The spaceboat floated on upon a collision-course with the arriving
fleet. That would not mean, of course, actual contact with any of the
improbable 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.
There was inevitable confusion, though, and the spacephone proved it.
There were disputes between freakish ships when craft with the
astrogational qualities of washtubs tried to keep assigned positions,
and failed, and there were squabbles when ships had to pass close
together. One had to shut off its drive-field to keep from blowing the
fuses of both.
But there were some ships which proceeded quietly to their positions and
others which did the same after tumult amounting to rebellion. And
naturally there were a few others which seemed incapable of co-operation
with anybody. They went careening through the other ships' paths in what
must have seemed to the planet's sunset area like a most unlikely
dancing of brand-new stars.
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 space-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, pot-bellied
tripper ship of really ancient vintage. Rows of ports in its sides had
been welded over. It had rocket tubes whose size was indicative of the
kind of long-obsolete fuel on which it once had operated. Slenderer
nozzles peered out of the original ones now. It had been adapted to
modern propellants by simply welding modern rockets inside the old ones.
It was only half a mile away.
* * * * *
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 do 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. But you surely don't expect to land all
this fleet! Actually, we can't land any."
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 something!"
He waited. There was a sudden huge eruption of vapor in space some two
hundred miles away. Perhaps an ounce of explosive 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 cauliflowerlike shape of filmy whiteness appeared and grew
larger and thinner.
Hoddan drove toward the spot with very light touches of rocket power. 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 tightly
closed.
One of those doorways suddenly 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 cargo door swung shut. The outside-pressure needle swung
sharply and stopped at thirty centimeters of mercury pressure. There was
a clanging. A smaller door evidently opened somewhere. Lights came
on--old-fashioned glow tubes. 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 but 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 boat door and said politely:
"Good morning. I'm Bron Hoddan. You were talking to me just now."
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 Colin!" he
repeated more loudly. "The people whose forefathers settled that planet,
and brought it to be 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 what they 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 quickly 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 had cherished. We would trade our lands,
our cities, our farms, our highways, for ships to take us to a new world
with food for the journey and machines for the taming of the planet we
would select. We sent 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, his eyes flashing. "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!"
[Illustration]
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. The business men on Krim would have some sort of code determining
how completely one could swindle a customer. Don Loris, now--
"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 the people of Colin showed the way. Hoddan had been
admitted with his spaceboat into one gigantic cargo hold. He was now
escorted to the next. It was packed tightly 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 and
night, turning jungle into farmland ready for terrestrial crops.
"We ran this for five minutes," said the bearded man fiercely as Hoddan
nodded approval. 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 pipe and broken castings. We
have shiploads of crush-baled, rusted sheet-metal trimmings! We have
been cheated of our lives!"
* * * * *
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 an 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 otherwise would die
with ... with the most of us."
Hoddan ran his hands through his hair. This was not his trouble, but he
could not thrust it from him.
"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.
"The rich might give us what they could spare. But simple, not-rich
people, close to the soil, will give us what they need themselves. They
will share what they have, and accept a share of our need."
Hoddan paced up and down the ancient flooring of this compartment in an
ancient ship. 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 nonexistent. 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-- No.
It's impossible! 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," said Hoddan grimly, "I have an idea. I ... ah ... 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! But real things ain't simple! They
ain't clear! Any time you try to figure things out so they're 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 that it not impossibly might
apply. He saw one possibility right away. It looked fairly good. After a
minute's examination it looked better. It was astonishing how
plausible--
"Hm-m-m," 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-m-m ... 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 forbiddingly, "and we can lose nothing. We
have stopped our journey and are in orbit. We can wait. But ... 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. Er ... I'll want a very small ship!"
"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 respecting the old gentleman as he gained experience of
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 space 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 of his personal inclinations
to 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
wasn't kept out of their reach in some cozy 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--some fifteen hundred or two
thousand miles.
