, making other pumps without further
instructions.
The
mechanics stirred uneasily. They had watched without comprehension. Now they
listened without enthusiasm. Their eyes were like those of children who watch
marvels without comprehension.
He
made a sledge whose runners slid on the air between themselves and whatever
object would otherwise have touched them. It was practically frictionless. He
made a machine to make nails. He made a power-hammer which hummed and pushed
nails into any object that needed to be nailed. He made-He stopped abruptly,
and sat down with his head in his hands. The people of the fleet faced so
overwhelming a catastrophe that they could not see through it. They could only
experience it. As their leader would have been unable to answer questions about
the fleet's predicament before he'd poured out the tale in the form it had
taken in his mind, now these mechanics were unable to see ahead. They were
paralyzed by the completeness of the disaster before them. They could live
until the supplies of the fleet gave out. They could not grow fresh supplies
without jungle-breaking machinery. They had to have jungle-breaking machinery.
They could not imagine wanting anything more or less than jungle-breaking
machinery.
Hoddan
raised his head. The mechanics looked dully at him.
"You men do maintenance?" he asked.
"You repair things when they wear out on the ships? Have you run out of
some of the materials you need for repairs?"
After a long time a
tired-looking man said slowly:
"On
the ship I come from, we're having trouble. Our hydroponic garden keeps the air
fresh, o'course. But the water-circulation pipes are gone. Rusted
through. We haven't got any pipe to fix them with. We have to keep the
water moving with buckets."
Hoddan
got up. He looked about him. He hadn't brought hydroponic piping. And there was
no raw material. He took a pair of power-snips and cut away a section of wall
lining. He cut it into strips. He asked the diameter of the pipe. Before their
eyes he made pipe—spirally wound around a mandrel and line-welded to solidity.
"I need some of that
on my ship," said another man.
The bearded man said
heavily:
"We'll make some and
send it to the ships that need it."
"No,"
said Hoddan. "We'll send the tools to make it. We can make the tools here.
There must be other kinds of repairs, too. With the machines I've brought,
we'll make the tools to make repairs. Picture-tape machines have reels that
show exactly how to do it."
It
was a new idea. The mechanics had other and immediate problems beside the
over-all disaster of the fleet. Pumps that did not work.
Motors that heated up. They could envision the meeting
of those problems, and they could envision the obtaining of jungle plows. But
they couldn't imagine anything in between. They were capable of learning how
to make tools for repairs.
Hoddan
taught them. In one day there were five ships being brought into better
operating condition—for ultimate futility— because of what he'd brought. Two
days. Three.
Mechanics
began to come to the liner. Those who'd learned first,
pompously passed on what they knew. On the fourth day somebody began to use a
vision-tape machine to get information on a fine point in welding. On the
fifth day there were lines of men waiting to use them.
On
the sixth day a mechanic on what had been a luxury passenger liner scores of
years ago, asked to talk to Hoddan by space-phone. He'd been working
feverishily at the minor repairs he'd been unable to make for so long. To get
material he pulled a crate off one of the junk machines supplied the fleet. He
looked it over. He believed that if this piece were made new, and that replaced
with sound metaL the machine might be usablel
Hoddan
had him come to the liner which was now the the flagship of the fleet.
Discussion began and Hoddan began to draw diagrams. They were not clear. He
drew more. Abruptly, he stared at what he'd outlined He saw something
remarkable. If one applied a perfectly well-known bit of pure-science
information that nobody bothered with . . . He finished the diagram and a vast,
soothing satisfaction came over him.
"We've got to get out of herel" he
said. "Not enough room!"
He looked about him. Insensibly, as he talked
to the first man on the fleet to show imagination, other men had gathered
around. They were now absorbed.
"I think," said Hoddan, "that
we can make an electronic field that'll soften the cementite between the
crystals of steel, without heating up anything else. If it works, we can use
plastic dies I And then that useless junk you've got can be
rebuilt."
They listened gravely,
nodding as he talked. They did not quite understand everything, but they had
the habit of believing him now.
Soon Hoddan had a cold-metal die-stamper in
operation. It was very large. It drew on the big ship's drive-unit for power.
One put a rough mass of steel in place between plastic dies. One turned on the
power. In a tenth of a second the steel was soft as putty. Then it stiffened
and was warm.
But
in that tenth of a second it had been shaped with precision.
It took two days to duplicate the jungle plow
Hoddan had first been shown, in new, sound metal. But after the first one
worked triumphantly, they made forty of each part at a time and turned out
enough jungle plows for the subjugation of all Thetis' forests.
One
day Hoddan waked from a cat nap with a diagram in his head. He drew it,
half-asleep, and later looked and found that his unconscious mind had designed
a power-supply system which made Walden's look rather primitive.
During
the first six days Hoddan did not sleep to speak of, and after that he merely
cat-napped when he could. But he finally agreed with the emigrants' leader—now
no longer fierce, but fiercely triumphant—that he thought they could go on. And
he would ask a favor. He propped his eyelids open with his fingers and wrote
the letter to his grandfather that he'd composed in his mind in the liner on
Krim. He managed to make one copy, unaddressed, of the public-relations letter
that he'd worked out at the same time. He put it through a facsimile machine
and managed to address each of fifty copies. Then he yawned uncontrollably.
He
still yawned when he went to take leave of the leader of the people of Colin.
That person regarded him with warm eyes.
"I
think everything's all right," said Hoddan exhaustedly. "You've got a
dozen machine-shops and they're multiplying themselves, and you've got some
enthusiastic mechanics, now, who're drinking in the
vision-tape stuff and finding out more than they guessed there ever was. And
they're thinking, now and then, for themselves. I think you'll make out."
The bearded man said
humbly:
"I
have waited until you said all was well. Will you come with us?"
"No-o-o,"
said Hoddan. He yawned again. "I've got my work here. There's an
obligation I have to meet."
"It
must be very admirable work," said the old man wistfully. "I wish we
had some young men like you among us."
"You have," said Hoddan.
"They'll be giving you trouble presently."
The old man shook his head, looking at Hoddan
very affectionately.
"We
will deliver your letters," he said warmly. "First
to Krim, and then to Walden. Then we will go on and let down your letter
and gift to your grandfather on Zan. Then we will go on toward Thetis. Our
mechanics will work at building machines while we are in overdrive. But also
they will build new tool shops and train new mechanics, so that every so often
we will need to come out of overdrive to transfer the tools and the men to new
ships."
Hoddan nodded exhaustedly.
This was right.
"So,"
said the old man contentedly, "we will simply make those transfers in
orbit about the planets for which we have your letters. You will pardon us if
we only let down your letters, and do not visit those planets? We have
prejudices."
"Perfecdy
satisfactory," said Hoddan.
"The
mechanics you have trained," said the old man proudly, "have made a
little ship ready for you. It is not much iarger than your spaceboat, but it is
fit for travel between suns, which will be convenient for your work. I hope
you will accept it. There is even a tiny tool shop on itl"
Hoddan
would have been more touched if he hadn't known about it. But one of the men
entrusted with the job had needed his advice. He knew what he was getting. It
was the spaceyacht he'd used before, refurbished and fitted with everything the
emigrants could provide.
