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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.
I'll counter with a formal request for an exit-permit. I'll talk to you again when he leaves." Hoddan went out. He paced up and down the other room into which he was shown. Darth wouldn't be in a Golden Age! He was wiser now than he'd been this same morning. He recognized that he'd made mistakes.
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."
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.
The writer was one Don Loris, and he explained that his dignity would not let him make a commercial offer, but an electronic engineer who put himself under his protection would not be the loser. He signed himself prince of this, lord of that, baron of the other thing and claimant to the dukedom of something else. Are you interested? No kings on Darth, just feudal chiefs." Hoddan thought it over.
"Here I had you come all the way from Walden to help arrange a delicate matter, and before you'd traveled even the few miles to my castle within minutes of landing on Darth! you spoiled everything! I am a reasonable man, but there are the facts! You used stun-pistols, so you have to disappear. I think it generous for me to say only until people on Darth forget that such things exist.
During that half hour I shall sit down on something which will, I hope, remain perfectly still. And I may," he added morbidly, "eat an apple. I've had nothing to eat since I landed on Darth. People don't want to commit themselves to not cutting my throat. But after half an hour we'll leave." The Lady Fani looked sympathetic. "But the castle's surrendered to you," she protested. "You hold it!
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.
The outside-pressure meter went up to normal. Hoddan turned off the visionscreens, so ending any view of the interior of the hold. He opened the port and went out. Sitting in something like continued paralysis in their seats, the seven spearmen of Darth heard his voice in conversation outside the boat. They could catch no words, but Hoddan's tone was strictly businesslike. He came back.
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.
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