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"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.
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.
The bearded old man received him in the skipper's quarters, which Hoddan himself had occupied for a few days. He looked very weary. He seemed to have aged, in hours. "We grow more astounded by the minute," he told Hoddan heavily, "by what you have brought us. Ten shiploads like this and we would be better equipped than we believed ourselves in the beginning.
It was now a parabolic curve. Presently the surface diminished a little. The yacht was increasing its distance from it. Hoddan used the telescope. He searched the space ahead with full-width field. He found the liner. It rose steadily. The grid still thrust it upward with an even, continuous acceleration. It had to be not less than forty thousand miles out before it could take to overdrive.
The spaceport and the town rushed toward a spot beneath the spaceboat's tail. They shrank and shrank. He saw other places. Mountains. Castles. He saw Don Loris' stronghold. Higher, he saw the sea. The sky turned purple. It went black with specks of starshine in it. Hoddan swung to a westward course and continued to rise, watching the star-images as they shifted on the screens.
"Say ours," said Don Loris hopefully. "With my experience of men and affairs, and my loyal and devoted retainers " "And cozy dungeons," said Hoddan. He wiped his mouth. "No." Don Loris started violently. "No, what?" "No deathrays," said Hoddan. "I can't make 'em. Nobody can.
What happened to it?" "I gave it away," said Hoddan. He saw what Fani was trying to tell him. One corridor ... no, two ... leading toward the great hall was filled with spearmen. His tone turned sardonic. "I gave it to a poor old man." Don Loris shook his head. "That's not right, Hoddan! That fleet overhead, now. If they are pirates and want some of my men for crews, they should come to me!
And I don't know where to take you." "Where," asked Hoddan, "did those characters from Walden come down?" Thal told him. At the castle of a considerable feudal chieftain, on the plain some four miles from the mountain range and six miles this side of the spaceport. "We ride there," said Hoddan. "Liberty is said to be sweet, but the man who said that didn't have blisters from a saddle. Let's go."
"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.
And, though Hoddan hadn't the faintest idea of it, it left behind the maddest girl in several solar systems. It is the custom of all men, everywhere, to be obtuse where women are concerned. Hoddan went skyward in the spaceboat with feelings of warm gratitude toward the Lady Fani.
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