The Pirates of Ersatz by Murray Leinster (1959)
Posted on February 15th, 2008
CHAPTER IX
Normally, at overdrive cruising speed, it would be a week’s journey from Walden to the planet Krim. Hoddan made it in five days. There was reason. He wanted to beat the news of his piracy to Krim. He could endure suspicion, and he wouldn’t mind doubt, but he did not want certainty of his nefarious behavior to interfere with the purposes of his call.
The space yacht, sealed tightly, floated in an orbit far out in emptiness. The big ship went down alone by landing grid. It glittered brightly as it descended. When it touched ground and the grid’s force fields cut off, it looked very modern and very crisp and strictly businesslike. Actually, the capture of this particular liner was a bit of luck, for Hoddan. It was not one of the giant inter-cluster ships which make runs of thousands of light-years and deign to stop only at very major planets. It was a medium ship of five thousand tons burden, designed for service in the Horsehead Nebula region. It was brand-new and on the way from its builders to its owners when Hoddan interfered. Naturally, though, it carried cargo on its maiden voyage.
Hoddan spoke curtly to the control room of the grid.
"I’m non-sked," he explained. "New ship. I got a freak charter party over on Walden and I have to get rid of my cargo. How about shifting me to a delay space until I can talk to some brokers?"
The force fields came on again and the liner moved very delicately to a position at the side of the grid’s central space. There it would be out of the way.
Hoddan dressed himself carefully in garments found in the liner’s skipper’s cabin. He found Thal wearing an apron and an embittered expression. He ceased to wield a mop as Hoddan halted before him.
"I’m going ashore," said Hoddan crisply. "You’re in charge until I get back."
"In charge of what?" demanded Thal bitterly. "Of a bunch of male housemaids! I run a mop! And me a Darthian gentleman! I thought I was being a pirate! What do I do? I scrub floors! I wash paint! I stencil cases in cargo holds! I paint over names and put others in their places! Me, a Darthian gentleman!"
"No," said Hoddan. "A pirate. If I don’t get back, you and the others can’t work this ship, and presently the police of Krim will ask why. They’ll recheck my careful forgeries, and you’ll all be hung for piracy. So don’t let anybody in. Don’t talk to anybody. If you do—pfft!"
He drew his finger across his throat, and nodded, and went cheerfully out the crew’s landing-door in the very base of the ship. He went across the tarmac and out between two of the gigantic steel arches of the grid. He hired a ground vehicle.
"Where?" asked the driver.
"Hm-m-m," said Hoddan. "There’s a firm of lawyers…. I can’t remember the name—"
"There’s millions of ‘em," said the driver.
"This is a special one," explained Hoddan. "It’s so dignified they won’t talk to you unless you’re a great-grandson of a client. They’re so ethical they won’t touch a case of under a million credits. They’ve got about nineteen names in the firm title and—"
"Oh!" said the ground-car driver. "That’ll be— Hell! I can’t remember the name either. But I’ll take you there."
He drove out into traffic. Hoddan relaxed. Then he tensed again. He had not been in a city since he stopped briefly in this on the way to Darth. The traffic was abominable. And he, who’d been in various pitched battles on Darth and had only lately captured a ship in space— Hoddan grew apprehensive as his ground-car charged into the thick of hooting, rushing, squealing vehicles. When the car came to a stop he was relieved.
"It’s yonder," said the driver. "You’ll find the name on the directory."
Hoddan paid and went inside the gigantic building. He looked at the directory and shrugged. He went to the downstairs guard. He explained that he was looking for a firm of lawyers whose name was not on the directory list. They were extremely conservative and of the highest possible reputation. They didn’t seek clients—
"Forty-two and forty-three," said the guard, frowning. "I ain’t supposed to give it out, but—floors forty-two and-three."
Hoddan went up. He was unknown. A receptionist looked at him with surprised aversion.
"I have a case of space piracy," said Hoddan polite. "A member of the firm, please."
Ten minutes later he eased himself into the easiest of easy-chairs. A gray-haired man of infinite dignity said:
"Well?"
"I am," said Hoddan modestly, "a pirate. I have a ship in the spaceport with very convincing papers and a cargo of Rigellian furs, jewelry from the Cetis planets, and a rather large quantity of bulk melacynth. I want to dispose of the cargo and invest a considerable part of the proceeds in conservative stocks on Krim."
The lawyer frowned. He looked shocked. Then he said carefully:
"You made two statements. One was that you are a pirate. Taken by itself, that is not my concern. The other is that you wish to dispose of certain cargo and invest in reputable businesses on Krim. I assume that there is no connection between the two observations."
He paused. Hoddan said nothing. The lawyer went on, with dignity:
"Of course our firm is not in the brokerage business. However, we can represent you in your dealing with local brokers. And obviously we can advise you—"
"I also wish to buy," said Hoddan, "a complete shipload of agricultural machinery, a microfilm technical library, machine tools, vision-tape technical instructors and libraries of tape for them, generators, and such things."
"Hm-m-m," said the lawyer. "I will send one of our clerks to examine your cargo so he can deal properly with the brokers. You will tell him in detail what you wish to buy."
Hoddan stood up.
"I’ll take him to the ship now."
He was mildly surprised at the smoothness with which matters proceeded. He took a young clerk to the ship. He showed him the ship’s papers as edited by himself. He took him through the cargo holds. He discussed in some detail what he wished to buy.
When the clerk left, Thal came to complain again.
"Look here!" he said bitterly, "we’ve scrubbed this ship from one end to the other! There’s not a speck or a fingermark on it. And we’re still scrubbing! We captured this ship! Is this pirate revels?"
Hoddan said:
"There’s money coming. I’ll let you boys ashore with some cash in your pockets presently."
Brokers came, escorted by the lawyer’s clerk. They squabbled furiously with him. But the dignity of the firm he represented was extreme. There was no suspicion—no overt suspicion anyhow—and the furs went. The clerk painstakingly informed Hoddan that he could draw so much. More brokers came. The jewelry went. The lawyer’s clerk jotted down figures and told Hoddan the net. The bulk melacynth was taken over by a group of brokers, none of whom could handle it alone.
Hoddan drew cash and sent his Darthians ashore with a thousand credits apiece. With bright and shining faces, they headed for the nearest bars.
"As soon as my ship’s loaded," Hoddan told the clerk, "I’ll want to get them out of jail."
The clerk nodded. He brought salesmen of agricultural machinery. Representatives of microfilm libraries. Manufacturers of generators, vision-tape instructors and allied lines. Hoddan bought, painstakingly. Delivery was promised for the next day.
"Now," said the clerk, "about the investments you wish to make with the balance?"
"I’ll want a reasonable sum in cash," said Hoddan reflectively. "But…. well … I’ve been told that insurance is a fine, conservative business. As I understand it, most insurance organizations are divided into divisions which are separately incorporated. There will be a life-insurance division, a casualty division, and so on. Is that right? And one may invest in any of them separately?"