He affected great surprise and expressed
unfeigned appreciation. Barely an hour later he
transferred to it with the spaceboat in tow. He watched the emigrant fleet
swing out to emptiness and resume its valiant journey.
But it was not a hopeless journey, now. In fact, the colony on Thetis ought to
start out better equipped than most settled planets.
And
he went to sleep. He'd nothing urgent to do, except allow a certain amount of
time pass before he did anything. He was exhausted. He slept the clock round,
and waked and ate sluggishly, and went back to sleep again. On the whole, the
cosmos did not notice the difference. Stars flamed in emptiness, and planets
rotated sedately. Comets flung out gossamer veils or retracted them, and
spaceliners went about upon their lawful occasions.
When
he waked again he was rested, and he reviewed all his actions and his
situation. It appeared that matters promised fairly well on the emigrant fleet
now gone forever. They would remember Hoddan with affection for a year or so,
and dimly after that. But settling a new world would be enthralling and
important work. Nobody'd think of him at all, after a certain length of time.
But he had to think of an obligation he'd assumed on their account.
He
considered his own affairs. He'd told Fani he was going to marry Nedda. The way
things looked, that was no longer so probable. Of course, in a year or two, or
a few years, he might be out from under the obligations he now considered due.
In time even the Waldenian government would realize that death rays didn't
exist, and a lawyer might be able to clear things for his return to Walden. But
Nedda was a nice girl . . .
He
frowned. That was it. She was a remarkably nice girl. But Hoddan suddenly
doubted if she were a delightful one. He found himself questioning that she was
exactly and perfectly what his long-cherished ambitions described. "He
tried to imagine spending his declining years with Nedda. He couldn't quite
picture it as exciting. She did tend to be a little insipid.
Presently,
gloomy and a trifle dogged about it, he brought the spaceboat around to the
modernized boat-port of the yacht. He got into it, leaving the yacht in orbit.
He headed down toward Darth. Now that he'd rested, he had work to do which
could not be neglected. To carry out that work, he needed a crew able and
willing to pass for pirates for a pirate's pay. And there were innumerable
castles on Darth, with quite as many shifty noblemen, and certainly no fewer
plunder-hungry Darthian gentlemen hanging around them. But Don Loris' castle
had one real advantage and one which existed only in Hoddan's mind.
Don
Loris' retainers knew that Hoddan had led their companions to loot. Large loot. He'd have less trouble and more enthusiastic
support from Don Loris' retainers than any other. This was true.
The
illusion was that the Lady Fani was his firm personal friend with no nonsense
about her. This was a very great mistake.
He
landed for the fourth time outside Don Loris' castle. This time he had no
booty-laden men to march to the castle and act as heralds of his presence. The
spacebdat's vision screens showed Don Loris' stronghold as squat, immense, dark
and menacing. Banners flew from its turrets, their colors bright in the-ruddy
light of near-sunset. The gate remained closed. For a long time there was no
sign that his landing had been noted. Then there was movement on the
battlements, and a figure began to descend outside the wall. It was lowered to
the ground by a long rope.
It
reached the ground and shook itself. It marched toward the spaceboat through
the red and nearly level rays of the dying sun. Hoddan watched with a frown on
his face. This wasn't a retainer of Don Loris'. It assuredly wasn't Fani. He
couldn't even make out its gender until the figure was very near.
Then
he looked astonished. It was his old friend Derec, arrived on Darth a long
while since in the spaceboat Hoddan had been using ever since. Derec had been
his boon companion in the days when he expected to become rich by splendid
exploits in electronics. Derec was also the character who'd conscientiously
told the cops on Hoddan, when they found his power-receptor sneaked into a
Mid-Continent station and a stray corpse coincidentally outside.
He
opened the boat-port and stood in the opening. Derec had been a guest in Don
Loris' castle for a good long while, now. Hoddan wondered if he considered his
quarters cosy.
"Evening,
Derec," said Hoddan cordially. "You're looking well!"
"I
don't feel it," said Derec dismally. "I feel like^ a fool in the
castle yonder. And the high police official I came here with has gotten grumpy
and snaps when I try to speak to him."
Hoddan said gravely:
"I'm sure the Lady
Fani—"
"A tigressl" said
Derec bitterly: "We don't get along."
Looking
at Derec, Hoddan found himself able to understand
why. Derec was the sort of friend one might make on Walden for lack of
something better. He was well-meaning. He might even be capable of splendid
things—even heroism. But he was horribly, terribly, appallingly civilized!
"Well!
Well!" said Hoddan kindly. "And what's on your mind, Derec?"
"I came," said Derec dismally,
"to plead with you again, Bron. You must surrender! There's nothing else
to do! People can't have death rays, Bron! Above all, you mustn't tell the
pirates how to make them!"
Hoddan
was puzzled for a moment. Then he realized that Derec's information about the
fleet came from the spearmen he'd brought back, loaded down with cash. Derec
hadn't noticed the absence of the flashing lights at sunset—or hadn't realized
that they meant the fleet had gone away.
"Hm,"
said Hoddan. "Why don't you think I've already done it?"
"Because they'd have killed you,"
said Derec. "Don Loris pointed that out.- He
doesn't believe you know how to make death rays. He says it's not a secret
anybody would be willing for anybody else to know. But you know the truth,
Bron! You killed that poor man back on Walden. You've got to sacrifice yourself
for humanity! You'll be treated kindly!"
Hoddan
shook his head. It seemed somehow very startling for Derec to be harping on
that same idea, after so many things had happened to Hoddan. But he didn't
think Derec would actually expect him to yield to persuasion. There must be
something else. Derec might even have nerved himself up to do something quite
desperate.
"What did you really come here for,
Derec?"
"To beg you to—"
Then,
in one instant, Derec made a hysterical gesture and Hoddan's stun-pistol
hummed. A small object left Derec's hand as his muscles convulsed from the
stun-pistol bolt. It did not fly quite true. It fell a foot or so to one side
of the boat-port instead of inside.
It exploded luridly as Derec crumpled. There
was thick, strangling smoke. Hoddan disappeared. When the thickest smoke
drifted away there was nothing to be seen but Derec lying on the ground, and
thinner smoke drifting out of the still-open boat-port.
Nearly
half an hour later, figures came very cautiously toward the spaceboat. Thai was
their leader. His expression was mournful and depressed. Other brawny retainers
came uncertainly behind him. At a nod from Thai, two of them picked up Derec and
carted him off toward the castle.
"I
guess he got it," said Thai dismally. He peered in. He shook his head.
"Wounded, maybe, and crawled off to die." He peered in again and
shook his head once more. "No sign of 'im."
A spearman just behind Thai
said:
"Dirty
trick I I was with him to Walden, and he paid off
good! A good man! Shoulda been a chieftain! Good manl"
Thai
gingerly entered the spaceboat. He wrinkled his nose at the faint smell of
explosive still inside. Another man came in. Another.
