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It was his old friend Derec, arrived on Darth a long while since in the spaceboat Hoddan had been using ever since. Derec had been his boon companion in the days when he expected to become rich by splendid exploits in electronics.
"Nobody will look," said Derec tearfully. "Anybody who knows how to make it will have to be locked up. They checked the patent examiners. They've forgotten. Nobody dared examine the device you had working. They'd be jailed if they understood it! Nobody will ever risk learning how to make deathrays not on a world as civilized as this, with so many people anxious to kill everybody else.
"I came," said Derec dismally, "to plead with you again, Bron. You must surrender! There's nothing else to do! People can't have deathrays, Bron! Above all, you mustn't tell the pirates how to make them!" Hoddan was puzzled for a moment. Then he realized that Derec's information about the fleet came from the spearmen he'd brought back, loaded down with cash.
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.
Derec might even have nerved himself up to something quite desperate. "What did you really come here for, Derec?" "To beg you to " Then, in one instant, Derec made an hysterical gesture and Hoddan's stun-pistol hummed. A small object left Derec's hand as his muscles convulsed from the stun-pistol bolt. It did not fly quite true. It fell a foot or so to one side of the boatport instead of inside.
When Derec arrived, he'd been incredulously comparing the treatment he'd received and the panic about him, with the charges made against him in court. They didn't add up. This new, previously undisclosed item left him speechless. He goggled at Derec, who fairly wept. "Don't you see?" asked Derec pleadingly. "That's why I had to tell the police it was you. We can't have deathrays!
When Hoddan showed no comprehension, the Ambassador explained, "The man your friend Derec thought was killed by deathrays. It develops that he'd gotten a terrific load on drunk, you know and climbed a tree to escape the pink, purple, and green duryas he thought were chasing him to gore him. He climbed too high, a branch broke, and he fell and was killed.
"I know," growled Hoddan, "but there are some people so stupid you have to show them everything. I didn't realize that there are people so stupid you can't show them anything." "You ... showed something you didn't intend," said Derec miserably. "Bron, I ... I have to tell you. When they went to charge the carbon bins at the power station, they ... they found a dead man, Bron!" Hoddan sat up.
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.
He asked the latitude of the Darthian spaceport. Thal did not know it. He asked about major geographical features seas and continents and so on. Thal had no ideas on the subject. Hoddan fumed. He hadn't worried about such things on Walden. Of course, on Walden he'd had one friend, Derec, and believed he had a sweetheart, Nedda. There he was lonely and schemed to acquire the admiration of others.
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