The clerk said impassively:
"I was given to understand, sir, that you are interested in risk-insurance. Perhaps especially risk-insurance covering piracy. I was given quotations on the risk-insurance divisions of all Krim companies. Of course those are not very active stocks, but if there were a rumor of a pirate ship acting in this part of the galaxy, one might anticipate—"
"I do," said Hoddan. "Let’s see. … My cargo brought so much…. Hm-m-m…. My purchases will come to so much. Hm-m-m…. My legal fees, of course…. I mentioned a sum in cash. Yes. This will be the balance, more or less, which you will put in the stocks you’ve named, but since I anticipate activity in them. I’ll want to leave some special instructions."
He gave a detailed, thoughtful account of what he anticipated might be found in news reports of later dates. The clerk noted it all down, impassively. Hoddan added instructions.
"Yes, sir," said the clerk without intonation when he was through. "If you will come to the office in the morning, sir, the papers will be drawn up and matters can be concluded. Your new cargo can hardly be delivered before then, and if I may say so, sir, your crew won’t be ready. I’d estimate two hours of festivity for each man, and fourteen hours for recovery."
"Thank you," said Hoddan. "I’ll see you in the morning."
He sealed up the ship when the lawyer’s clerk departed. Then he felt lonely. He was the only living thing in the ship. His footsteps echoed hollowly. There was nobody to speak to. Not even anybody to threaten. He’d done a lot of threatening lately.
He went forlornly to the cabin once occupied by the liner’s former skipper. His loneliness increased. He began to feel those daunting self-doubts such as plague the most unselfish and conscientious people. His actions to date, of course, did not trouble him. Today’s actions were the ones which bothered his conscience. He felt that they were not quite adequate. The balance left in the lawyer’s hands would not be nearly enough to cover a certain deficit which in justice he felt himself bound to make up. It had been his thought to make this enterprise self-liquidating—everybody concerned making a profit, including the owners of the ship and cargo he had pirated. But he wasn’t sure.
He reflected that his grandfather would not have been disturbed about such a matter. That elderly pirate would have felt wholly at ease. It was his conviction that piracy was an essential part of the working of the galaxy’s economic system. Hoddan, indeed, could remember him saying precisely, snipping off the ends of his words as he spoke:
"I tell y’, piracy’s what keeps the galaxy’s business thriving! Everybody knows business suffers when retail trade slacks down. It backs up the movement of inventories. They get too big. That backs up orders to the factories. They lay off men. And when men are laid off they don’t have money to spend, so retail trade slacks off some more, and that backs up inventories some more, and that backs up orders to factories and makes unemployment and hurts retail trade again. It’s a feed-back. See?" It was Hoddan’s grandfather’s custom, at this point, to stare shrewdly at each of his listeners in turn.
"But suppose somebody pirates a ship? The owners don’t lose. It’s insured. They order another ship built right away. Men get hired to build it and they’re paid money to spend in retail trade and that moves inventories and industry picks up. More’n that, more people insure against piracy. Insurance companies hire more clerks and bookkeepers. They get more money for retail trade and to move inventories and keep factories going and get more people hired…. Y’see? It’s piracy that keeps business in this galaxy goin’!"
Hoddan had known doubts about this, but it could not be entirely wrong. He’d put a good part of the proceeds of his piracy in risk-insurance stocks, and he counted on them to make all his actions as benevolent to everybody concerned as his intentions had been, and were. But it might not be true enough. It might be less than … well … sufficiently true in a particular instance. And therefore—
Then he saw how things could be worked out so that there could be no doubt. He began to work out the details. He drifted off to sleep in the act of composing a letter in his head to his grandfather on the pirate planet Zan.
When morning came on Krim, catawheel trucks came bringing gigantic agricultural machines of a sort that would normally never be shipped by space freight. There came generators and turbines and tanks of plastic, and vision-tape instructors and great boxes full of tape for them. There were machine tools and cutting tips—these last in vast quantity—and very many items that the emigrants of Colin probably would not expect, and might not even recognize. The cargo holds of the liner filled.
He went to the office of his attorneys. He read and signed papers, in an atmosphere of great dignity and ethical purpose. The lawyer’s clerk attended him to the police office, where seven dreary Darthians with oversized hangovers tried dismally to cheer themselves by memories of how they got that way. He got them out and to the ship. The lawyer’s clerk produced a rather weighty if small box with an air of extreme solemnity.
"The currency you wanted, sir."
"Thank you," said Hoddan. "That’s the last of our business?"
"Yes, sir," said the clerk. He hesitated, and for the first time showed a trace of human curiosity. "Could I ask a question, sir, about piracy?"
"Why not?" asked Hoddan. "Go ahead."
"When you … ah … captured this ship, sir," said the clerk hopefully, "did you … ah … shoot the men and keep the women?"
Hoddan sighed.
"Much," he said regretfully, "as I hate to spoil an enlivening theory—no. These are modern days. Efficiency has invaded even the pirate business. I used my crew for floor-scrubbing and cookery."
He closed the ship port gently and went up to the control room to call the landing grid operators. In minutes the captured liner, loaded down again, lifted toward the stars.
And all the journey back to Darth was as anticlimactic as that. There was no trouble finding the space yacht in its remote orbit. Hoddan sent out an unlocking signal, and a keyed transmitter began to send a signal on which to home. When the liner nudged alongside it, Hoddan’s last contrivance operated and the yacht clung fast to the larger ship’s hull. There were four days in overdrive. There were three or four pauses for position-finding. The stop-over on Krim had cost some delay, but Hoddan arrived back at a positive sight of Darth’s sun within a day or so of standard space drive direct from Walden. Then there was little or no time lost in getting into orbit with the junk yard space fleet of the emigrants. Shortly thereafter he called the leader’s ship with only mild worries about possible disasters that might have happened while he was away.
"Calling the leader’s ship," he said crisply. "Calling the leader’s ship! This is Bron Hoddan, reporting back from Walden with a ship and machinery contributed for your use!"
The harsh voice of the bearded old leader of the emigrants seemed somehow broken when he replied. He called down blessings on Hoddan, who could use them. Then there was the matter of getting emigrants on board the new ship. They didn’t know how to use the boat-blister lifeboat tubes. Hoddan had to demonstrate. But shortly after there were twenty, thirty, fifty of the folk from Colin, feverishly searching the ship and incredulously reporting what they found.
"It’s impossible!" said the old man. "It’s impossible!"
"I wouldn’t say that," said Hoddan. "It’s unlikely, but it’s happened. I’m only afraid it’s not enough."
"It is … many times what we hoped," said the old man humbly. "Only—" He stopped. "We are more grateful than we can say."
Hoddan took a deep breath.
"I’d like to take my crew back home," he explained. "And come back and … well … perhaps I can be useful explaining things. And I’d like to ask a great favor of you … for my own work."