"Say!" said one of them in a
conspiratorial voice. "We got our share of that loot from Walden. But he
hadda share, too! What'd he do with it? He could've kept it in this boat here.
We could take a quick lookl What Don Loris don't know
don't hurt him I"
"I'm
going to find Hoddan first," said Thai, with dignity. "We don't have
to carry him outside so's Don Loris knows we're looking for loot, but I'm going
to find him first."
There
were other men in the spaceboat now. A full dozen of them.
Their spears were very much in the way.
The
boat-door closed quietly. Don Loris' retainers stared at each other. The
locking-dogs grumbled for half a second, sealing the door tightly. Don Loris*
retainers began to babble protestingly.
There
was a roaring outside. The spaceboat stirred. The roaring rose to thunder. The
boat lurched. It flung the spearmen into a sprawling, swearing, terrified heap
at the rear end of the boat's interior.
The boat went on out to space again. In the
control-room
Hoddan said dourly to himself:
'I'm
in a rut I've got to figure out some way to ship a pirate crew without having
±o kidnap them. This is. getting monotonous!"
CHAPTER xi
There was a disturbed air which enveloped all the
members of Hoddan's crew, on the way to Walden. It was not exactly reluctance,
because there was self-evident enthusiasm over the idea of making a pirate
voyage under him. When men went off with Hoddan, they came back rich.
But
nevertheless there was an uncomfortable sort of atmosphere in the renovated
yacht. They'd transshipped from the spaceboat to the yacht through
lifeboat-tubes, and they were quite docile about it because none of them knew
how to get back to ground. Hoddan left the spaceboat with a timing signal set
for use on his return. He'd done a similar thing off Krim. He drove the little
yacht well out, until Darth was only a spotted ball with visible clouds and icecaps.
Then he lined up for Walden, direct, and went into overdrive.
Within
hours he noted the disturbing feel of things. His followers were not happy.
They moped. They sat in corners and submerged themselves in misery. Large,
massive men with drooping blonde moustaches—ideal characters for the roles of
pirates— had tears rolling down from their eyes at odd moments. When the ship
was twelve hours on its way, the atmosphere inside it was funereal. The
spearmen did not even gorge themselves on the food with which the yacht was
stocked. And when a Darthian gentleman lost his appetite, something had to be
wrong.
He called Thai into the
control-room. -
"What's
the matter with the gang?" he demanded vexedly. "They look at me as
if I'd broken all their hearts! Do they want to go back?"
Thai heaved a sigh, indicating depression
beside which suicidal mania would be hilarity. He said pathetically:
"We
cannot go back. We cannot ever return to Darth. We are lost men, doomed to
wander forever among strangers, or to float as corpses between the stars."
"What
happened?" demanded Hoddan. "I'm taking you on a pirate cruise where
the loot should be a lot better than last time!"
Thai
wept. Hoddan astonishedly regarded his whiskery countenance,
contorted with grief and dampened with tears.
"It
happened at the castle," said Thai miserably. "The man Derec, from
Walden, had thrown a bomb at you. You seemed to be dead. But Don Loris was not
sure. He fretted, as he does. He wished to send someone to make sure. The Lady
Fani said: T will make sure!' She called me to her and said, 'Thai, will you
fight for me?* And there was Don Loris suddenly
nodding beside her. So I said, 'Yes, my Lady Fani.' Then she said: 'Thank you.
I am troubled by Bron Hoddan.' So what could I do? She said the same thing to
each of us, and each of us had to say that he would fight for her. To each she
said that she was troubled by you. Then Don Loris sent us out to look at your
body. And now we are disgraced!"
Hoddan's
mouth opened and closed and opened again. He remembered this item of Darthian
etiquette. If a girl asked a man if he would fight for her, and he agreed, then
within a day and a night he had to fight the man she sent him to fight, or else
he was disgraced. And disgrace on Darth meant that the shamed man could be
plundered or killed by anybody who chose to do so—and he would be hanged by indignant
authority if he resisted. It was a great deal worse than outlawry. It included
scorn and contempt and opprobrium. It meant dishonor and humiliation and
admitted degradation. A disgraced man was despicable in his own eyes. And
Hoddan had kidnaped these men who'd been forced to engage themselves to fight
him, and if they killed him they would obviously die in space, and if they
didn't they'd be ashamed to stay alive. The moral tone on Darth was probably
not elevated, but etiquette was a force.
Hoddan thought it over. He
looked up suddenly.
"Some of them," he said wryly,
"probably figure there's nothing to do but go through with it, eh?"
"Yes," said Thai
dismally. "Then we will all die."
"Hmm,"
said Hoddan. "The obligation is to fight. If you fail to kill me, that's not your fault, is it? If you're conquered you're in
the clear?"
"True.
Too true!" Thai said miserably. "When a man
is conquered he is conquered. His conqueror may plunder him, when the matter is
finished, or he can spare him, then he may never fight his conqueror
again."
"Draw your
knife," said Hoddan. "Come at me."
Thai
made a bewildered gesture. Hoddan levelled a stun-pistol and said:
"Bzzz. You're conquered. You came at me with your knife, and I shot you with
my stun-pistol. It's all over. Right?"
Thai
gaped at him. Then he beamed. He expanded. He gloated. He frisked. He
practically wagged a non-existent tail in his exuberance. He'd been shown an
out when he could see none.
"Send
in the others one by one," said Hoddan. "I'll take care of them. But
Thai, why did the. Lady Fani want me killed?"
Thai
had no idea, but he did not care. Hoddan did care. He was bewildered and
inclined to be indignant. A noble friendship like theirs—A
spearman came in and saluted. Hoddan went through a symbolic duel, which was
plainly the way the thing would have happened in reality. Others came in and
went through the same process. Two of them did not quite grasp that it was a
ritual, and he had to shoot them in the knife-arm. Then he hunted in the ship's
supplies for ointment for the blisters that would appear from stun-pistol bolts
at such short range. As he bandaged the places, he again tried to find out why
the Lady Fani had tried to get him carved up. Nobody could enlighten him.
But
the atmosphere improved remarkably. Since each theoretic fight had taken place
in private, nobody was obliged to admit a compromise with etiquette. Hoddan's
followers ceased to brood. They developed huge appetites. Those who had been
aground on Krim told zestfully of the monstrous hang-overs they'd acquired
there. It appeared that Hoddan was revered for the size of the benders he
enabled his followers to hang on.
But
there remained the fact that the Lady Fani had tried to get him massacred. He
puzzled over it. The little yacht sped through space toward Walden. He tried to
think how he'd offended Fani. He could think of nothing. He set to work on a
new electronic set-up which would make still another modification of the Lawlor
space-drive possible. In the others, groups of electronic components were cut
out and others substituted in rather tricky fashion from the control board.
This was trickiest of all. It required the homemade vacuum tube to burn
steadily when in use. But it was a very simple idea.'Lawlor drive and
landing-grid forcefields were formed by not dissimilar generators, and ball-lightning
force-fields were in the same general family of phenomena. Suppose one made the
field generator that had to be on a ship if it were to drive at all, capable of
all those allied, associated, similar forcefields? If a ship could make the
fields that landing-grids did, it should be useful to pirates.