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 possible. 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 judgmatically used rocket power to slow
himself to a suitable east-west velocity, and at the last and proper
instant applied full-power for deceleration 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 high 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 with considerably more blue in it. Secondary, pallid shadows
appeared.
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--and the spaceboat lay in a circle of wildly
smoking, carbonized Darthian soil. The return of tranquility after so
much of 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
relationship to the government of Walden, the brief visit he'd made to
Krim, the ship the emigrants would lend him and his unpopularity with
Don Loris on Darth. 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 he ought to get a half-million
credits for Hoddan delivered to Derec and the Waldenian police. He'd
been unable to get the police official--Derec merely sat miserably by
and said nothing--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. Thal was back at the
castle. He'd told her of Hoddan riding up to the spaceboat near another
chieftain's castle, entering it, and that then it had taken to the skies
in an aura of flames and smoke and thunder. Fani hoped that he might
have returned here in it. 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 fairy half-light in which all things looked much
more charming than they really were. And Don Loris, reduced to peevish
sputtering by pure mystery, summoned Thal to him. It should be
remembered that Don Loris knew nothing of the disappearance of the
spaceboat from his neighbor's land. He knew nothing of Thal's journey
with Hoddan. But he did remember that Hoddan had seemed unworried at
breakfast and explained his calm by saying that he had a secret. The
feudal chieftain worried lest this spaceboat be it.
"Thal," said Don Loris peevishly, sitting beside the great fireplace in
the enormous, draughty hall, "you know this Bron Hoddan better than
anybody else."
Thal breathed heavily. He turned pale.
"Where is he?" demanded Don Loris.
"I don't know," said Thal. 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 Thal helplessly.
"Where does that ... that thing outside the castle come from?"
"I don't know," said Thal.
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 Thal 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."
Thal saluted. With his teeth tending to chatter, 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, Thal?" demanded one of them as Thal arranged
them in two lines to make a proper military appearance, spears dressed
upright and garrison-shields on their left arms.
"Frrrrd _harch!_" barked Thal, and they swung into motion. "Two, three,
four, _Hup_, two, three, four. _Hup_, two, three--" The cadence was
established.
Thal said gloomily, "Don Loris said to find out who landed that thing
out yonder. And he keeps asking me 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-shaft 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 Thal. "_Hup_, two, three--"
"Don Loris' 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 characters 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-m-m.... Here's this thing, Thal. What do we do with it?"
"Hrrrmp, _halt!_" barked Thal. 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 _harch!_ two, three, four, _hup_, two, three,
four. Left turn here and mind those rocks. Don Loris'd give us hell if
somebody fell 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 Thal, came to a second halt.
"Here goes," rumbled Thal. "I tell you, boys, if she starts to spit
fire, you get the hell away!"
He marched up to the spaceboat's port. He knocked on it. There was no
response. He knocked again.
Hoddan opened the door. He nodded cheerfully to Thal.
"'Afternoon, Thal! Glad to see you. I've been hoping you'd come over
this way. Who's with you?" He peered through the semidarkness. "Some of
the boys, eh? Come in!" He beckoned and said casually: "Lean your spears
against the hull, there."
Thal hesitated and was lost. The others obeyed. There were clatterings
as the steel spearheads came to rest against the metal hull. Six of Don
Loris' retainers followed Thal admiringly into the spaceboat's interior,
to gaze at it and that Bron Hoddan who so recently had given three of
them and nearly half a score of their fellows 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 visionscreens to see around with."
He flicked on the screens. Thal and his companions were charmed to see
the landscape outside portrayed on screens. Hoddan shifted the
sensitivity-point toward infra red, and details came out that would have
been invisible to the naked eye.
"With the boatport 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 throttle!"
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 merely 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 turned off the fuel pump. He turned to look
thoughtfully at the seven men. They were very pale. They sat unanimously
very still, because they could see in the vision plates 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, well below them.
"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!"
Thal 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, because 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 he'd taken them for, no matter where it led.
Numbly, they waited for what would befall.