"But naturally," said the old man. "Of course. We will await your return. Naturally! And … perhaps we can … we can arrange something—"
Hoddan was relieved. There did seem a slightly strange limitation to the happiness of the emigrants. They were passionately rejoiceful over the agricultural machinery. But they seemed rather dutifully than truly happy over the microfilm library. The vision-tape instructors were the objects of polite comment only. Hoddan felt a vague discomfort. There seemed to be a sort of secret desperation in the atmosphere, which they would not admit or mention. But he was coming back. Of course.
He brought the spaceboat over to the new liner. He hooked onto a lifeboat blister and his seven Darthians crawled through the lifeboat tube. Hoddan pulled away quickly before somebody thought to ask why there were no lifeboats in the places so plainly made for them.
He headed downward when the landmarks on Darth’s surface told him that Don Loris’ castle would shortly come over the horizon. He was just touching atmosphere when it did. The boat’s rocket-tanks had been refilled, and he burned fuel recklessly to make a dramatic landing within a hundred yards of the battlements where Fani had once thoughtfully had a coil of rope ready for him.
Heads peered at the lifeboat over those same battlements now, but the gate was closed. It stayed closed. There was somehow an atmosphere of suspicion amounting to enmity. Hoddan felt unwelcome.
"All right, boys," he said resignedly. "Out with you and to the castle. You’ve got your loot from the voyage"—he’d counted out for each of them rather more actual cash than any of them really believed in—"and I want you to take this box to Don Loris. It’s a gift from me. And I want to—consult with him about co-operation between the two of us in … ah … some plans I have. Ask if I may come and talk to him."
His seven former spearmen tumbled out. They marched gleefully to the castle gate. Hoddan saw them tantalizingly displaying large sums in cash to the watchers above them. Thal held up the box for Don Loris. It was the box the lawyer’s clerk had turned over to him, with a tidy sum in cash in it. The sum was partly depleted, now. Hoddan had paid off his involuntary crew with it—had paid them, in fact, as if they’d done the fighting they’d expected and he’d thought would be necessary. But there was still more in it than Don Loris would have gotten from Walden for selling him out.
The castle gate opened, as if grudgingly. The seven went in. With the box.
Time passed. Much time. Hoddan went over the arguments he meant to use on Don Loris. He needed to make up a very great sum, and it could be done thus-and-so, but thus-and-so required occasional piratical raids, which called for pirate crews, and if Don Loris would encourage his retainers— He could have gone to another Darthian chieftain, of course, but he knew what kind of scoundrel Don Loris was. He’d have to find out about another man.
Nearly an hour elapsed before the castle gate opened again. Two files of spearmen marched out. There were eight men with a sergeant in command. Hoddan did not recognize any of them. They came to the spaceboat. The sergeant formally presented an official message. Don Loris would admit Bron Hoddan to his presence, to hear what he had to say.
Hoddan felt excessively uncomfortable. Waiting, he’d thought about that secret despair in the emigrant fleet. He worried about it. He was concerned because Don Loris had not welcomed him with cordiality, now that he’d brought back his retainers in good working order. In a sudden gloomy premonition, he checked his stun-pistols. They needed charging. He managed it from the lifeboat unit.
He went forebodingly toward the castle with the eight spearmen surrounding him as cops had once surrounded him on Walden. He did not like to be reminded of it. He frowned to himself as he went in the castle gate, and along a long stone passage, and up stone stairs into the great hall of state. Don Loris, as once before, sat peevishly by the huge fireplace. This time he was almost inside it, with its hood and mantel actually over his head. The Lady Fani sat there with him.
Don Loris seemed to put aside his peevishness only a little to greet Hoddan.
"My dear fellow," he said complainingly, "I don’t like to welcome you with reproaches, but do you know that when you absconded with that spaceboat, you made a mortal enemy for me? It’s a fact! My neighbor, on whose land the boat descended, was deeply hurt. He considered it his property. He had summoned his retainers for a fight over it when I heard of his resentment and partly soothed him with apologies and presents. But he still considers that I should return it to him, whenever you appear here with it!"
"Oh," said Hoddan. "That’s too bad."
Things looked ominous. The Lady Fani looked at him strangely. As if she tried to tell him something without speaking it. She looked as if she had wept lately.
"To be sure," said Don Loris fretfully, "you gave me a very pretty present just now. But my retainers tell me that you came back with a ship. A very fine ship. What became of it? The landing grid has been repaired at last and you could have landed it. 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! I don’t take kindly to the idea of your kidnaping my men and carrying them off on piratical excursions! They must be profitable! But if you can afford to give me presents like that, and be so lavish with my retainers … why I don’t see why—"
Hoddan grimaced.
"I came to arrange a deal on that order," he observed.
"I don’t think I like it," said Don Loris peevishly. "I prefer to deal with people direct. I’ll arrange about the landing grid, and for a regular recruiting service which I will conduct, of course. But you … you are irresponsible! I wish you well, but when you carry my men off for pirates, and make my neighbors into my enemies, and infect my daughter with strange notions and the government of a friendly planet asks me in so many words not to shelter you any longer … why that’s the end, Hoddan. So with great regret—"
"The regret is mine," said Hoddan. Thoughtfully, he aimed a stun-pistol at a slowly opening door. He pulled the trigger. Yells followed its humming, because not everybody it hit was knocked out. Nor did it hit everybody in the corridor. Men came surging out of one door, and then two, to require the attention of his weapons.
Then a spear went past Hoddan’s face and missed him only by inches. It buried its point in the floor. A whirling knife spun past his nose. He glanced up. There were balconies all around the great hall, and men popped up from behind the railings and threw things at him. They popped down out of sight instantly. There was no rhythm involved. He could not anticipate their rising, nor shoot them through the balcony front. And more men infiltrated the hall, getting behind heavy chairs and tables, to push toward him behind them as shovable shields. More spears and knives flew.
"Bron!" cried the Lady Fani, throatily.
He thought she had an exit for him. He sprang to her side.
"I … I didn’t want you to come," she wept.
There was a singular pause in the clangings and clashings of weapons on the floor. For a second the noises continued. Then they stopped. Then one man popped up and hurled a knife. The clang of its fall was a very lonely one. Don Loris fairly howled at him.
"Idiot! Think of the Lady Fani!"
The Lady Fani suddenly smiled tremulously.
"Wonderful!" she said. "They don’t dare do anything while you’re as close to me as this!"
"Do you suppose," asked Hoddan, "I could count on that?"
"I’m certain of it!" said Fani. "And I think you’d better."
"Then, excuse me," said Hoddan with great politeness.
He swung her up and over his shoulder. With a stun-pistol in his free hand he headed down the hall.
"Outside," she said zestfully. "Get out the side door and turn left, and nobody can jump down on your neck. Then left again to the gate."
He obeyed. Now and again he got in a pot-shot with his pistol. Don Loris had turned the castle into a very pretty trap. The Lady Fani said plaintively:
"This is terribly undignified, and I can’t see where we’re going. Where are we now?"