Hoddan's
present errand was neither pure nor simple piracy, but piracy it would be. The
more he considered the obligation he'd taken on himself when he helped the emigrants,
the more he doubted that he could lift it without long struggle. He was
preparing to carry on that struggle for a long time. He'd more or less resigned
himself to the postponement of his personal desires—Nedda, for example.
But
time passed, and he finished his electronic job. He came out of overdrive and
made his observations and corrected his course. Finally, there came a moment
when the fiery ball which was Walden's sun shone brightly in the vision-plates.
It writhed and spun in the vast silence of emptiness.
Hoddan drove to a point still above the
five-diameter limit of Walden. He interestedly switched on the control which
made his drive-unit manufacture landing-grid type force-fields. He groped for
Walden, and felt the peculiar rigidity of the ship when the field took hold somewhere
underground. He made an adjustment, and felt the ship respond. Instead of
pulling a ship to ground, in the set-up he'd made, the new fields pulled the
ground toward the ship. When he reversed the adjustment, instead of pushing the
ship away to empty space, the new field pushed the planet.
There
was no practical difference, of course. The effect was simply that the
spaceyacht now carried its own landing-grid. It could descend anywhere and
ascend from anywhere without using rockets. Moreover, it could hover without
using power.
Hoddan
was pleased. He took the yacht down to a bare four hundred-mile altitude. He
stopped it there. It was highly satisfactory. He made quite certain that
everything worked as it should. Then he made a call on the space-communicator.
"Calling
ground," said Hoddan. "Calling ground.
Pirate ship calling groundl"
He
waited for an answer. Now he'd set the results of his efforts and planning. He
was apprehensive, of course. There was much responsibility on his shoulders.
There was the liner he'd captured and looted and given to the emigrants. There
were his followers on the yacht, now enthusiastically sharpening their two-foot
knives in expectation of loot. He owed these people something. For an instant
he thought of the Lady Fani and wondered how he could make reparation to her
for whatever had hurt her feelings.
A whining, bitterly unhappy
voice came to him.
"Pirate
ship!" said the voice plaintively, "we received the fleet's warning.
Please state where you intend to descend. We will take measures to prevent
disorder. Repeat, please state where you intend to descend and we will take
measures to prevent disorder."
Hoddan
drew a sharp breath of relief. He named a spot—a high-income, residential small
city, some forty miles from the planetary capitol. He set his controls for a
very gradual descent. He went out to where his followers made grisly zinging
noises where they honed their knives.
"We'll
land," said Hoddan sternly, "in about three-quarters of an hour. You
will go ashore and loot in parties of not less than three! Thai, you will be
ship-guard and receive the plunder and make sure that nobody from Walden gets
on board. You will not waste time committing atrocities on the
populationl"
He went back to the control-room. He turned
to general communication bands and listened to the broadcasts down below.
"Special Emergency Bulletin!"
boomed a voice. "Pirates are landing in the city of Ensfield, forty miles
from Walden City. The population is instructed to evacuate immediately, leaving
all action to the police. Repeat! The population will evacuate Ensfield,
leaving all action to the police. Take nothing with you. Take nothing with you.
Leave at once." Hoddan nodded approvingly. The voice boomed again:
"Special Emergency Bulletin! Pirates are landing. Evacuate. Take nothing
with you. Leave at once."
He
turned to another channel. An excited voice barked: "Seems to be only the
one pirate ship, which has been located hovering in an unknown manner over
Ensfield. We are rushing cameramen to the spot and will try to give
on-the-spot, as-it-happens coverage of the landing of pirates on Walden, their
looting of the city of Ensfield, and the traffic jams inevitable in the
departure of the citizens before the pirate ship touches ground. For background
information on this the most exciting event in planetary history, I take you to
our editorial rooms." Another voice took over instantly. "It will be
remembered that some days since the gigantic pirate fleet then overhead sent
down a communication to the planetary government, warning that single ships
would appear to loot and giving notice that any resistance—"
Hoddan
felt a contented, heart-warming glow. The emigrant fleet had most faithfully
carried out its leader's promise to let down a letter from space while in orbit
around Walden. The emigrants, of course,-did not know the contents of the
letter. Blithely, cheerfully, and dutifully, they gave the appearance of
monstrous piratical strength. They had awed Walden thoroughly. And then they'd
gone on, faithfully leaving similar letters and similar impressions on Krim,
Lohala, Tralee, Famagusta, and all throughout the Coalsack stars until the
stock of addressed missives ran out. They would perform this kindly act out of
gratitude to Hoddan.
And every planet they visited would be left
with the impression that the fleet overhead was that of bloodthirsty
space-marauders who would presently send single ships to collect loot, which
must be yielded without resistance. Such looting expeditions were to be looked
for regularly and must be submitted to under penalty of unthinkable retribtution
from the monster fleet of space.
Now, as the yacht descended on Walden, it
represented that mythical but impressive piratical empire. He listened with
genuine pleasure to the broadcasts. When low enough, he even picked up the
pictures of highways thronged with fugitives from the to-be-looted town. He
saw Waldenian police directing the traffic of flight. He saw other traffic
heading toward the city. Walden was the most highly civilized planet in the
Nurmi Cluster, and its citizens had had no worries at
all except about the tranquilizers to enable them to stand it. When something
genuinely exciting turned up, they wanted to be there to see it.
The yacht descended below the clouds. Hoddan
turned on an emergency flare to make a landing by. Sitting in the control-room
he saw his own ship as the broadcast-cameras picked it up and relayed it to
millions of homes. He was impressed. It was a glaring eye of fierce light,
descending deliberately with a dark and mysterious spacecraft behind it. He
heard the chattered, on-the-spot-news accounts of the happening. He saw the
people who had not left Ensfield joined by avid visitors. He saw all of them
held back by police, who frantically shepherded them away from the area in
which the .pirates should begin their horrid work.
Hoddan even watched pleasurably from his
control-room as the cameras daringly showed the actual touch-down of the ship:
the dramatic slow opening of its port: the appearance of authentic pirates in
the opening, armed to the teeth, bristling ferociously, glaring about them at
the silent, deserted streets of the city left to their mercy.
It was a splendid broadcast. Hoddan would liked to have .stayed and watched all of it. But he had work
to do. He had to supervise the pirate raid.
It was, as it turned out, simple enough.
Looting parties of three pirates each, moved skulking about, seeking plunder.
Quaking cameramen dared to ask them, in shaking voices, to pose for the news
cameras. It was a request no Darthian gentleman, even in an act of piracy,
could possibly refuse. They posed, making pictures of malignant ruffianism.
Commentators,
adding informed comment to delectably thrilling pictures, observed that the
pirates wore Darthian costume, but observed crisply that this did not mean that
Darth as an entity had turned pirate, but only that some of her citizens had
joined the pirate fleet.
