III

When dawn broke over the capital city of Walden, the sight was

appropriately glamorous. There were shining towers and curving

tree-bordered ways, above which innumerable small birds flew

tumultuously. The dawn, in fact, was heralded by high-pitched 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 twenty-thousand-ton liner from

Rigel, Cetis, and the Nearer Rim. Presently it would take off for Krim,

Darth, and the Coalsack Stars, and if Hoddan was lucky he would be on

it. But at the earliest part of the day there was only tranquillity 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 huge suns for little villages and territories back

on Earth--which less than one human being in ten thousand had ever seen.

The sound of the stacking of freight parcels was crisp and distinct in

the morning hush. The dew deposited during darkness had not yet dried

from the pavement of the square. Damp, unhappy figures loafed nearby.

They were self-evidently 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 had anything

warm in his stomach 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 made

a number of their fellows unwilling to sit down and then made all the

police and municipal authorities ridiculous by the manner of his return.

The police guards about the Embassy were very 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

summoned a smile and beckoned to that 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-m-m ... 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 space liner 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 set up for just such use. He told what the Embassy servant

had said, and the inference to be drawn from it, the suspicions to be

entertained--and there he stopped short. 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 guard outside the Embassy became desirable.

So fresh, alert 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 infallibly certain clue

went home too, disgruntled because he wasn't allowed a share in the

credit for Hoddan's 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, "that letter to the 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. "I'll look him up. Thanks."

"Somehow," said the ambassador, "I cherish unreasonable hopes of 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 don't urge you 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 in that line will be really a kindness, and as

such 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, "but 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 truckload was quite unsuspicious. There was no package

in the lot which could have held a man in 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 worked 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

the watching, ostensible loafers saw that nearly the last item to be put

on it was a large box which hadn't been visible before. It was carried

with some care, and it was marked fragile, and it was put into place and

wedged fast with other parcels.

The plainclothesmen 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 truck load 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, Machiavelian 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 blessing. There remained

just one, single, large-sized 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 the second truck they'd sent for, and

festooned themselves about it as it trundled away. Strangely, it 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. Even so early in the morning they seemed

inclined to burst into song. 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 three guards who had

been given baths by a high-pressure hose when Bron Hoddan departed from

his cell. 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 dead silence, except for the voice that came from a

two-way communicator set inside.

"_And now_," said the voice from the box--and only now did anybody

notice what the muffling effect of the boards had hidden, that it was a

speaker-unit which had sworn and coughed and sneezed--"_we take our

leave of the planet Walden and its happy police force, who wave to us as

our space-liner 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 learn that Hoddan hadn't been in the box, but only

one-half of a two-way communication pair, and that Hoddan had coughed

and sneezed and sworn at them from the other instrument somewhere else.

Now he signed off.

* * * * *

The space liner 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 ground-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, Hoddan! You have a gift for infuriating constituted authority.

You should plot at your art. You may go far!"

He shook hands again and watched Hoddan walk into the lift which should

raise him--and did raise him--to the entrance port of the space liner.

Twenty minutes later the force fields of the giant landing grid lifted

the liner smoothly out to space. The twenty-thousand-ton 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 overdrive 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.

Normality 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, zestful 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. Some of them--one in ten thousand, or

twenty--were possibly seen by human eyes. The liner bearing Hoddan sped

through 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 sightseeing of one city only

and an estimate of what the people of such a planet would be sure they

wanted. He saw slums and gracious public buildings, and went back to the

spaceport and the liner which then rose upon the landing grid's force

fields 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 remoter galaxies a super-nova flamed,

and on a rocky, barren world a small living thing squirmed

experimentally--and to mankind the one event was just as important as

the other.

But presently the liner from Krim and Walden appeared in 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 timberline.

The space liner increased in size, descending toward the landing grid.

The grid itself was a monstrous lattice of steel, half a mile high and

enclosing a circle not less in diameter. It filled much 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-toned 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

them and 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 under the arches of the grid. There were two dozen of the

_duryas_, and despite the shouts and whip-crackings they moved with a

stubborn slowness. It took a long time for the object with the

wide-tired 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

draught animals to be arranged to pull as two teams against each other.