"Almost at the gate," panted Hoddan. "At it, now." He swung out of the massive entrance to Don Loris’ stronghold. "I can put you down now."
"I wouldn’t," said the Lady Fani. "In spite of the end of me that’s uppermost, I think you’d better make for the spaceboat exactly as we are."
Again Hoddan obeyed, racing across the open ground. Howls of fury followed him. It was evidently the opinion of the castle that the Lady Fani was to be abducted in the place of the seven returned spearmen.
Hoddan, breathing hard, reached the spaceboat. He put Fani down and said anxiously:
"You’re all right? I’m very much in your debt! I was in a spot!" Then he nodded toward the castle. "They are upset, aren’t they? They must think I mean to kidnap you."
The Lady Fani beamed.
"It would be terrible if you did," she said hopefully. "I couldn’t do a thing to stop you! And a successful public abduction’s a legal marriage, on Darth! Wouldn’t it be terrible?"
Hoddan mopped his face and patted her reassuringly on the shoulder.
"Don’t worry!" he said warmly. "You just got me out of an awful fix! You’re my friend! And anyhow I’m going to marry a girl on Walden, named Nedda. Good-by, Fani! Keep clear of the rocket blast."
He went into the boatport, turned to beam paternally back at her, and shut the port behind him. Seconds later the spaceboat took off. It left behind clouds of rocket smoke.
And, though Hoddan hadn’t the faintest idea of it, it left behind the maddest girl in several solar systems.
CHAPTER X
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. He had not the slightest inkling that she, who had twice spoiled her father’s skulduggery so far as it affected him, felt any but the friendliest of feelings toward him. He remembered that he had kept her from the necessity of adjusting to matrimony with the Lord Ghek. It did not occur to him that most girls intend to adjust to marriage with somebody, anyhow, and he did not even suspect that it is a feminine instinct to make a highly dramatic and romantic production of their marriage so they’ll have something to be sentimental about in later years.
As Hoddan drove on up and up, the sky became deep purple and then black velvet set with flecks of fire. He was relieved by the welcome he’d received earlier today from the emigrants, but he remained slightly puzzled by a very faint impression of desperation remaining. He felt very virtuous on the whole, however, and his plans for the future were specific. He’d already composed a letter to his grandfather, which he’d ask the emigrant fleet to deliver. He had another letter in his mind—a form letter, practically a public-relations circular—which he hoped to whip into shape before the emigrants got too anxious to be on their way. He considered that he needed to earn a little more of their gratitude so he could make everything come out even; self-liquidated; everybody satisfied and happy but himself.
For himself he anticipated only the deep satisfaction of accomplishment. He’d wanted to do great things since he was a small boy, and in electronics since his adolescence, when he’d found textbooks in the libraries of looted spaceships. He’d gone to Walden in the hope of achievement. There, of course, he failed because in a free economy industrialists consider that freedom is the privilege to be stupid without penalty. In other than free economies, of course, stupidity is held to be the duty of administrators. But Hoddan now believed himself in the fascinating situation of having knowledge and abilities which were needed by people who knew their need.
It was only when he’d made contact with the fleet, and was in the act of maneuvering toward a boat-blister on the liner he’d brought back, that doubts again assailed him. He had done a few things—accomplished a little. He’d devised a broadcast-power receptor and a microwave projector and he’d turned a Lawlor drive into a ball lightning projector and worked out a few little things like that. But the first had been invented before by somebody in the Cetis cluster, and the second could have been made by anybody and the third was standard practice on Zan. He still had to do something significant.
When he made fast to the liner and crawled through the boat-tube to its hull, he was in a state of doubt which passed very well for modesty.
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 looks as if some thousands of us will now be able to survive our colonization of the planet Thetis."
Hoddan gaped at him. The old man put his hand on Hoddan’s shoulder.
"We are grateful," he said with a pathetic attempt at warmth. "Please do not doubt that! It is only that … that— You had to accept what was given for our use. But I cannot help wishing very desperately that … that instead of unfamiliar tools for metal-working and machines with tapes which show pictures…. I wish that even one more jungle-plow had been included!"
Hoddan’s jaw dropped. The people of Colin wanted planet-subduing machinery. They wanted it so badly that they did not want anything else. They could not even see that anything else had any value at all. Most of them could only look forward to starvation when the ship supplies were exhausted, because not enough ground could be broken and cultivated early enough to grow food enough in time.
"Would it," asked the old man desperately, "be possible to exchange these useless machines for others that will be useful?"
"L—let me talk to your mechanics, sir," said Hoddan unhappily. "Maybe something can be done."
He restrained himself from tearing his hair as he went to where mechanics of the fleet looked over their treasure-trove. He’d come up to the fleet again to gloat and do great things for people who needed him and knew it. But he faced the hopelessness of people to whom his utmost effort seemed mockery because it was so far from being enough.
He gathered together the men who’d tried to keep the fleet’s ships in working order during their flight. They were competent men, of course. They were resolute. But now they had given up hope. Hoddan began to lecture them. They needed machines. He hadn’t brought the machines they wanted, perhaps, but he’d brought the machines to make them with. Here were automatic shapers, turret lathes, dicers. Here were cutting-points for machines these machines could make, to make the machines the colony on Thetis would require. He’d brought these because they had the raw material. They had their ships themselves! Even some of the junk they carried in crates was good metal, merely worn out in its present form. They could make anything they needed with what he’d brought them. For example, he’d show them how to make … say … a lumber saw.
He showed them how to make a lumber saw—slender, rapierlike revolving tool with which a man stabbed a tree and cut outward with the speed of a knife cutting hot butter. And one could mount it so—and cut out planks and beams for temporary bridges and such constructions.
They watched, baffled. They gave no sign of hope. They did not want lumber saws. They wanted jungle-breaking machinery.
"I’ve brought you everything!" he insisted. "You’ve got a civilization, compact, on this ship! You’ve got life instead of starvation! Look at this. I make a water pump to irrigate your fields!"
Before their eyes he turned out an irrigation pump on an automatic shaper. He showed them that the shaper went on, by itself, making other pumps without further instructions than the by-hand control of the tools that formed the first.
The mechanics stirred uneasily. They had watched without comprehension. Now they listened without enthusiasm. Their eyes were like those of children who watch marvels without comprehension.
He made a sledge whose runners slid on air between themselves and whatever object would otherwise have touched them. It was practically frictionless. He made a machine to make nails—utterly simple. He made a power hammer which hummed and pushed nails into any object that needed to be nailed. He made—
He stopped abruptly, and sat down with his head in his hands. The people of the fleet faced so overwhelming a catastrophe that they could not see into it. They could only experience it. As their leader would have been unable to answer questions about the fleet’s predicament before he’d poured out the tale in the form it had taken in his mind, now these mechanics were unable to see ahead. They were paralyzed by the completeness of the disaster before them. They could live until the supplies of the fleet gave out. They could not grow fresh supplies without jungle-breaking machinery. They had to have jungle-breaking machinery. They could not imagine wanting anything less than jungle-breaking machinery—
Hoddan raised his head. The mechanics looked dully at him.
