Chapter 3

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_ Chapter 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.

"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 packets 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...." _

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