Fani stamped her foot.

“Outrageous! Think what you saved me from!”

But she did not question the possibility, Hoddan observed.

“A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community.” Hoddan commented. “Now I’ve decided that I’ve got to be practical myself, and that’s one of the rules. How about breakfast?”

He strapped the shipbag shut on the stun-pistols his pockets would not hold. He made a minor adjustment to the communicator. It was not ruined, but nobody else could use it without much labor finding out what he’d done. This was the sort of thing his grandfather on Zan would have advised. His grandfather’s views were explicit.

“Helping one’s neighbor,” the old man had said frequently, “is all right as a two-way job. But maybe he’s laying for you. You get a chance to fix him so he can’t do you no harm and you’re a lot better off and he’s one hell of a better neighbor!”

This was definitely true of the men from Walden. Hoddan guessed that Derec was one of them. The other would represent the police or the planetary government. It was probably just as true of Don Loris and others.

Hoddan found himself disapproving of the way the cosmos was designed.

As he sat at breakfast, Fani looked at him with interesting anxiety; he was filled with forebodings. The future looked dark. Yet what he asked of fate and chance was so simple! He asked only a career, riches, and a delightful girl to marry and the admiration of his fellow citizens. Trivial things! But it looked like he’d have to do battle for even such minor gifts of destiny!

Fani watched him eat.

“I don’t understand you,” she complained. “Anybody else would be proud of what he’d done and angry with my father. Or don’t you think he’ll act ungratefully?”

“Of course I do!” said Hoddan.

“Then why aren’t you angry?”

“I’m hungry,” said Hoddan.

“And you take it for granted that I want to be properly grateful,” said Fani in one breath, “and yet you haven’t show the least appreciation of my getting two horses over in that patch of woodland yonder!” she pointed and Hoddan nodded. “Besides having Thai there with orders to serve you faithfully-”

She stopped short. Don Loris appeared, beaming, at the top of the steps leading from the great hall where the conferences took place. He regarded Hoddan benignly.

“This is a very bad business, my dear fellow,” he said benevolently. “Has Fani told you of the people who arrived from Walden in search of you? They tell me terrible things about you!”

“Yes,” said Hoddan. He prepared a roll for biting. He continued, “One of them, I think, is named Derec. He’s to identify me so good money isn’t wasted paying for the wrong man. The other man’s a policeman, isn’t he?” He reflected a moment. “If I were you, I’d start talking at a million credits. You might get half that.”

He bit into the roll as Don Loris looked shocked.

“Do you think,” he asked indignantly, “that I would give up the rescuer of my daughter to emissaries from a foreign planet to be locked in a dungeon for life?”

“Not in those words,” conceded Hoddan. “But after all, despite your deep gratitude to me, there are such things as one’s duty to humanity as a whole. And while it would cause you bitter anguish if someone dear to you represented a danger to millions of innocent women and children — still, under such circumstances you might feel it necessary to do violence to your own emotions.”

Don Loris looked at him with abrupt suspicion. Hoddan waved the roll.

“Moreover,” he observed, “gratitude for actions done on Darth does not entitle you to be judge of my actions on Walden. While you might and even should feel obliged to defend me in all things I have done on Darth, your obligation to me does not extend to uphold my acts on Walden.” Don Loris looked extremely uneasy.

“I may have thought something like that,” he admitted. “But-”

“So that,” continued Hoddan, “while your debt to me cannot and should not be overlooked, nevertheless—” Hoddan put the roll into his mouth and spoke less clearly ” — nevertheless you feel that you should give consideration to the claims of Walden to inquire into my actions while there.” He chewed, swallowed, and said gravely: “And can I make death rays?”

Don Loris brightened. He drew a deep breath of relief. He said complainingly:

“I don’t see why you’re so sarcastic! Yes. That is a rather important question. You see, on Walden they don’t know how to. They say you do. They’re very anxious that nobody should be able to. Because, while in unscrupulous hands such an instrument of destruction would be most unfortunate… Ah… under proper control…”

“Yours,” said Hoddan.

“Say ours,” said Don Loris hopefully. “With my experience of men and affairs, and my loyal and devoted retainers—”

“And cozy dungeons,” said Hoddan. He wiped his mouth. “No.”

Don Loris started violently.

“No, what?”

“No death rays,” said Hoddan. “I can’t make ’em. Nobody can. If they could be made, some star somewhere would be turning them out, or some natural phenomenon would let them loose from time to time. If there were such things as death rays, all living things would have died, or else would have adjusted to their weaker manifestations and developed immunity so they wouldn’t be death rays any longer. As a matter of fact, that’s probably been the case, some time in the past. So far as the gadget goes that they’re talking about, it’s been in use for a half-century in the Cetis cluster. Nobody’s died of it yet.”

Don Loris looked bitterly disappointed.

“That’s the truth?” he asked unhappily. “Honestly? That’s your last word on it?”

“Much said Hoddan, “much as I hate to spoil the prospects of profitable skulduggery, that’s my last word and it’s true.”

“But those men from Walden are very anxious!” protested Don Loris. “There was no ship available, so their government got a liner that normally wouldn’t stop here to take an extra lifeboat aboard. It came out of overdrive in this solar system, let out the lifeboat, and went on its way again. Those two men are extremely anxious!”

“Ambitious, maybe,” said Hoddan. “They’re prepared to pay to overcome your sense of gratitude to me. Naturally, you want all the traffic will bear. I think you can get a half-million.”

Don Loris looked suspicious again.

“You don’t seem worried,” he said fretfully. “I don’t understand you!”

“I have a secret,” said Hoddan.

“What is it?”

“It will develop,” said Hoddan.

Don Loris hesitated and essayed to speak, and thought better of it. He shrugged his shoulders and went slowly back to the flight of stone steps. He descended. The Lady Fani started to wring her hands. Then she said hopefully: “What’s your secret?”

“That your father thinks I have one,” said Hoddan. “Thanks for the breakfast. Should I walk out the gate, or—”

“It’s closed,” said the Lady Fani forlornly. “But I have a rope for you. You can go down over the wall.”

“Thanks,” said Hoddan. “It’s been a pleasure to rescue you.”

“Will you…” Fani hesitated. “I’ve never known anybody like you before. Will you ever come back?” Hoddan shook his head at her.

“Once you asked me if I’d fight for you, and look what it got me into! No commitments.”

He glanced along the battlements. There was a fairly large coil of rope in view. He picked up his bag and went over to it. He checked the fastening of one end and tumbled the other over the wall.

Ten minutes later he trudged up to Thai, waiting in the nearby woodland with two horses.

“The Lady Fani,” he said, “has the kind of brains I like. She pulled up the rope again.”

Thai did not comment. He watched morosely as Hoddan made the perpetually present shipbag fast to his saddle and then distastefully climbed aboard the horse.