"You men do maintenance?" he asked. "You repair things when they wear out on the ships? Have you run out of some materials you need for repairs?"
After a long time a tired-looking man said slowly:
"On the ship I come from, we’re having trouble. Our hydroponic garden keeps the air fresh, o’course. But the water-circulation pipes are gone. Rusted through. We haven’t got any pipe to fix them with. We have to keep the water moving with buckets."
Hoddan got up. He looked about him. He hadn’t brought hydroponic-garden pipe supplies! And there was no raw material. He took a pair of power snips and cut away a section of cargo space wall-lining. He cut it into strips. He asked the diameter of the pipe. Before their eyes he made pipe—spirally wound around a mandril and line-welded to solidity.
"I need some of that on my ship," said another man.
The bearded man said heavily:
"We’ll make some and send it to the ships that need it."
"No," said Hoddan. "We’ll send the tools to make it. We can make the tools here. There must be other kinds of repairs that can’t be made. With the machines I’ve brought, we’ll make the tools to make the repairs. Picture-tape machines have reels that show exactly how to do it."
It was a new idea. The mechanics had other and immediate problems beside the overall disaster of the fleet. Pumps that did not work. Motors that heated up. They could envision the meeting of those problems, and they could envision the obtaining of jungle-plows. But they could not imagine anything in between. They were capable of learning how to make tools for repairs.
Hoddan taught them. In one day there were five ships being brought into better operating condition—for ultimate futility—because of what he’d brought. Two days. Three. Mechanics began to come to the liner. Those who’d learned first pompously passed on what they knew. On the fourth day somebody began to use a vision-tape machine to get information on a fine point in welding. On the fifth day there were lines of men waiting to use them.
On the sixth day a mechanic on what had been a luxury passenger liner on the other side of the galaxy—but it was scores of years ago—asked to talk to Hoddan by spacephone. He’d been working feverishly at the minor repairs he’d been unable to make for so long. To get material he pulled a crate off one of the junk machines supplied the fleet. He looked it over. He believed that if this piece were made new, and that replaced with sound metal, the machine might be usable!
Hoddan had him come to the liner which was now the flagship of the fleet. Discussion began. Shaping such large pieces of metal which could be taken from here or there—shaping such large pieces of metal…. Hoddan began to draw diagrams. They were not clear. He drew more. Abruptly, he stared at what he’d outlined. Electronics…. He saw something remarkable. If one applied a perfectly well-known bit of pure-science information that nobody bothered with— He finished the diagram and a vast, soothing satisfaction came over him.
"We’ve got to get out of here!" he said. "Not enough room!"
He looked about him. Insensibly, as he talked to the first man on the fleet to show imagination, other men had gathered around. They were now absorbed.
"I think," said Hoddan, "that we can make an electronic field that’ll soften the cementite between the crystals of steel, without heating up anything else. If it works, we can make die-forgings and die-stampings with plastic dies! And then that useless junk you’ve got can be rebuilt—"
They listened gravely, nodding as he talked. They did not quite understand everything, but they had the habit of believing him now. He needed this and that in the huge cargo spaces of the ship the leader had formerly used.
"Hm-m-m," said Hoddan. "How about duplicating these machines and sending them over?"
They looked estimatingly at the tool-shop equipment. It could be made to duplicate itself—
The new machine shop, in the ancient ark of space, made another machine shop for another ship. In the other ship that tool shop would make another for another ship, which in turn….
By then Hoddan had a cold-metal die-stamper in operation. It was very large. It drew on the big ship’s drive unit for power. One put a rough mass of steel in place between plastic dies. One turned on the power. For the tenth of a second—no longer—the steel was soft as putty. Then it stiffened and was warm. But in that tenth of a second it had been shaped with precision.
It took two days to duplicate the jungle-plow Hoddan had first been shown, in new sound metal. But after the first one worked triumphantly, they made forty of each part at a time and turned out jungle-plow equipment enough for the subjugation of all Thetis’ forests.
There were other enterprises on hand, of course. A mechanic who stuttered horribly had an idea. He could not explain it or diagram it. So he made it. It was an electric motor very far ahead of those in the machines of Colin. Hoddan waked from a cat nap with a diagram in his head. He drew it, half-asleep, and later looked and found that his unconscious mind had designed a power-supply system which made Walden’s look rather primitive—
During the first six days Hoddan did not sleep to speak of, and after that he merely cat-napped when he could. But he finally agreed with the emigrants’ leader—now no longer fierce, but fiercely triumphant—that he thought they could go on. And he would ask a favor. He propped his eyelids open with his fingers and wrote the letter to his grandfather that he’d composed in his mind in the liner on Krim. He managed to make one copy, unaddressed, of the public-relations letter that he’d worked out at the same time. He put it through a facsimile machine and managed to address each of fifty copies. Then he yawned uncontrollably.
He still yawned when he went to take leave of the leader of the people of Colin. That person regarded him with warm eyes.
"I think everything’s all right," said Hoddan exhaustedly. "You’ve got a dozen machine shops and they are multiplying themselves, and you have got some enthusiastic mechanics, now, who’re drinking in the vision-tape stuff and finding out more than they guessed there was. And they’re thinking, now and then, for themselves. I think you’ll make out."
The bearded man said humbly:
"I have waited until you said all was well. Will you come with us?"
"No-o-o," said Hoddan. He yawned again. "I’ve got my work here. There’s an … obligation I have to meet."
"It must be very admirable work," said the old man wistfully. "I wish we had some young men like you among us."
"You have," said Hoddan. "They will be giving you trouble presently."
The old man shook his head, looking at Hoddan very affectionately indeed.
"We will deliver your letters," he said warmly. "First to Krim, and then to Walden. Then we will go on and let down your letter and gift to your grandfather on Zan. Then we will go on toward Thetis. Our mechanics will work at building machines while we are in overdrive. But also they will build new tool shops and train new mechanics, so that every so often we will need to come out of overdrive to transfer the tools and the men to new ships."
Hoddan nodded exhaustedly. This was right.
"So," said the old man contentedly, "we will simply make those transfers in orbit about the planets for which we have your letters. 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. I hope you will accept it. There is even a tiny tool shop on it!"
Hoddan would have been more touched if he hadn’t known about it. But one of the men entrusted with the job had harassedly asked him for advice. He knew what he was getting. It was the space yacht he’d used before, refurbished and fitted with everything the emigrants could provide.
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. He’d nothing urgent to do, except allow a certain amount of time to pass before he did anything. He was exhausted. He slept the clock around, and waked and ate sluggishly, and went back to sleep again. On the whole, the cosmos did not notice the difference. Stars flamed in emptiness, and planets rotated sedately on their axes. Comets flung out gossamer veils or retracted them, and space liners went about upon their lawful occasions. And lovers swore by stars and moons—often quite different stars and moons—and various things happened which had nothing to do with Hoddan.
