Part 34 (1/2)

He saw Fani mount lightly into her own saddle and shook his head gloomily. He climbed clumsily into his own. They moved off to return to Don Loris' stronghold. Hoddan suffered.

They reached the castle before noon, and the sight of the Lady Fani produced enthusiasm and loud cheers. The loot displayed by the returned wayfarers increased the rejoicing. There was envy among the men who had stayed behind. There were respectfully admiring looks cast upon Hoddan. He had displayed, in furnis.h.i.+ng opportunities for plunder, the most-admired quality a leader of feudal fighting men could show.

The Lady Fani beamed as she, Thal, and Hoddan, all very dusty and travel-stained, presented themselves to her father in the castle's great hall.

”Here's your daughter, sir,” said Hoddan, and yawned. ”I hope there won't be any further trouble with Ghek. We took his castle and looted it a little and brought back some extra horses. Then we went to the s.p.a.ceport. I recharged my stun-pistols and put the landing-grid out of order for the time being. I brought away the communicator there.” He yawned again. ”There's something highly improper going on, up just beyond atmosphere. There are three s.h.i.+ps up there in orbit, and they were trying to call the s.p.a.ceport in non-regulation fas.h.i.+on, and it's possible that some of your neighbors would be interested. So I postponed everything until I could get some sleep. It seemed to me that when better skulduggeries are concocted, that Don Loris and his a.s.sociates ought to concoct them. And if you'll excuse me-”

He moved away practically dead on his feet. If he had been accustomed to horseback riding, he wouldn't have been so exhausted. But now he yawned, and yawned, and Thal took him to a room quite different from the guestroom-dungeon to which he'd been taken the night before. He noted that the door, this time, opened inward. He braced chairs against it to make sure that n.o.body could open it from without. He lay down and slept heavily.

He was awakened by loud poundings. He roused himself enough to say sleepily: ”Whaddyawant?”

”The lights in the sky!” cried Fani outside the door. ”The ones you say are s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps! It's sunset again, and I just saw them. But there aren't three, anymore. Now there are nine!”

”All right,” said Hoddan. He laid down his head again and thrust it into his pillow. Then he was suddenly very wide awake. He sat up with a start.

Nine s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps? That wasn't possible! That would be a s.p.a.cefleet! And there were no s.p.a.cefleets!

Walden would certainly have never sent more than one s.h.i.+p to demand his surrender to its police. The s.p.a.ce Patrol never needed more than one s.h.i.+p anywhere. Commerce wouldn't cause s.h.i.+ps to travel in company.Piracy?There couldn't be a pirate fleet! There'd never be enough loot anywhere to keep it in operation. Nine s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps at one time. All traveling in orbit around a primitive planet like Darth.

It couldn't happen! Hoddan couldn't conceive of such a thing. But a recently developed pessimism suggested that since everything else, to date, had been to his disadvantage, this was probably a catastrophe also. He groaned and lay down to sleep again.

Chapter 6.

When frantic bangings on the propped-shut door awakened him next morning, he confusedly imagined that they were noises in the communicator headphones.

But suddenly he opened his eyes. Somebody banged on the door once more. A voice cried angrily: ”Bron Hoddan! Wake up or I'll go away and let whatever happens to you, happen! Wake up!”

It was the voice of the Lady Fani, at once indignant, tearful, solicitous and angry.

”h.e.l.lo. I'm awake. What's up?”

”Come out of there!” cried Fani's voice, simultaneously exasperated and filled with anxiety. ”Things are happening! Somebody's here from Walden! They want you!”

Hoddan could not believe it. It was too unlikely. But he opened the door and Thal came in, and Fani followed.

”Good morning,” said Hoddan automatically.

Thal said mournfully: ”A badmorning, Bron Hoddan! A bad morning! Men from Walden came riding over the hills.”

”How many?”

”Two,” said Fani angrily. ”A fat man in a uniform, and a young man who looks like he wants to cry. They had an escort of retainers from one of my father's neighbors. They were stopped at the gate, of course, and they sent a written message to my father, and he had them brought inside right away.”

Hoddan shook his head.

”They probably said that I'm a criminal and that I should be sent back to Walden. How'd they get down? The landing-grid isn't working.”

”They landed in something that used rockets,” Fani said viciously. ”It came down close to a castle over that way-only six or seven miles from the s.p.a.ceport. They asked for you. They said you'd 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 s.p.a.ceboat. Yes. With a built-in, tool-steel cell to keep me from telling anybody how to make-” He stopped and grimaced. ”They'd take me to the s.p.a.ceport in a soundproof can and I'd be hauled back to Walden. Fine!”

”What are you going to do?” asked Fani anxiously.

Hoddan's ideas were not clear. But Darth was not a healthy place for him. It was extremely likely, for example, that Don Loris would feel that the very bad jolt he'd given that astute schemer's plans, by using stun-pistols at the s.p.a.ceport, had been neatly canceled out by his rescue of Fani. He would regard Hoddan with a mingled grat.i.tude and aversion that would amount to calm detachment. Don Loris could not be counted on as a really warm, personal friend.

On the other hand, the social system of Darth was not favorable to a stranger with an already lurid reputation for fighting. Another disadvantage was that his weapons would be useless unless frequently recharged; he couldn't count on always being able to do that.

As a practical matter, his best bet was probably to investigate the nine inexplicable s.h.i.+ps overhead. They hadn't cooperated with the Waldenians. It could be inferred that no confidential relations.h.i.+p existed up there. It was even possible that the nine s.h.i.+ps and the Waldenians didn't know of each other's presence.

There is a lot of room in s.p.a.ce. If both called on s.h.i.+p-frequency and listened on ground-frequency, they would not have picked up each other's 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 s.h.i.+pbag.”

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.”

”But aren't you going to face them? You could shoot them!” Fani said.

Hoddan shook his head.

”It wouldn't solve anything. Anyhow a practical man like your father won't sell me out before he's sure I can't pay off better. I'll bet on a conference with me before he makes a deal.”

Fani stamped her foot.

”Outrageous! Think what you saved me from!”

But she did not question the possibility, Hoddan observed.

”A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a n.o.ble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community,” Hoddan commented. ”Now I've decided that I've got to be practical myself, and that's one of the rules. How about breakfast?”

He strapped the s.h.i.+pbag shut on the stun-pistols his pockets would not hold. He made a minor adjustment to the communicator. It was not ruined, but n.o.body else could use it without much labor finding out what he'd done. This was the sort of thing his grandfather on Zan would have advised. His grandfather's views were explicit.

”Helping one's neighbor,” the old man had said frequently, ”is all right as a two-way job. But maybe he's laying for you. You get a chance to fix him so he can't do you no harm and you're a lot better off and he's one h.e.l.l of a better neighbor!”

This was definitely true of the men from Walden. Hoddan guessed that Derec was one of them. The other would represent the police or the planetary government. It was probably just as true of Don Loris and others.

Hoddan found himself disapproving of the way the cosmos was designed.