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There was a disturbing air which was shared by all the members of Hoddan's crew, on the way to Walden. It was not exactly reluctance, because there was self-evident enthusiasm over the idea of making a pirate voyage under him. So far as past enterprises were concerned, Hoddan as a leader was the answer to a Darthian gentleman's prayer.
Jewelers were turning out stun-gun pins for ornaments, Darthian knives for brooches, and the song writers had eight new tunes on the air about pirate lovers, pirate queens, and dark ships that roam the lanes of night. Three new vision-play series were to start that same night with space-piracy as their theme, and one of them claimed to be based on your life. Better make them pay for that, Hoddan!
Why doesn't Don Loris simply give you so much a year, or week, or whatnot?" Thal made a shocked sound. "That would be pay! A Darthian gentleman does not serve for pay! To offer it would be insult!" Then he said, "Listen!" He reined in. Hoddan clumsily followed his example. After a moment or two Thal clucked to his horse and started off again. "It was nothing," he said regretfully.
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.
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.
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.
Darthian gentlemen all, Hoddan's followers still gazed and floated over the plunder tucked everywhere. It crowded the living quarters. It threatened to interfere with the astrogation of the ship. Hoddan came out of the control room and was annoyed. "Break it up!" he snapped. "Pack that stuff away somewhere! What do you think this is?"
Then it would be my obligation as a Darthian gentleman to ride beside you, advise, counsel, and fight in your defense, and generally to uphold your dignity." Hoddan suspected himself of blisters in places that had no dignity about them. He said suspiciously: "How about Don Loris? Aren't you his retainer?" "Between the two of us," said Thal, "he's stingy.
Two of them did not quite grasp that it was a ritual, and he had to shoot them in the knife arm. Then he hunted in the ship's supplies for ointment for the blisters that would appear from stun-pistol bolts at such short range. As he bandaged the places, he again tried to find out why the Lady Fani had tried to get him carved up by the large-bladed knives all Darthian gentlemen wore.
Now you must either fight the Lord Ghek within a night and day or be disgraced!" "I doubt," said Hoddan tiredly, "that the obligations of Darthian gentility apply to the grandson of a pirate or an escap.... To me." He'd been about to say an escaped criminal from Walden, but caught himself in time. "But they do apply!" said Thal, shocked. "A man who has been disgraced has no rights!
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