But when he waked again he was rested, and he reviewed all his actions and his situation. It appeared that matters promised fairly well on the emigrant fleet now gone forever. They would remember Hoddan with affection for a year or so, and dimly after that. But settling a new world would be enthralling and important work. Nobody’d think of him at all, after a certain length of time. But he had to think of an obligation he’d assumed on their account.
He considered his own affairs. He’d told Fani he was going to marry Nedda. The way things looked, that was no longer so probable. Of course, in a year or two, or a few years, he might be out from under the obligations he now considered due. In time even the Waldenian government would realize that deathrays don’t exist, and a lawyer might be able to clear things for his return to Walden. But—Nedda was a nice girl.
He frowned. That was it. She was a remarkably nice girl. But Hoddan suddenly doubted if she were a delightful one. He found himself questioning that she was exactly and perfectly what his long-cherished ambitions described. He tried to imagine spending his declining years with Nedda. He couldn’t quite picture it as exciting. She did tend to be a little insipid—
Presently, gloomy and a trifle dogged about it, he brought the spaceboat around to the modernized boatport of the yacht. He got into it, leaving the yacht in orbit. He headed down toward Darth. Now that he’d rested, he had work to do which could not be neglected. To carry out that work, he needed a crew able and willing to pass for pirates for a pirate’s pay. And there were innumerable castles on Darth, with quite as many shiftly noblemen, and certainly no fewer plunder-hungry Darthian gentlemen hanging around them. But Don Loris’ castle had one real advantage and one which existed only in Hoddan’s mind.
Don Loris’ retainers did know that Hoddan had led their companions to loot. Large loot. He’d have less trouble and more enthusiastic support from Don Loris’ retainers than any other. This was true.
The illusion was that the Lady Fani was his firm personal friend with no nonsense about her. This was a very great mistake.
He landed for the fourth time outside Don Loris’ castle. This time he had no booty-laden men to march to the castle and act as heralds of his presence. The spaceboat’s visionscreens showed Don Loris’ stronghold as immense, dark and menacing. Banners flew from its turrets, their colors bright in the ruddy light of near-sunset. The gate remained closed. For a long time there was no sign that his landing had been noted. Then there was movement on the battlements, and a figure began to descend outside the wall. 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. 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. Derec was also the character who’d conscientiously told the cops on Hoddan, when they found his power-receptor sneaked into a Mid-Continent station and a stray corpse coincidentally outside.
He opened the boatport and stood in the opening. Derec had been a guest—anyhow an inhabitant—of Don Loris’ castle for a good long while, now. Hoddan wondered if he considered his quarters cozy.
"Evening, Derec," said Hoddan cordially. "You’re looking well!"
"I don’t feel it," said Derec dismally. "I feel like a fool in the castle yonder. And the high police official I came here with has gotten grumpy and snaps when I try to speak to him."
Hoddan said gravely:
"I’m sure the Lady Fani—"
"A tigress!" said Derec bitterly. "We don’t get along."
Looking at Derec, Hoddan found himself able to understand why. Derec was the sort of friend one might make on Walden for lack of something better. He was well-meaning. He might be capable of splendid things—even heroism. But he was horribly, terribly, appallingly civilized!
"Well! Well!" said Hoddan kindly. "And what’s on your mind, Derec?"
"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. Derec hadn’t noticed the absence of the flashing lights at sunset—or hadn’t realized that they meant the fleet was gone away.
"Hm-m-m," said Hoddan. "Why don’t you think I’ve already done it?"
"Because they’d have killed you," said Derec. "Don Loris pointed that out. He doesn’t believe you know how to make deathrays. He says it’s not a secret anybody would be willing for anybody else to know. But … you know the truth, Bron! You killed that poor man back on Walden. You’ve got to sacrifice yourself for humanity! You’ll be treated kindly!"
Hoddan shook his head. It seemed somehow very startling for Derec to be harping on that same idea, after so many things had happened to Hoddan. But he didn’t think Derec would actually expect him to yield to persuasion. There must be something else. 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.
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. His expression was mournful and depressed. Other brawny retainers came uncertainly behind him. At a nod from Thal, two of them picked up Derec and carted him off toward the castle.
"I guess he got it," said Thal dismally.
He peered in. He shook his head.
"Wounded, maybe, and crawled off to die."
He peered in again and shook his head once more.
"No sign of ‘im."
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! What’d he do with it? He could’ve kept it in this boat here. We could take a quick look! What Don Loris don’t know don’t hurt him!"
"I’m going to find Hoddan first," said Thal, with dignity. "We don’t have to carry him outside so’s Don Loris knows we’re looking for loot, but I’m going to find him first."
There were other men in the spaceboat now. A full dozen of them. Their spears were very much in the way.
The boat door closed quietly. Don Loris’ retainers stared at each other. The locking-dogs grumbled for half a second, sealing the door tightly. Don Loris’ retainers began to babble protestingly.
There was a roaring outside. The spaceboat stirred. The roaring rose to thunder. The boat lurched. It flung the spearmen into a sprawling, swearing, terrified heap at the rear end of the boat’s interior.
The boat went on out to space again. In the control room Hoddan said dourly to himself:
"I’m in a rut! I’ve got to figure out some way to ship a pirate crew without having to kidnap them. This is getting monotonous!"
CHAPTER XI
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. The partial looting of Ghek’s castle, alone, would have made him a desirable leader. But a crew of seven, returned from space, had displayed currency which amounted to the wealth of fabled Ind. Nobody knew what Ind was, any longer, but it was a synonym for fabulous and uncountable riches. When men went off with Hoddan, they came back rich.
But nevertheless there was an uncomfortable sort of atmosphere in the renovated yacht. They’d transshipped from the spaceboat to the yacht through lifeboat tubes, and they were quite docile about it because none of them knew how to get back to ground. Hoddan left the spaceboat with a triggerable timing-signal set for use on his return. He’d done a similar thing off Krim. He drove the little yacht well out, until Darth was only a spotted ball with visible clouds and ice caps. Then he lined up for Walden, direct, and went into overdrive.
Within hours he noted the disturbing feel of things. His followers were not happy. They moped. They sat in corners and submerged themselves in misery. Large, massive men with drooping blond mustaches—ideal characters for the roles of pirates—tended to squeeze tears out of their eyes at odd moments. When the ship was twelve hours on its way, the atmosphere inside it was funereal. The spearmen did not even gorge themselves on the food with which the yacht was stocked. And when a Darthian gentleman lost his appetite, something had to be wrong.
He called Thal into the control room.
"What’s the matter with the gang?" he demanded vexedly. "They look at me as if I’d broken all their hearts! Do they want to go back?"
Thal heaved a sigh, indicating depression beside which suicidal mania would be hilarity. He said pathetically:
"We cannot go back. We cannot ever return to Darth. We are lost men, doomed to wander forever among strangers, or to float as corpses between the stars."