The
camera crews then asked apologetically if they would permit themselves to be
broadcast in the act of looting. Growling savagely for their public, and
occasionally adding even a fiendish "Hal" they obliged. The cameramen
helped pick out good places to loot for the sake of good pictures. The pirates
co-operated in a fine, dramatic style. Millions watching vision sets all over
the planet shivered in delicious horror as the pirates went about their
nefarious enterprise.
Presently
the press of onlookers could not be held back by police. They surrounded the
pirates. Some, greatly daring, asked for autographs. Girls watched them with
round, frightened, fascinated eyes. Younger men found it vastly tfirilling to carry burdens of loot back to the pirate
ship for them. Thai complained hoarsely that the ship was getting overloaded.
Hoddan ordered greater discrimination, but his pirates by this time were in the
position of directors rather than looters themselves. Romantic Waldenian
admirers smashed windows and brought them treasure, for the reward of a
scowling acceptance.
Hoddan
had to call it off. The pirate ship was loaded. It was then the center of an
agitated, excited, enthusiastic crowd. He called back his men. One party of
three did not return. He took two others and fought his way through the mob. He
found the trio backed against a "wall while hysterical, adoring girls
struggled to sieze scraps of their garments for momentos of real, five pirates
looting a Waldenian town I
But Hoddan got them back to the ship. He
fought a way clear for them to get into the ship. Cheers rose from the onlookers.
He got the landing-port shut only by the help of police who kept pirate fans
from having their fingers caught in its closing.
Then the piratical
spaceyacht rose swiftly toward the stars.
An
hour later there was barely any diminution of the excitement inside the ship.
Darthian gentleman all, Hoddan's followers still gazed and gloated over the
plunder tucked everywhere. It crowded the living-quarters. It threatened to
interfere with the astrogation of the ship. Hoddan came out of the control-room
and was annoyed.
"Break
it up!" he snapped. "Pack that stuff away somewhere! What the hell
do you think this is?"
Thai
gazed at him dully not quite able to tear his mind and thoughts from this
marvelous mass of plunder. Then intelligence came into his eyes. He grinned
suddenly. He slapped his thigh.
"Boys!" he
gurgled. "He don't know what we got for
him!"
One
man looked up. Two. They beamed. They got to their
feet, dripping jewelry and stray objects of virtu. Thai went ponderously to one
stateroom. At the door he turned, expansively.
"She
came to the port," he said exuberantly, "and said we were wearin'
clothes like they wore on Darth. Did we come from there? I said we did. Then
she said did we know somebody named Bron Hoddan on Darth? And I said we did
and if she'd step inside the ship she'd meet you. And here she is!"
He
unfastened the stateroom door, which had been barred from without. He opened
it. He looked in, and grabbed, and pulled at something. Hoddan went sick with
apprehension. He groaned as the something inside the stateroom sobbed and
yielded.
Thai
brought Nedda out into the saloon of the yacht. Her nose and eyes were red from
terrified weeping. She gazed about her in purest despairing horror. She did not
see Hoddan for a moment. Her eyes were filled with the brawny, piratical
figures who were Darthian gentlemen and who grinned at her in what she took for
evil gloating.
She wailed.
Hoddan swallowed, with much difficulty, and
said quickly: "It's all right, Nedda. It was a mistake. Nothing will
happen to you. You're quite safe with mel" And she was.
CHAPTER XII
Hoddan stopped off at Krim, by landing-grid, to
consult Jais lawyers.
He felt a certain amount of hope of good results from his raid on Walden, but
he was desperate about Nedda. Once she was confident of her safety under his
protection, she took over the operation of the spaceship. She displayed an
overwhelming saccharinity that was appalling. She was sweetness and light among
criminals who respectfully did not harm her, and she sweetened and lightened
the atmosphere of the spaceyacht until Hoddan's followers were close to
mutiny.
"It
ain't that I mind her being a nice girl,'' one of his moustachioed Darthians
explained almost tearfully to Hoddan, "but she wants to make a nice girl
out of me, tool"
Hoddan,
himself, cringed from her society. He would gladly have put her ashore on Krim
with ample funds to return to Walden. But she was prettily and reproachfully
helpless. If he did put her ashore, she would confide her kidnaping and the
lovely behavior of the pirates until nobody could believe in them any more.
This would be fatal.
He went to his lawyers, brooding. The news
astounded him. The emigrant fleet had appeared over Krim on the way to Walden. Before
it appeared, Hoddan's affairs had been prosperous enough. Right after his
previous visit, news had come of the daring piratical raid which captured a
ship off Walder,. This was the liner Hoddan'd brought
in to Krim. All merchants and ship owners immediately, insured all vessels and
goods in space-transit at much higher valuations. The risk insurance stocks
bought on Hoddan's account had multiplied in value. Obeying his instructions,
his lawyers had sold them out and held a pleasing fortune in trust for Hoddan.
Then
came the fleet over Krim, with its letter threatening
planetary destruction if resistance was offered to single ships which would
land and loot later on. It seemed that all commerce was at the mercy of
space-marauders. Risk insurance companies had undertaken to idemnify the owners
of ships and freight in emptiness. Now that an unprecedented pirate fleet
ranged and doubtless ravaged the skyways, the insurance companies ought to go
bankrupt. Owners of stock in them dumped it at any price to get rid of it. In
accordance with Hoddan's instructions, though, his lawyers had faithfully, if
distastefully bought it up. To use up the funds available, they had to buy up
not only all the stock of all the risk insurance companies of Krim, but all
stock in all off-planet companies owned by investors on Krim.
Then time passed, and ships in space arrived
unmolested in port. Cargoes were delivered intact. Insurers observed that the
risk insurance companies had not collapsed and could still pay off if necessary.
They continued their insurance. Risk companies appeared financially sound once
more. They had more business than ever, and no more claims than usual. Suddenly
their stocks went up, or rather, what people were willing to pay for them went
up, because Hoddan had forbidden the sale of any stock after the pirate fleet
appeared.
Now
he asked hopefully if he could reimburse the owners of the ship he'd captured
off Walden. He could. Could he pay them even the profit they'd have made
between the loss of their ship and the arrival of a replacement? He could.
Could he pay off the shippers of Rigellian furs and jewelry from the Cetic
stars, and the owners of the bulk melacynth that
had brought so good a price on Krim? He could. In fact, he had. The insurance
companies he now owned lock, stock, and barrel had already paid the claims on
the ship and its cargo, and it would be rather officious to add to that
reimbursement.
Hoddan
was abruptly appalled. He insisted on a bonus being paid, regardless, which his
lawyers had some trouble finding a legal fiction to fit. Then he brooded over
his position. He wasn't a businessman. He hadn't expected to make out so well.
He'd thought to have to labor for years, perhaps, to make good the injury he'd
done the ship owners and merchants in order to help the emigrants from Colin.
But it was all done, and here he was with a fortune and the framework of a
burgeoning financial empire. He didn't like it.
Gloomily, he explained matters to his
attorneys. They pointed out that he had a duty, an obligation, from the nature
of his unexpected success. If he let things go, now, the currently thriving
business of risk insurance would return to its former unimportance. His
companies—they were his, now—had taken on extra help. More bookkeepers and accountants
worked for him this week than last. More mail clerks, secretaries, janitors and
scrubwomen. Even more vice-presidents! He would administer a serious blow to
the economy of Krim if he caused a slackening of employment by letting his
companies go to pot. A slackening of employment would cause a drop in retail
trade, an increase in inventories, a depression in industry.
