Hoddan drank the sour wine and brooded. He was very . hungry and very tired, and it seemed to him that he had been disillusioned in a new dimension. Morbidly, he remembered a frequently given lecture from his grandfather on Zan.

“It’s no use!” his grandfather used to say. “There’s not a bit o’ use in having brains! All they do is get you into trouble! A lucky idiot’s ten times better off than a brainy man with a jinx on him! A smart man starts thinkin’, and he thinks himself into a jail cell if his luck is bad, and good luck’s wasted on him because it ain’t reasonable and he don’t believe in it when it happens! It’s taken me a lifetime to keep my brains from ruinin’ me! No, sir! I hope none o’ my descendants inherit my brains I pity ’em if they do!”

Hoddan had been on Darth not more than four hours. In that time he’d found himself robbed, had been the object of two spirited attempts at assassination, had ridden an excruciating number of miles on an unfamiliar animal, and now found himself in a stone dungeon and deprived of food lest feeding him obligate his host not to cut his throat. And he’d gotten into this by himself! He’d chosen it! He’d practically asked for it!

He began strongly to share his grandfather’s disillusioned view of brains.

After a long time the door of the cell opened. Thai was back, chastened.

“Don Loris wants to talk to you,” he said in a subdued voice. “He’s not pleased.”

Hoddan took another gulp of the wine. He picked up his shipbag and limped to the door. He decided painfully that he was limping on the wrong leg. He tried the other. No improvement. He really needed to limp on both.

He followed a singularly silent Thai through a long stone corridor and up stone steps until they came to a monstrous hall lit with torches. It was barbarically hung with banners, but it was not exactly a cheery place. At the far end logs burned in a great fireplace.

Don Loris sat in a carved chair beside it; wizened and white-bearded, in a fur-trimmed velvet robe, with a peevish expression on his face.

“My chieftain,” said Thai submissively, “here is the engineer from Walden.”

Hoddan scowled at Don Loris, whose expression of peevishness did not lighten. He did regard Hoddan with a flicker of interest, however. A stranger who unfeignedly scowls at a feudal lord with no superior and many inferiors, is anyhow a novelty.

“Thai tells me,” said Don Loris fretfully, “that you and he, together, slaughtered some dozens of the retainers of my neighbors today. I consider it unfortunate. They may ask me to have the two of you hanged, and it would be impolite to refuse.”

Hoddan said truculently:

“I considered it impolite for your neighbors’ retainers to march toward me waving large knives.”

“Yes,” agreed Don Loris impatiently. “I concede that point. It is natural enough to act hastily at such times. But still… How many did you kill?”

“None,” said Hoddan curtly. “I shot them with shin-pistols I’d just charged in the control-room of the landing-grid.”

Don Loris sat up straight.

“Stun-pistol’s?” he demanded sharply. “You used stun-pistols on Darth?”

“Naturally on Darth,” said Hoddan with some tartness. “I was here! But nobody was killed. One or two may be slightly blistered. All of them had their pockets picked by Thai. I understand that is a local custom. There’s nothing to worry about.”

But Don Loris stared at him, aghast.

“But this is deplorable!” he protested. “Stun-pistols used here? It is the one thing I would have given strict orders to avoid! My neighbors will talk about it. Some of them may even think about it! You could have used any other weapon, but of all things why did you have to use a stun-pistol?”

“I had one,” said Hoddan briefly.

“Horrible!” said Don Loris peevishly. “The worst thing you could possibly have done! I have to disown you. Unmistakably! You’ll have to disappear at once. Well blame it on Ghek’s retainers.”

“Disappear? Me?” Hoddan exclaimed.

“Vanish,” said Don Loris. “I suppose there’s no real necessity to cut your throat, but you plainly have to disappear, though it would have been much more discreet if you’d simply gotten killed.”

“I was indiscreet to survive?” demanded Hoddan bristling.

“Extremely so!” snapped Don Loris. “Here I had you come all the way from Walden to help arrange a, delicate matter, and before you’d traveled even the few miles to my castle — within minutes of landing on Darth — you spoiled everything! I am a reasonable man, but there are the facts! You used stun-pistols, so you have to disappear. I think it generous of me to say only until people on Darth forget that such things exist. But the two of you — oh, for a year or so — there are some fairly cozy dungeons.”

Hoddan seethed suddenly. He’d tried to do something brilliant on Walden, and had been framed into jail for life. He’d defended his life and property on Darth, and nearly the same thing popped up as a prospect. Hoddan angrily suspected fate and chance of plain conspiracy against him.

But there was an interruption. A clanking of arms sounded somewhere nearby. Men with long, gruesome, glittering spears came through a doorway. They stood aside. A girl entered the great hall. More spearmen followed her. They stopped by the door. The girl came across the hall.

She was a pretty girl, but Hoddan hardly noticed the fact with so many other things on his mind.

Thai, behind him, said in a quivering voice:

“My Lady Fani, I beg you to plead with your father for his most faithful retainer!”

The girl looked in surprise at him. Her eyes fell on Hoddan. She looked interested. Hoddan, at that moment, was very nearly as disgusted and as indignant as a man could be. He did not look romantically at her — which to the Lady Fani, daughter of that powerful lord, Don Loris, was a novelty. He did not look at her at all. He ground his teeth.

“Don’t try to wheedle me, Fani!” snapped Don Loris. “I am a reasonable man, but I indulge you too much — even to allowing you to refuse that young imbecile Ghek, with no end of inconvenience as a result. But I will not have you question my decision about Thai and this Hoddan person!”

The girl said pleasantly:

“Of course not, father. But what have they done?”

“The two of them,” snapped Don Loris again, “fought twenty men today and defeated all of them! Thai plundered them. Then thirty other men, mounted, tried to avenge the first and they defeated them also! Thai plundered eighteen. And all this was permissible, if unlikely. But they did it with stun-pistols! Everybody will soon be talking of it! They’ll know that this Hoddan came to Darth to see me!

They’ll suspect that I imported new weapons for political , purposes! They’ll guess at the prettiest scheme I’ve had these twenty years!”

“But did they really defeat so many?” she asked, marveling. “That’s wonderful! And Thai was undoubtedly fighting in defense of someone you’d told him to protect, as a loyal retainer should do. Wasn’t he?”

“I wish,” fumed her father, “that you would not throw in irrelevancies! I sent him to get Hoddan this afternoon, not to massacre my neighbors’ retainers — or rather, not to not massacre them. A little bloodletting would have done no harm, but stun-pistols—”

“He was protecting somebody he was told to protect,” said Fani. “And this other man, this—”

“Hoddan, Bron Hoddan,” said her father irritably. “Yes. He was protecting himself! Doubtless he thought he did me a service in doing that! But if he’d only let himself get killed quietly, the whole affair would be simplified!”

The Lady Fani said with quiet dignity:

“By the same reasoning, father, it would simplify things greatly if I let the Lord Ghek kidnap me.”

“It’s not the same thing at all.”

“At least,” said Fani, “I wouldn’t have a pack of spearmen following me about like foul-breathed puppies everywhere I go!”