"What happened?" demanded Hoddan. "I’m taking you on a pirate cruise where the loot should be a lot better than last time!"
Thal wept. Hoddan astonishedly regarded his whiskery countenance, contorted with grief and dampened with tears.
"It happened at the castle," said Thal miserably. "The man Derec, from Walden, had thrown a bomb at you. You seemed to be dead. But Don Loris was not sure. He fretted, as he does. He wished to send someone to make sure. The Lady Fani said; ‘I will make sure!’ She called me to her and said, ‘Thal, will you fight for me?’ And there was Don Loris suddenly nodding beside her. So I said, ‘Yes, my Lady Fani.’ Then she said; ‘Thank you. I am troubled by Bron Hoddan.’ So what could I do? She said the same thing to each of us, and each of us had to say that he would fight for her. To each she said that she was troubled by you. Then Don Loris sent us out to look at your body. And now we are disgraced!"
Hoddan’s mouth opened and closed and opened again. He remembered this item of Darthian etiquette. If a girl asked a man if he would fight for her, and he agreed, then within a day and a night he had to fight the man she sent him to fight, or else he was disgraced. And disgrace on Darth meant that the shamed man could be plundered or killed by anybody who chose to do so, but he would be hanged by indignant authority if he resisted. It was a great deal worse than outlawry. It included scorn and contempt and opprobrium. It meant dishonor and humiliation and admitted degradation. A disgraced man was despicable in his own eyes. And Hoddan had kidnaped these men who’d been forced to engage themselves to fight him, and if they killed him they would obviously die in space, and if they didn’t they’d be ashamed to stay alive. The moral tone on Darth was probably not elevated, but etiquette was a force.
Hoddan thought it over. He looked up suddenly.
"Some of them," he said wryly, "probably figure there’s nothing to do but go through with it, eh?"
"Yes," said Thal dismally. "Then we will all die."
"Hm-m-m," said Hoddan. "The obligation is to fight. If you fail to kill me, that’s not your fault, is it? If you’re conquered, you’re in the clear?"
Thal said miserably:
"True. Too true! When a man is conquered he is conquered. His conqueror may plunder him, when the matter is finished, or he can spare him, when he may never fight his conqueror again."
"Draw your knife," said Hoddan. "Come at me."
Thal bewilderedly made the gesture. Hoddan leveled a stun-pistol and said:
"Bzzz. You’re conquered. You came at me with your knife, and I shot you with my stun-pistol. It’s all over. Right?"
Thal gaped at him. Then he beamed. He expanded. He gloated. He frisked. He practically wagged a nonexistent tail in his exuberance. He’d been shown an out when he could see none.
"Send in the others one by one," said Hoddan. "I’ll take care of them. But Thal—why did the Lady Fani want me killed?"
Thal had no idea, but he did not care. Hoddan did care. He was bewildered and inclined to be indignant. A noble friendship like theirs— A spearman, came in and saluted. Hoddan went through a symbolic duel, which was plainly the way the thing would have happened in reality. Others came in and went through the same process. 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. Nobody could enlighten him.
But the atmosphere improved remarkably. Since each theoretic fight had taken place in private, nobody was obliged to admit a compromise with etiquette. Hoddan’s followers ceased to brood. They developed huge appetites. Those who had been aground on Krim told zestfully of the monstrous hangovers they’d acquired there. It appeared that Hoddan was revered for the size of the benders he enabled his followers to hang on.
But there remained the fact that the Lady Fani had tried to get him massacred. He puzzled over it. The little yacht sped through space toward Walden. He tried to think how he’d offended Fani. He could think of nothing. He set to work on a new electronic setup which would make still another modification of the Lawlor space-drive possible. In the others, groups of electronic components were cut out and others substituted in rather tricky fashion from the control board. This was trickiest of all. It required the home-made vacuum tube to burn steadily when in use. But it was a very simple idea. Lawlor drive and landing grid force fields were formed by not dissimilar generators, and ball lightning force fields were in the same general family of phenomena. Suppose one made the field generator that had to be on a ship if it was to drive at all, capable of all those allied, associated, similar force fields? If a ship could make the fields that landing grids did, it should be useful to pirates.
Hoddan’s present errand was neither pure nor simple piracy, but piracy it would be. The more he considered the obligation he’d taken on himself when he helped the emigrant-fleet, the more he doubted that he could lift it without long struggle. He was preparing to carry on that struggle for a long time. He’d more or less resigned himself to the postponement of his personal desires. Nedda, for example. He wasn’t quite sure— Perhaps, after all—
But time passed, and he finished his electronic job. He came out of overdrive and made his observations and corrected his course. Finally, there came a moment when the fiery ball which was Walden’s sun shone brightly in the vision plates. It writhed and spun in the vast silence of emptiness.
Hoddan drove to a point still above the five-diameter limit of Walden. He interestedly switched on the control which made his drive-unit manufacture landing-grid-type force fields. He groped for Walden, and felt the peculiar rigidity of the ship when the field took hold somewhere underground. He made an adjustment, and felt the ship respond. Instead of pulling a ship to ground, in the setup he’d made, the new fields pulled the ground toward the ship. When he reversed the adjustment, instead of pushing the ship away to empty space, the new field pushed the planet.
There was no practical difference, of course. The effect was simply that the space yacht now carried its own landing grid. It could descend anywhere and ascend from anywhere without using rockets. Moreover, it could hover without using power.
Hoddan was pleased. He took the yacht down to a bare four-hundred-mile altitude. He stopped it there. It was highly satisfactory. He made quite certain that everything worked as it should. Then he made a call on the space communicator.
"Calling ground," said Hoddan. "Calling ground. Pirate ship calling ground!"
He waited for an answer. Now he’d find out the result of very much effort and planning. He was apprehensive, of course. There was much responsibility on his shoulders. There was the liner he’d captured and looted and given to the emigrants. There were his followers on the yacht, now enthusiastically sharpening their two-foot knife blades in expectation of loot. He owed these people something. For an instant he thought of the Lady Fani and wondered how he could make reparation to her for whatever had hurt her feelings so she’d try to get his throat cut.
A whining, bitterly unhappy voice came to him.
"Pirate ship!" said the voice plaintively, "we received the fleet’s warning. Please state where you intend to descend, and we will take measures to prevent disorder. Repeat, please state where you intend to descend and we will take measures to prevent disorder—"
Hoddan drew a sharp breath of relief. He named a spot—a high-income residential small city some forty miles from the planetary capital. He set his controls for a very gradual descent. He went out to where his followers made grisly zinging noises where they honed their knives.
"We’ll land," said Hoddan sternly, "in about three-quarters of an hour. You will go ashore and loot in parties of not less than three! Thal, you will be ship guard and receive the plunder and make sure that nobody from Walden gets on board. You will not waste time committing atrocities on the population!"
He went back to the control room. He turned to general-communication bands and listened to the broadcasts down below.