Hoddan thought gloomily of his grandfather.
He'd written to the old gendeman and the emigrant fleet would have delivered
the letter. He couldn't disappoint his grandfather!
He morbidly accepted his
attorney's advice, and they arranged immediately to take over the forty-first
as well as the forty-second and -third floors of the building their offices
were in. Commerce would march on.
And Hoddan headed for
Darth. He had to return his crew, and there was something else. Several something elses. He arrived in that solar system and
put his yacht in a search orbit, listening for the signal the spaceboat should
give for him to come on. He found it. He maneuvered to come alongside, and
there was blinding light everywhere. Alarms rang. Lights went out. Instruments
registered impossibilities, the rockets fired crazily, and the whole ship
reeled. Then a voice roared out of the communicator:
"Stand and deliver! Surrender and y'll be allowed to go to ground. But if y'even hesitate I'll hull ye and heave ye out to space without a spacesuitl"
Hoddan
winced. Stray sparks had flown about everywhere inside the spaceyacht. A
ball-lightning bolt, even of only warning size, makes things uncomfortable when
it strikes. Hoddan's fingers tingled as if they'd been asleep. He threw on the
transmitter switch and said with annoyance in his voice:
"Hello,
grandfather. This is Bron. Have you been waiting for me long?"
He
heard his grandfather swear disgustedly. A few minutes later, a badly battered,
blackened, scuffed old spacecraft came rolling up on rocket impulse and stopped
with a billowing of rocket fumes. Hoddan threw a switch and used the landing-grid
field he'd used on Walden in another fashion. The ships came together with fine
precision, lifeboat tube to fife-boat tube. He heard his grandfather swear in
amazement.
"That's
a little trick I worked out, grandfather," said Hoddan into the
transmitter. "Come aboard. I'll pass it on."
His
grandfather presently appeared, scowling and suspicious. His eyes shrewdly
examined everything, including the loot tucked in every available space. He
snorted.
"All
honestly come by," said Hoddan morbidly. "It seems I've got a license
to steal. I'm not sure what to do with it."
His grandfather stared at a placard on the
wall. It said archly: Remember! A Lady is Present! Nedda had put it up.
"Hmph!" said his grandfather.
"What's a woman doing on a pirate ship? That's what your letter talked
aboutl"
"They get on," said Hoddan,
wincing, "like mice. You've had mice on a ship, haven't you? Come in the
control-room and I'll explain."
He did explain, up to the point where his
arrangements to pay back for a ship and cargo turned into a runaway success,
and now he was responsible for the employment of innumerable bookkeepers and
clerks in the insurance companies he'd come to own. There was also the fact
that as the emigrant fleet went on, about fifty more planets would require the
attention of pirate ships from time to time, or there would be disillusionment
and injury to the economic system.
"Organization,"
said his grandfather, "does wonders for a tender conscience like you've
got. What else?"
Hoddan
explained the matter of his Darthian crew and how Don Loris might consider them
disgraced because they hadn't cut his throat. Hoddan had to take care of the matter.
And there was Nedda . . . Fani came into the story somehow, too. Hoddan's
grandfather grunted, at the end.
"We'll
go down and talk to this Don Loris," he said pugnaciously. "I've
dealt with his kind before. While we're down, your Cousin OHverll take a look at this new grid-field job. We'll put it on my
ship. Hm . . . how about the time down below? Never land long after daybreak.
Early in the morning, people ain't at their best."
Hoddan looked at Darth,
rotating deliberately below him.
"It's not too late, sir," he said.
"Will you follow me down?"
His grandfather nodded briskly, took another
comprehensive look at the loot from Walden, and crawled back through the tube
to his own ship.
So it was not too long after dawn, in that
time zone, when a sentry on the battlements of Don Loris' castle felt a shadow
over his head. He jumped a foot and stared upward. Then his hair stood up on
end and almost threw his steel helmet off. He stared, unable to move a muscle.
There was a ship above him. It was not a
large ship, but he could not judge of such matters. It was not supported by
rockets. It should have been falling horribly to smash him under its weight. It
wasn't. Instead, it floated down with a very fine precision, like a ship being
landed by grid, and settled delicately to the ground some fifty yards from the
base of the castle wall.
Immediately thereafter there was a muttering
roar. It grew to a howl: a bellow: it became thunder. It increased from that to
a noise so stupendous that it ceased altogether to be heard, and was only felt
as a deep-toned battering at one's chest. When it ended there was a second ship
resting in the middle of a very large scorched place close by the first.
A
landing-ramp dropped down from the battered craft. It neatly spanned the scorched
and still-smoking patch of soil. A port opened. Men came out, following a
jaunty small figure with bushy gray whiskers. They dragged an enigmatic object
behind them.
Hoddan
came out of the yacht. His grandfather said wasp-ishly:
"This
the castle?"
He waved at the massive pile of cut gray
stone, with walls twenty feet thick and sixty high. "Yes, sir," said
Hoddan.
"Hm,"
snorted his grandfather. "Looks flimsy to mel" He waved his hand
again. "You remember your cousins."
Familiar,
matter-of-fact nods came from the men of the battered ship. Hoddan hadn't seen
any of them for years, but they were his kin. They wore commonplace, workaday
garments, but carried weapons slung negligently over their shoulders. They
dragged the cryptic object behind them without particular formation or apparent
discipline, but somehow they looked capable.
Hoddan
and his grandfather strolled to the castle gate, their companions a little to
their rear. They came to the gate. Nothing happened. Nobody challenged. There
was the feel of peevish refusal to associate with persons who landed in
spaceships.
"Shall we hail?" asked Hoddan.
"Nah!" snorted his grandfather.
"I know his kind! Make him make the advances." He waved to his
descendants. "Open it up.
Somebody casually pulled back a cover and
reached in and threw switches.
"Found a power broadcast unit,"
grunted Hoddan's grandfather, "on a ship we took. Hooked
it to the ship's space-drive. When y'can't use the space-drive, you
still got power. Your cousin, Oliver whipped this thing up."
The
enigmatic object made a spiteful noise. The castle gate shuddered and fell
halfway from its hinges. The thing made a second noise. Stones splintered and
began to collapse. Hoddan admired. Three more unpleasing but
not violently loud sounds. Half the wall on either side of the gate was
rubble, collapsing parüy
inside and partly outside
the castle's proper boundary.
Figures
began to wave hysterically from the battlements. Hoddan's grandfather yawned
slightly.
"I
always like to talk to people," he observed, "when they're worryin'
about what I'm likely to do to them, instead of what maybe they can do to
me."
Figures
appeared on the gTound-level. They'd come out of a sally-port to
one side. They were even extravagantly cordial when Hoddan's grandfather
admitted that it might be convenient to talk over his business inside the
castle, where there would be an easy chair to sit in.
