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Updated: June 25, 2025
Seven men marched dismally out of the spaceboat and down to the floor of the huge hold. Eyes front, chests out, throats dry, they marched to the larger but still small vessel that shared this hold compartment. They marched into that ship. Thal barked, "Halt!" and they stopped. They waited. Hoddan came in very matter-of-factly only moments later. He closed the entrance port, so sealing the ship.
But he could not possibly guess where they came from. And most mysterious of all was the question of why they'd come out of faster-than-light drive to make of themselves a celestial feature about a planet which had practically nothing to offer to anybody. Presently the spaceboat was in the very thick of the fleet.
The man who called himself Stanley Martin had carefully plotted the orbit of this particular planetoid and then let his spaceboat coast in without using any detection equipment except the visual. It had been necessary, but very risky. Had the people here seen his boat? If so, had they recognized it, in spite of the heavy camouflage? And, even if they only suspected, what would be their reaction?
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.
How about the deal? That's the good news, said the second suited figure as it came from the air lock of the grounded spaceboat. Another five million. The man who was hidden behind the nearby crag of rock listened and watched for a minute or so more while the two men began unloading cases of foodstuffs from the spaceboat.
Those who bargained with the emigrants had been content to furnish nothing more than that. But this could not be appreciated by Hoddan's involuntary crew. The spaceboat drew up alongside the gigantic hulk which was the leader's. The seven Darthians were still numbed by their kidnaping and the situation in which they found themselves.
Hoddan turned to his companions followers victims, once the spaceboat was still. "This," he said in a manner which could only be described as one of smiling ferocity, "is a pirate ship, belonging to the pirate fleet we passed through on the way here.
He had to return his crew, and there was something else. Several something elses. He arrived in that solar-system and put his yacht in a search-orbit, listening for the call-signal the spaceboat should give for him to home on. He found it, deep within the gravity-field of Darth. He maneuvered to come alongside, and there was blinding light everywhere. Alarms rang. Lights went out.
"If you ever return," he said with mournful warmth, "I am your friend!" Hoddan nodded and rode out of the brushwood toward the spaceboat the lifeboat that had landed the emissaries from Walden. That it landed so close to the spaceport, of course, was no accident. It was known on Walden that Hoddan had taken space passage to Darth.
He affected great surprise and expressed unfeigned appreciation. Barely an hour later he transferred to it with the spaceboat in tow. He watched the emigrant fleet swing out to emptiness and resume its valiant journey. But it was not a hopeless journey, now. In fact, the colony on Thetis ought to start out better-equipped than most settled planets. And he went to sleep.
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