More shoutings and whip-crackings. A long, slanting, ladderlike arm

arose. It teetered, and a man with a lurid purple cloak rose with it at

its very end. The ship's air lock opened and a crewman threw a rope. The

purple-cloaked man caught it and made it fast. From somewhere inside the

ship of space the line was hauled in. The end of the landing ramp

touched the sill of the air lock. Somebody made other things fast and

the purple-cloaked man triumphantly entered the ship.

There was a pause. Men loaded carts with cargo to be sent to remote and

unimagined planets. In the air lock, 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

ship bag--a gift from the ambassador--and then parcels, bales, boxes,

and such nondescript items of freight as needed special designation.

Rolls of wire. Long strings of plastic objects, strung like beads on

shipping cords. Plexiskins of fluid which might be anything from wine to

fuel oil in less than bulk-cargo quantities. 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, at that. 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 air lock 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 belt-beam up, reappeared and came striding grandly down to

ground. Somebody cast off, above. Ropes writhed and fell and dangled.

The ship's air lock 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 not 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 horns of the _duryas_ rising and falling, the

wagons overtook Hoddan and passed him. He saw his ship bag 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 the gift-clothing, 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 or mustachioed 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 any 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 ill-smelling, but the equipment 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.

[Illustration]

"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 red-headed 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,

briskly. 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 with great dignity to depart.

The stun-pistol buzzed. He leaped and howled and fled. Hoddan had aimed

accurately enough, but prudence suggested that if he appeared to kill

anybody, the matter might become serious. So he'd fired to sting the man

with a stun-pistol bolt at about the same spot where, on Walden, he'd

scorched members of a party of police in ambush. It was nice shooting.

But this happened to be a time and place where prudence did not pay.

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 the 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-m-m," said Hoddan. He needed information. He wasn't likely to get it

from the men in the grid's control room. He would hardly be popular with

any of these, either. He irritably suspected himself of a tendency to

make enemies unnecessarily. But he did need directions. He said: "I have

a letter of introduction to one Don Loris, prince of something-or-other,

lord of this, baron of that, and claimant to the dukedom of the other

thing. Would you have any idea how I could reach him?"

The man in the purple cloak gaped at Hoddan.

"He is ... my chieftain," he said, aghast. "I ... am Thal, his most

trusted retainer." Then he practically wailed, "You must be the man I

was sent to meet! He sent me to learn if you came on the ship! I should

have fought by your side! This is disgrace!"

"It's disgraceful," agreed Hoddan grimly. But he, who had been born and

raised in a space-pirate community, should not be too critical of

others. "Let it go. How do I find him?"

"I should take you!" complained Thal bitterly. "But you have killed all

these men. Their friends and chieftains are honor bound to cut your

throat! And you shot Merk, but he ran away, and he will be summoning his

friends to come and kill you now! This is shame! This is--" Then he said

hopefully: "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 red-headed man 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 said 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 pictures

of space pirates. But he knew what space pirates were actually like. 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 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 space liner. 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.

* * * * *

Thal, 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 frenziedly in the act of mounting 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 gable-roofed small town a mob of some thirty mounted men

plunged toward the landing grid. They wore garments of yellow and blue

and magenta. They waved large-bladed knives and made bloodthirsty

noises. Thal 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. Thal reined in.

"Mount!" he cried hoarsely. "Mount and ride!"

Hoddan passed up the chemical--powder--gun. Thal seized it frantically.

"Hurry!" he panted. "Don Loris would have my throat cut if I deserted

you! Mount and ride!"

Hoddan painstakingly fastened his bag to the saddle of the lead horse.

He unfastened the lead rope. He'd noticed that Thal 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 Thal 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 charging small horde.

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, Thal was shooting valorously. Hoddan held up his

hand for cease fire. Thal rode up beside him, not quite believing what

he'd seen.

"Wonderful!" he said shakily. "Wonderful! 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.

Thal was shocked.

"You need me," he said commiseratingly. "It is fortunate that Don Loris

chose me to fight beside you!"

He sent his horse trotting toward the mostly 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 and now

swaggering in his saddle.

"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 Thal. "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.

Thal 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-pistol, Thal 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 Thal. "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...."