Presently
they sat beside the fireplace in the great hall. Don Loris, jittering, shivered
next to Hoddan's grandfather. The Lady Fani appeared, icy cold and defiant. She
walked with frigid dignity to a place beside her father. Hoddan's grandfather
regarded her with a wicked, estimating gaze.
"Not
bad!" he said brightly. "Not bad at all!" Then he turned to
Hoddan. "Those retainers coming?"
"On the way," said Hoddan. He was
not happy. The Lady Fani had passed her eyes over him exactly as if he did not
exist.
There was a murmuring noise. A dozen spearmen
came marching into the great hall. They carried loot. It dripped on the floor
and they blandly ignored such things as stray golden coins rolling off away
from them. Stay-at-home inhabitants of the castle gazed at them in joyous
wonderment.
Nedda came with them. The Lady Fani made a
very slight, almost imperceptible movement. Hoddan said desperately:
"Fani, I know you hate me, though I
can't guess why. But here's a thing that had to be taken care of! We made a raid
on Walden—that's where the loot came from—and my men kidnaped this girl. Her
name is Nedda. Nedda's in an awful fix, Fani! She's alone and friendless, and
somebody just has to take care of her! Her father'll come for her eventually,
no doubt, but somebody's got to take care of her in the meantime, I can't do
it. Hoddan felt hysterical at the bare idea. "I can't!"
The Lady Fani looked at Nedda. And Nedda wore
the brave look of a girl so determinedly sweet that nobody could possibly bear
it.
"I'm very sorry," said Nedda
bravely, "that I've been the cause of poor Bron's turning pirate and
getting into such dreadful trouble. I cry over it every night before I go to
sleep. He treated me as if I were his sister, and the other men were so gende
and respectful that I—I think it will break my heart when they are punished.
When I think of them being formally and coldly executed . . ."
"On
Darth," said the Lady Fani practically, "we're not very formal about
such things. Just cutting somebody's throat is usually enough—but he treated
you like a sister, did he? Thai?"
Thai swallowed. He'd been beaming a moment
before, with his arms full of silver plate, jewelry, laces, and other bits of
booty from the town of Ensfield. But now he said desperately:
"Yes, Lady Fani. But not the way I've
treated my sister. My sisters, Lady Fani, bit me when they were little, slapped
me when they were bigger, and scorned me when I grew up. I'm fond of 'em! But
if one of my sisters'd ever lectured me because I wasn't refined, and shook a finger
at me because I wasn't gentlemanly—Lady Fani, I'd've strangled her!"
There was a certain gleam in the Lady Fani's
eye as she said warmly to Hoddan:
"Of course I'll take care of the poor
thing! I'll let her sleep with my maids and I'm sure one of them can spare
clothes for her to wear, and I'll take care of her until a spaceliner comes
along and she can be shipped back to her family.
And
you can come to see her whenever you please, to make sure she's all
right!"
Hoddan's
eyes tended to grow wild. His grandfather cleared his throat loudly. Hoddan
said doggedly:
"You,
Fani, asked each of my men if they'd fight for you. They said yes. You sent
them to cut my throat. They didn't. But they're not disgraced! I want that
clear! They're good men! They're not disgraced for failing to assassinate
me!"
"Of
course they aren't," conceded the Lady Fani sweetly. "Whoever heard
of such a thing?"
Hoddan
wiped his forehead. Don Loris opened his mouth fretfully. Hoddan's grandfather
forestalled him.
"You've
heard about that big pirate fleet that's been floating around these parts? Eh?
It's my grandson's. I run a squadron of it for him. Wonderful boy, my grandson!
Bloodthirsty crews on those ships, but they love that boy!"
"Very—" Don Loris
caught his breath, "very interesting."
"He likes your men," confided
Hoddan's grandfather. "Used them twice. Says they
make nice, well-behaved pirates. He's going to give them stun-pistols and
cannon like the one that smashed your gate. Only men on Darth with guns like
that! Sieze the spaceport and put in power broadcast, and make sure nobody else
gets stun-weapons. Run the countiv. Your menll love it. Love that boy, tool
Follow him anywhere. Loot."
Don Loris quivered. It was horribly
plausible. He'd had the scheme of the only stun-weapon-armed force on Darth,
himself. He knew his men tended to revere Hoddan because of the plunder. Don
Loris was in a very, very uncomfortable situation. Bored men from the battered
spacecraft stood about his great hall. They were unimpressed. He knew that
they, at least, were casually sure that they could bring his castle down about
his ears in minutes if they chose.
"But ...
if my men . . ." Don Loris quavered, "what about me?"
"Minor problem," said Hoddan's
grandfather blandly. "The usual thing would be pfft! Cut your
throat." He rose. "Decide that later, no doubt. Yes,
Bron?"
"I've brought back my men," growled
Hoddan, "and Nedda's taken care of. We're through here."
He
headed abruptly for the great hall's farthest door. His grandfather followed
him briskly, and the negligent, matter-of-fact, armed men who were mostly
Hoddan's first and second cousins came after him. Outside the castle, Hoddan
said angrily:
"Why did you tell such
a preposterous story, grandfather?"
"It's
not preposterous," said his grandfather. "Sounds like fun, to mel You're tired now, Bron. Lots of
responsibilities and such. Take a rest. You and your cousin Oliver get
together and fix those new gadgets on my ship. I'll take the other boys for a
run over to this spaceport town. The boys need a run ashore, and there might be
some loot. Your grandmother's fond of homespun. Ill try
to pick some up for her."
Hoddan
shrugged. His grandfather was a law unto himself. Hoddan saw his cousins
bringing horses from the castle stables, and a very
casual group went riding away as if on a pleasure excursion. As a matter of
fact, it was. Thai guided them.
For the rest of that morning and part of the
afternoon Hoddan and his cousin Oliver worked at the battered ship's Lawlor
drive. Hoddan was pleased with his cousin's respect for his device. He
unfeignedly admired the cannon his cousin had designed. Presently they
reminisced about their childhood. It was pleasant to renew family ties like
this.
The
riders came back about sunset. There were extra horses, with loads. There were
cheerful shoutings. His grandfather came into Hoddan's ship.
"Brought
back some company," he said. "Spaceliner landed while we were there. Friend of yours on it. Congenial fellow,
Bron. Thinks well of you, tool"
A
large figure followed his grandfather in. A large figure with
snow-white hair. The amiable and relaxed Interstellar
Ambassador to Walden.
"Hard-gaited
horses, Hoddan," he said wryly. "I want a chair and a drink. I
traveled a good many light-years to see you, and it wasn't necessary after all.
I've been talking to your grandfather."
"Glad to see you,
sir," said Hoddan reservedly.
His
cousin Oliver brought glasses, and the ambassador buried his nose in his and
said in satisfaction:
"A-a-ahl That's
good!-Capable man, your grandfather. I watched him loot that town. Beautiful
professional job! He got some homespun sheets for your grandmother. But about
you ..."
Hoddan sat down. His grandfather puffed and
was silent. His cousins effaced themselves. The ambassador waved a hand.
