When frantic bangings on the propped-shut door awakened him next
morning, he confusedly imagined that they were noises in the
communicator headphones, and until he heard his name called tried
drearily to make sense of them.
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 up!"
It was the voice of the Lady Fani, at once indignant and tearful and
solicitous and angry.
He rolled out of bed and found himself dressed. He hadn't slept the full
night. At one time he couldn't rest for thinking about the sounds in the
communicator when he listened at the spaceport. He listened again, and
what he heard made him get his clothes on for action. That was when he
heard a distinctly Waldenian voice, speaking communications speech with
crisp distinctness, calling the landing grid. The other voices were not
Waldenian ones and he grew dizzy trying to figure them out. But he was
clothed and ready to do whatever proved necessary when he realized that
he had the landing grid receiver, that there would be no reception even
of the Waldenian call until the landing grid crew had built another out
of spare parts in store, and even then couldn't do much until they'd
painfully sorted out and re-spliced all the tangled wires that Hoddan
had cut. That had to be done before the grid could be used again.
He'd gone back to sleep while he tried to make sense of things. Now,
long after daybreak, he shook himself and made sure a stun-pistol was
handy. Then he said:
"Hello. I'm awake. What's up? Why all the noise?"
"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 Thal came in, and Fani followed.
"Good morning," said Hoddan automatically.
Thal 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 in 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."
Fani said viciously:
"They landed in something that used rockets. 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 have landed from the last liner from
Walden. And because you and Thal 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. Thal 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--a lifeboat.
Hm-m-m.... Yes. With a built-in tool-steel cell to keep me from telling
anybody how to make--" He stopped and grimaced. "If they had time to
build one in, that's certain! They'd take me to the spaceport in a
sound-proofed can and I'd be hauled back to Walden in it. 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 canceled 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, but whose
weapons would be useless unless frequently recharged--and who couldn't
count on that as a steady thing.
As a practical matter, his best bet was probably to investigate 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 possible that the nine ships and the Waldenians
didn't even 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 I'll have some breakfast, if I may. As
soon as I fasten up my ship bag."
Thal 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. "Thal, 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."
Fani said disappointedly:
"But aren't you going to face them? The men from Walden? You could shoot
them!"
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. I've
decided that I've got to be practical myself, and that's one of the
rules. How about breakfast?"
He strapped the ship bag shut on the stun-pistols his pockets would not
hold. He made a minor adjustment to the space 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," he'd said frequently in Hoddan's hearing while
Hoddan was a youth, "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 a hell of a lot 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.
Even though presently he sat at breakfast high up on the battlements,
and 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 and 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 breakfast.
"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--"and having Thal there with orders to serve
you faithfully--"
* * * * *
She stopped short. Don Loris appeared, beaming, at the top of the steps
leading here from the great hall where 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 said: "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 police, 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 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 let you deny that I may have acted less
defensibly on Walden."
Don Loris looked extremely uneasy.
"I may have thought something like that," he admitted. "But--"
"So that," said Hoddan, "while your debt to me cannot and should not be
overlooked, nevertheless"--Hoddan put the roll into his mouth and spoke
less clearly--"you feel that you should give consideration to the claims
of Walden to inquire into my actions while there."
He chewed, and swallowed, and said gravely:
"And can I make deathrays?"
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. But 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 cozy dungeons," said Hoddan. He wiped his mouth. "No."
Don Loris started violently.
"No, what?"
"No deathrays," 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 deathrays, all living things would have died, or else
would have adjusted to their weaker manifestations and developed
immunity so they wouldn't be deathrays 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 half a
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 half a million."
Don Loris looked suspicious again.
"You don't seem worried," he said fretfully. "I don't understand you!"
"I have a secret," said Hoddan.
"What is it?"
"It will develop," said Hoddan.
* * * * *
Don Loris hesitated, 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."
[Illustration]
"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 Thal, 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."
Thal did not comment. He watched morosely as Hoddan made the perpetually
present ship bag fast to his saddle and then distastefully climbed
aboard the horse.
"What are you going to do?" asked Thal 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?"
Thal told him. At the castle of a considerable 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--how he loved his
daughter--as he observed 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 as prince of this, baron of that, lord of the
other thing and claimant to the dukedom of something-or-other. Either
they'd come up or the deal was off!
But meanwhile Hoddan and Thal rode industriously toward the place from
which those emissaries had come.
All was tranquil. All was calm. Once they saw a dust cloud, and Thal
turned aside to a providential wooded copse, in which they remained
while a cavalcade went by. Thal 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 Thal, 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, and dry stream-beds, and at last penetrating 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 clumsy,
obese, 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 Thal. "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."
Thal 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--the
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 deathrays 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 entrance 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 boat 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 visionscreens, which provided
the control room--indeed, all the boat--with an unobstructed view in all
directions. He was satisfied.
The knocks became bangings. Something approaching indignation could be
deduced. The guards around the spaceboat 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 bangings 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
visionscreens 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,
and 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 him. 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 starshine 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 forebears 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 back past midday and 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 space phone. 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
nonoperative 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 now!
"_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, and wrangled, and formally
reported, and now and again one admonished disputants to a proper
discipline of language.
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, antiquated freighter of a
design 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 crews' quarters in long
blisters built outside the gigantic tank which was the ship itself.
There was a needle-sharp space yacht. More freighters, with streaks of
rust on their sides where they had lain aground for tens of years....
The fleet was an anomaly, and each of its component parts was separately
a 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 could not
yet be guessed, but--
Hoddan watched absorbedly. He couldn't know what was toward, but there
was some emergency. It could be in the line of what an electronic
engineer could handle. If so--why--it could mean an opportunity to
accomplish great things, and grow rich, and probably marry some
delightful girl and be a great man somewhere--an assortment of ambitions
one could not easily gratify on Zan, or Walden, or Darth.