Part 19 (2/2)

The great cargo door swung shut. The outside-pressure needle swung sharply and stopped at thirty centimeters of mercury pressure. There was a clanging. A smaller door evidently opened somewhere. Lights came on--old-fas.h.i.+oned glow tubes. Then figures appeared through a door leading to some other part of this s.h.i.+p.

Hoddan nodded to himself. The costume was odd. It was awkward. It was even primitive, but not in the fas.h.i.+on of the soiled but gaudily colored garments of Darth. These men wore unrelieved black, with gray s.h.i.+rts.

There was no touch of color about them. Even the younger ones wore beards. And of all unnecessary things, they wore flat-brimmed hats--in a s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p!

Hoddan opened the boat door and said politely:

”Good morning. I'm Bron Hoddan. You were talking to me just now.”

The oldest and most fiercely bearded of the men said harshly:

”I am the leader here. We are the people of Colin.” He frowned when Hoddan's expression remained unchanged. ”The people of Colin!” he repeated more loudly. ”The people whose forefathers settled that planet, and brought it to be a world of peace and plenty--and then foolishly welcomed strangers to their midst!”

”Too bad,” said Hoddan. He knew what these people were doing, he believed, but putting a name to where they'd come from told him nothing of what they wanted of Darth.

”We made it a fair world,” said the bearded man fiercely. ”But it was my great-grandfather who destroyed it. He believed that we should share it.

It was he who persuaded the Synod to allow strangers to settle among us, believing that they would become like us.”

Hoddan nodded expectantly. These people were in some sort of trouble or they wouldn't have come out of overdrive. But they'd talked about it until it had become an emotionalized obsession that couldn't be summarized. When they encountered a stranger, they had to picture their predicament pa.s.sionately and at length.

This bearded man looked at Hoddan with burning eyes. When he went on, it was with gestures as if he were making a speech, but it was a special sort of speech. The first sentence told what kind.

”They clung to their sins!” said the bearded man bitterly. ”They did not adopt our ways! Our example went for naught! They brought others of their kind to Colin. After a little they laughed at us. In a little more they outnumbered us! Then they ruled that the laws of our Synod should not govern them. And they lured our young people to imitate them--frivolous, sinful, riotous folk that they were!”

Hoddan nodded again. There were elderly people on Zan who talked like this. Not his grandfather! If you listened long enough they'd come to some point or other, but they had arranged their thoughts so solidly that any attempt to get quickly at their meaning would only produce confusion.

”Twenty years since,” said the bearded man with an angry gesture, ”we made a bargain. We held a third of all the land of the planet, but our young men were falling away from the ways of their fathers. We made a bargain with the newcomers we had cherished. We would trade our lands, our cities, our farms, our highways, for s.h.i.+ps to take us to a new world with food for the journey and machines for the taming of the planet we would select. We sent of our number to find a world to which we could move. Ten years back, they returned. They had found it. The planet Thetis.”

Again Hoddan had no reaction. The name meant nothing.

”We began to prepare,” said the old man, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng. ”Five years since, we were ready. But we had to wait three more before the bargainers were ready to complete the trade. They had to buy and collect the s.h.i.+ps. They had to design and build the machinery we would need.

They had to collect the food supplies. Two years ago we moved our animals into the s.h.i.+ps, and loaded our food and our furnis.h.i.+ngs, and took our places. We set out. For two years we have journeyed toward Thetis.”

Hoddan felt an instinctive respect for people who would undertake to move themselves, the third of the population of a planet, over a distance that meant years of voyaging. They might have tastes in costume that he did not share, and they might go in for elaborate oratory instead of matter-of-fact statements, but they had courage.

”Yes, sir,” said Hoddan. ”I take it this brings us up to the present.”

”No,” said the old man, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng. ”Six months ago we considered that we might well begin to train the operators of the machines we would use on Thetis. We uncrated machines. We found ourselves cheated!”

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Hoddan found that he could make a fairly dispa.s.sionate guess of what advantage--say--Nedda's father would take of people who would not check on his good faith for two years and until they were two years' journey away. The business men on Krim would have some sort of code determining how completely one could swindle a customer. Don Loris, now--

”How badly were you cheated?” asked Hoddan.

”Of our lives!” said the angry old man. ”Do you know machinery?”

”Some kinds,” admitted Hoddan.

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