Part 25 (2/2)

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 s.h.i.+pped by s.p.a.ce 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 quant.i.ty--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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 s.h.i.+p. 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.h.i.+p'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 s.p.a.ce drive direct from Walden. Then there was little or no time lost in getting into orbit with the junk yard s.p.a.ce fleet of the emigrants. Shortly thereafter he called the leader's s.h.i.+p with only mild worries about possible disasters that might have happened while he was away.

”Calling the leader's s.h.i.+p,” he said crisply. ”Calling the leader's s.h.i.+p! This is Bron Hoddan, reporting back from Walden with a s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p. 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 s.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sionately 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 s.p.a.ceboat 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.

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