"Special Emergency Bulletin!" boomed a voice. "Pirates are landing in the city of Ensfield, forty miles from Walden City. The population is instructed to evacuate immediately, leaving all action to the police. Repeat! The population will evacuate Ensfield, leaving all action to the police. Take nothing with you. Take nothing with you. Leave at once."
Hoddan nodded approvingly. The voice boomed again:
"Special Emergency Bulletin! Pirates are landing … evacuate … take nothing with you…. Leave at once…."
He turned to another channel. An excited voice barked:
"… Seems to be only the one pirate ship, which has been located hovering in an unknown manner over Ensfield. We are rushing camera crews to the spot and will try to give on-the-spot as-it-happens coverage of the landing of pirates on Walden, their looting of the city of Ensfield, and the traffic jams inevitable in the departure of the citizens before the pirate ship touches ground. For background information on this the most exciting event in planetary history, I take you to our editorial rooms." Another voice took over instantly. "It will be remembered that some days since the gigantic pirate fleet then overhead sent down a communication to the planetary government, warning that single ships would appear to loot and giving notice that any resistance—"
Hoddan felt a contented, heart-warming glow. The emigrant fleet had most faithfully carried out its leader’s promise to let down a letter from space while in orbit around Walden. The emigrants, of course, did not know the contents of the letter. They would not send anybody down to ground, because of the temptations to sin in societies other than their own. Blithely, and cheerfully, and dutifully, they would give the appearance of monstrous piratical strength. They would awe Walden thoroughly. And then they’d go on, faithfully leaving similar letters and similar impressions on Krim, and Lohala, and Tralee, and Famagusta, and throughout the Coalsack stars until the stock of addressed missives ran out. They would perform this kindly act out of gratitude to Hoddan.
And every planet they visited would be left with the impression that the fleet overhead was that of bloodthirsty space-marauders who would presently send single ships to collect loot—which must be yielded without resistance. Such looting expeditions were to be looked for regularly and must be submitted to under penalty of unthinkable retribution from the monster fleet of space.
Now, as the yacht descended on Walden, it represented that mythical but impressive piratical empire of Hoddan’s contrivance. He listened with genuine pleasure to the broadcasts. When low enough, he even picked up the pictures of highways thronged with fugitives from the to-be-looted town. He saw Waldenian police directing the traffic of flight. He saw other traffic heading toward the city. Walden was the most highly civilized planet in the Nurmi Cluster, and its citizens had had no worries at all except about tranquilizers to enable them to stand it. When something genuinely exciting turned up, they wanted to be there to see it.
The yacht descended below the clouds. Hoddan turned on an emergency flare to make a landing by. Sitting in the control room he saw his own ship as the broadcast cameras picked it up and relayed it to millions of homes. He was impressed. It was a glaring eye of fierce light, descending deliberately with a dark and mysterious spacecraft behind it. He heard the chattered on-the-spot news accounts of the happening. He saw the people who had not left Ensfield joined by avid visitors. He saw all of them held back by police, who frantically shepherded them away from the area in which the pirates should begin their horrid work.
Hoddan even watched pleasurably from his control room as the broadcast cameras daringly showed the actual touch-down of the ship; the dramatic slow opening of its entrance port: the appearance of authentic pirates in the opening, armed to the teeth, bristling ferociously, glaring about them at the here-silent, here-deserted streets of the city left to their mercy.
It was a splendid broadcast. Hoddan would have liked to stay and watch all of it. But he had work to do. He had to supervise the pirate raid.
It was, as it turned out, simple enough. Looting parties of three pirates each moved skulking about, seeking plunder. Quaking cameramen dared to ask them, in shaking voices, to pose for the news cameras. It was a request no Darthian gentleman, even in an act of piracy, could possibly refuse. They posed, making pictures of malignant ruffianism.
Commentators, adding informed comment to delectably thrilling pictures, observed that the pirates wore Darthian costume, but observed crisply that this did not mean that Darth as an entity had turned pirate, but only that some of her citizens had joined the pirate fleet.
The camera crews then asked apologetically if they would permit themselves to be broadcast in the act of looting. Growling savagely for their public, and occasionally adding even a fiendish "Ha!" they obliged. The camera crews helped pick out good places to loot for the sake of good pictures. The pirates co-operated in fine dramatic style. Millions watching vision sets all over the planet shivered in delicious horror as the pirates went about their nefarious enterprise.
Presently the press of onlookers could not be held back by the police. They surrounded the pirates. Some, greatly daring, asked for autographs. Girls watched them with round, frightened, fascinated eyes. Younger men found it vastly thrilling to carry burdens of loot back to the pirate ship for them. Thal complained hoarsely that the ship was getting overloaded. Hoddan ordered greater discrimination, but his pirates by this time were in the position of directors rather than looters themselves. Romantic Waldenian admirers smashed windows and brought them treasure, for the reward of a scowling acceptance.
Hoddan had to call it off. The pirate ship was loaded. It was then the center of an agitated, excited, enthusiastic crowd. He called back his men. One party of three did not return. He took two others and fought his way through the mob. He found the trio backed against a wall while hysterically adoring girls struggled to seize scraps of their garments for mementos of real, live pirates looting a Waldenian town!
But Hoddan got them back to the ship, in confusion tending toward the blushful. Their clothes were shreds. He fought a way clear for them to get into the ship. He fought his way in. Cheers rose from the onlookers. He got the landing port shut only by the help of police who kept pirate fans from having their fingers caught in its closing.
Then the piratical space yacht rose swiftly toward the stars.
An hour later there was barely any diminution of the excitement inside the ship. 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?"
Thal gazed at him abstractedly, not quite able to tear his mind and thoughts from this completely unimaginable mass of plunder. Then intelligence came into his eyes—as much as could appear there. He grinned suddenly. He slapped his thigh.
"Boys!" he gurgled. "He don’t know what we got for him!"
One man looked up. Two. They beamed. They got to their feet, dripping jewelry. Thal went ponderously to one of the two owners’ staterooms the yacht contained. At the door he turned, expansively.
"She came to the port," he said exuberantly, "and said we were wearin’ clothes like they wore on Darth. Did we come from there? I said we did. Then she said did we know somebody named Bron Hoddan on Darth? And I said we did and if she’d step inside the ship she’d meet you. And here she is!"
He unfastened the stateroom door, which had been barred from without. He opened it. He looked in, and grabbed, and pulled at something. Hoddan went sick with apprehension. He groaned as the something inside the stateroom sobbed and yielded.
Thal brought Nedda out into the saloon of the yacht. Her nose and eyes were red from terrified weeping. She gazed about her in purest despairing horror. She did not see Hoddan for a moment. Her eyes were filled with the brawny, mustachioed piratical figures who were Darthian gentlemen and who grinned at her in what she took for evil gloating.
She wailed.
Hoddan swallowed, with much difficulty, and said sickly:
"It’s all right, Nedda. It was a mistake. Nothing will happen to you. You’re quite"—and he knew with desperate certainty that it was true—"safe with me!"
And she was.
Comments are closed.