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Updated: June 25, 2025
But you will pardon us if we only let down your letters, and do not visit those planets? We have prejudices " "Perfectly satisfactory," said Hoddan. "So I'll " "The mechanics you have trained," said the old man proudly, "have made a little ship ready for you. It is not much larger than your spaceboat, but it is fit for travel between suns, which will be convenient for your work.
A spearman just behind Thal said: "Dirty trick! I was with him to Walden, and he paid off good! A good man! Shoulda been a chieftain! Good man!" Thal entered the spaceboat. Gingerly. He wrinkled his nose at the faint smell of explosive still inside. Another man came in. Another. "Say!" said one of them in a conspiratorial voice. "We got our share of that loot from Walden. But he hadda share, too!
He knew nothing of Thal's journey with Hoddan. But he did remember that Hoddan had seemed unworried at breakfast and explained his calm by saying that he had a secret. The feudal chieftain worried lest this spaceboat be it. "Thal," said Don Loris peevishly, sitting beside the great fireplace in the enormous, draughty hall, "you know this Bron Hoddan better than anybody else."
It was only half a mile away. Hoddan's spaceboat floated on. The relative position of the two ships changed slowly. Another voice said indignantly: "That's the same thing that missed us by less than a mile! You, there! Stop acting like a squig! Get on your own course!" A third voice; "What boat's that? I don't recognize it! I thought I knew all the freaks in this fleet, too!"
Nobody doubted that it came from blueskins. The treatment of the news was precisely calculated to keep alive the hatred of Weald for the inhabitants of the world Dara. Calhoun put Murgatroyd into the Med Ship and went back to the spaceport office. A small spaceboat, designed to inspect the circling grain ships from time to time, was already aloft.
Presently the investigating spaceboat reached the mystery ship and circled it, beaming queries. No answer. It reported the cargo ship dark. No lights anywhere on or in it. There were no induction-surges from even pulsing, idling engines. Delicately, the messenger craft maneuvered until it touched the silent vessel. It reported that microphones detected no motion whatever inside.
But, during the few seconds of their closest approach, a third body had detached itself from the camouflaged spaceboat and shot rapidly across the intervening distance to land on the surface of the floating mountain. The third body was a man in a spacesuit. As soon as he landed, he sat down, stock-still, and checked the instrument case he held in his hands. No response.
It was lowered to the ground by a long rope. It reached the ground and shook itself. It marched, toward the spaceboat through the red and nearly level rays of the dying sun. Hoddan watched with a frown on his face. This wasn't a retainer of Don Loris'. It assuredly wasn't Fani. He couldn't even make out its gender until the figure was very near. Then he looked astonished.
He swung the spaceboat end for end, very judgmatically used rocket power to slow himself to a suitable east-west velocity, and at the last and proper instant applied full-power for deceleration and went down practically like a stone. One cannot really learn this. It has to be absorbed through the pores of one's skin. That was the way Hoddan had absorbed it, on Zan.
It exploded luridly as Derec crumpled from the pistol bolt. There was thick, strangling smoke. Hoddan disappeared. When the thickest smoke drifted away there was nothing to be seen but Derec, lying on the ground, and thinner smoke drifting out of the still-open boatport. Nearly half an hour later, figures came very cautiously toward the spaceboat. Thal was their leader.
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