"I started here," he observed,
"because it looked to me like you were running wild. That spacefleet, now ... I know something of your ability. I
thought you'd contrived some way to fake it. I knew there couldn't be such a
fleet. Not really! That was a sound job you did with the emigrants, by the way.
Most praiseworthy! And the point was that if you ran hog-wild with a faked
fleet, sooner or later the Space. Patrol would have to cut you down to size.
And you were doing too much good work to be stoppedl"
Hoddan blinked.
"Satisfaction," said the ambassador, "is well enough. But satiety is death. Walden
was dying on its feet. Nobody could imagine a greater satisfaction than curling
up with a good tranquilizer! You've ended that! I left Walden the day after
your Ensfield raid. Young men were already trying to grow moustaches. The
textile mills were making colored felt for garments. Jewelers were turning out
stun-gun pins for ornaments, Darthian knives for brooches, and the song
writers had eight new tunes on the air about pirate lovers, pirate queens, and
dark ships that roam the lanes of night. Three new vision-play series were to
start that same night with space-piracy as their theme, and one of them claimed
to be based on your life. Better make them pay for that, Hoddan! In short, Walden
had rediscovered the pleasure to be had by taking pains to make a fool of oneself. People who watched that raid on vision screens had
thrills they'd never swap for tranquilizers! And the ones who actually mixed in
with thé pirate raiders— You deserve well of the
republic, Hoddan!"
Hoddan said, "Hmm," because there
was nothing else to be said.
"Now, your grandfather and I have
canvassed the situation thoroughly! This good work must be continued.
Diplomatic Service has been worried all along the line. Now we've something to
work up. Your grandfather will expand his facuities and snatch ships, land and
loot, and keep piracy flying. Your job is to carry on the insurance business.
The ships that will be snatched will be your ships, of course. No interference
with legitimate commerce. The raids will be paid for by the interplanetary
piracy risk insurance companies—you. In time you'll probably have to get
writers to do scripts for them, but not right away. You'll continue to get
rich, but there's no harm in that so long as you re-introduce romance and adventure
to a galaxy headed for decline. Savages will not invent themselves if there
are plenty of heroic characters—of your making!—to slap them down!"
"I
like working on electronic gadgets," Hoddan said painfully. "My
cousin Oliver and I have some things we want to work on together."
His
grandfather snorted. One of the cousins came in from outside the yacht. Thai
followed him, glowing. He'd reported the looting of the spaceport town, and Don
Loris had gone into a tantrum of despair because nobody seemed able to make
headway against these strangers. Now he'd turned about and issued a belated
invitation to Hoddan and his grandfather and their guest the Interstellar
Ambassador—of whom he'd learned from Thai—to dinner at the castle. They could bring
their own guards.
Hoddan
would have refused, but the ambassador and his grandfather were insistent.
Ultimately he found himself seated drearily at a long table in a stone-walled
room lighted by very smoky torches. Don Loris, jittering, displayed a sort of
professional conversational charm. He was making an urgent effort to overcome
the bad effect of past actions by conversational brilliance. The Lady Fani sat
quietly. She looked most often at her place. The talk of the oldsters became
profound. They talked administration. They talked practical politics. They
talked economics.
The Lady Fani looked very bored as the talk
went on after the meal was over. Don Loris said brightly, to her:
"My
dear, we must be tedious! Young Hoddan looks uninterested, too. Why don't you
two walk on the battlements and talk about such things as persons your age find
interesting?"
Hoddan
rose, gloomily. The Lady Fani, with a sigh of polite resignation, rose to
accompany him. The ambassador said suddenly:
"Hoddan! I forgot to tell you! They found out what killed that man outside the
power station!" When Hoddan showed no comprehension, the ambassador
explained. "The man your friend Derec thought was killed by death rays. It
developed that he'd gotten a terrific load on—drunk, you know—and climbed a
tree to escape the pink, purple, and green duryas he thought were chasing him to gore him. He
climbed too high, a branch broke, and he fell and was killed. I'll take it up
with the court when I get back to Walden. No reason to lock you up any more,
you know. You might even sell the Power Board on using your receptor,
now!"
"Thanks,"
said Hoddan politely. He added. "Don Loris has that Derec and a cop from
Walden here now. Tell them about it and let them go home."
He
accompanied the Lady Fani to the battlements. The stars were very bright. They
strolled.
"What was that the
ambassador told you?" she asked.
He
explained without zest. He added morbidly - that it didn't matter. He could go
back to Walden now, and if the ambassador was right he could even accomplish
things in electronics there. But he wasn't interested. It was odd that he'd
once thought such things would make him happy.
"I
thought," said the Lady Fani, in gentle melancholy, "that I would be
happier with you dead. You had made me very angry. But I found it was not
so."
Hoddan
fumbled for her meaning. It wasn't quite an apology for trying to get him
killed. But at least it was a disclaimer of future intentions in that
direction.
"And
speaking of happiness," she added in a different tone, "this Nedda .
. ." Bron shuddered, and she said, "I talked to her. Then I sent for
Ghek. We're on perfectly good terms again, you know. I introduced him to Nedda.
She was vanilla ice-cream with meringue and maple syrup on it. He loved it! She
gazed at him with pretty sadness and told him how terrible it was of him to
kidnap me. He said humbly that he'd never had her ennobling influence nor
dreamed that she existed. And she loved that! They go together like strawberries
and cream! I had to leave, or stop being a lady. I think I made a match."
Then she said quietly:
"But
seriously, you ought te be perfectly happy. You've
everything you ever said you wanted, except a delightful girl to marry."
Hoddan squirmed.
"We're
old friends," said Fani kindly, "and you did me a great favor once.
I'll return it. I'll round up some really delightful girls for you to look
over."
"I'm leaving," said Hoddan,
alarmed.
"The
only thing is, I don't know what type you like. Nedda
isn't it."
Hoddan shuddered.
"Nor I," said Fani. "What type
would you say I was?" "Delightful," said Hoddan hoarsely.
The
Lady Fani stopped and looked up at him. She said approvingly:
"I
hoped that word would occur to you one day. What does a man usually do when he
discovers a girl is delightful?"
Hoddan
thought it over. He started. He put his arms around her with singularly little
skill. He kissed her, at first as if amazed at himself, and then with
enthusiasm.
There
were scraping sounds on the stone nearby. Footsteps.
Don Loris appeared, gazing uncertainly about.
"Fani!"
he said plaintively. "Hoddan?" Our guests
are going to the spaceships. I want to speak privately to Hoddan."
"Yes?" said Hoddan.
"I've
been thinking," said Don Loris fretfully. "I've made some mistakes,
my dear boy, and I've given you excellent reason to dislike me, but at bottom
I've always thought a great deal of you. And there seems to be only one way in
which I can properly express how much I admire
you. How would you like to marry my daughter?"
Hoddan
looked down at Fani. She did not try to move away.
"What
do you think of the idea, Fahi?" he asked. "How about marrying me
tomorrow morning?"
"Of
course not!" said Fani indignantly. "I wouldn't think of such a
thing! I couldn't possibly get married before tomorrow afternoon!"