“What are you going to do?” asked Thai unhappily. “I didn’t make a parting-present to Don Loris, so I’ll be disgraced if he finds out I helped you. And I don’t know where to take you.”

“Where,” asked Hoddan, “did those characters from Walden come down?”

Thai told him. At the castle of a powerful feudal chieftain, on the plain, some four miles from the mountain range, and six miles this side of the spaceport.

“We ride there,” said Hoddan. “Liberty Is said to be sweet, but the man who said that didn’t have blisters from a saddle. Let’s go.”

They rode away. There would be no immediate pursuit, and possibly none at all. Don Loris had left Hoddan at breakfast on the battlements. The Lady Fani would make as much confusion over his disappearance as she could. But there’d be no search -for him until Don Loris had made his deal.

Hoddan was sure that Fani’s father would have an enjoyable morning. He would relish the bargaining session. He’d explain in great detail how valuable had been Hoddan’s service to him, in rescuing Fani from an abductor who would have been an intolerable son-in-law. He’d grow almost tearful as he described his affection for Hoddan, and how he loved his daughter. He would observe grievedly that they were asking him to betray the man who had saved for him the solace of his old age. He would mention also that the price they offered was an affront to his paternal affection and his dignity. Either they’d come up or the deal was off!

But meanwhile Hoddan and Thai rode industriously toward the place from which those emissaries had come.

All was tranquil. All was calm. Once they saw a dust cloud, and Thai turned aside to a providential wooded copse, in which they remained while a cavalcade went by. Thai explained that it was a feudal chieftain on his way to the spaceport town. It was simple discretion for them not to be observed said Thai, because they had great reputations as fighting men. Whoever defeated them would become prominent at once. So somebody might try to pick a quarrel under one of the finer points of etiquette when it would be disgrace to use anything but standard Darthian implements for massacre. Hoddan admitted that he did not feel quarrelsome.

They rode on after a time, and in late afternoon the towers and battlements of the castle they sought appeared. The ground here was only gently rolling. They approached it with caution, following the reverse slope of hills. At last they penetrated horse-high brush to the point where they could see it clearly.

If Hoddan had been a student of early terrestrial history, he might have remarked upon the re-emergence of ancient architectural forms to match the revival of primitive social systems. As it was, he noted in this feudal castle the use of bastions for flanking fire upon attackers; he recognized the value of battlements for the protection of defenders while allowing them to shoot, and the tricky positioning of sally ports. He even grasped the reason for the massive, stark, unornamented keep. But his eyes did not stay on the castle for long. He saw the spaceboat in which Derec and his more authoritative companion had arrived.

It lay on the ground a half-mile from the castle walls. It was a chubby, clumsy, flattened shape some forty feet long and nearly fifteen wide. The ground about it was scorched where it had descended upon its rocket flames. There were several horses tethered near it, and men who were plainly retainers of the nearby castle reposed in its shade. Hoddan reined in.

“Here we part,” he told Thai. “When we first met I enabled you to pick the pockets of a good many of your fellow countrymen. I never asked for my split of the take. I expect you to remember me with affection.” Thai clasped both of Hoddan’s hands in his. “If you ever return,” he said with mournful warmth, “I am your friend!”

Hoddan nodded and rode out of the brushwood toward the spaceboat lifeboat that had landed the emissaries from Walden. That it landed so close to the spaceport, of course, was no accident. It was known on Walden that Hoddan had taken space-passage to Darth. He’d have landed only two days before his pursuers could reach the planet. And on a roadless, primitive world like Darth he couldn’t have gotten far from the spaceport. So his pursuers would have landed close by, also. But it must have taken considerable courage. When the landing-grid failed to answer, it must have seemed likely that Hoddan’s death rays had been at work.

Here and now, though, there was no uneasiness. Hoddan rode heavily, without haste, through the slanting sunshine. He was seen from a distance and watched without apprehension by the loafing guards about the boat. He looked hot and thirsty. He was both. So the posted guard merely looked at him without too much interest when he brought his dusty mount up to the shadow the lifeboat cast, and apparently decided that there wasn’t room to get into it.

He granted a greeting and looked at them speculatively.

“Those two characters from Walden,” he observed, “sent me to got something from this thing, here. Don Loris told ’em I was a very honest man.”

He painstakingly looked like a very honest man. After a moment there were responsive grins.

“If there’s anything missing when I start back,” said Hoddan, “I can’t imagine how it happened! None of you would take anything. Oh, no! I bet you’ll blame it on me!” He shook his head and said, “Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.”

One of the guards sat up and said appreciatively:

“But it’s locked. Good.”

“Being an honest man,” said Hoddan amiably, “they told me how to unlock it.”

He got off his horse. He removed the bag from his saddle. He went into the grateful shadow of the metal hull. He paused and mopped his face and then went to the boat’s port. He put his hand on the turning-bar. Then he painstakingly pushed in the locking-stud with his other hand. Of course the handle turned. The port opened. The two from Walden would have thought everything safe because it was under guard. On Walden that protection would have been enough. On Darth, the spaceboat had not been looted simply because locks, there, were not made with separate vibration-checks to keep vibration from loosening them. On spaccboats such a precaution was usual.

“Give me two minutes,” said Hoddan over his shoulder. “I have to get what they sent me for. After that everybody starts even.”

He entered and closed the door behind him. Then he locked it. By the nature of things it is as needful to be able to lock a spaceboat from the inside as it is unnecessary to lock it from without.

He looked things over. Standard equipment everywhere. He checked everything, even to the fuel supply. There were knockings on the port. He continued to inspect. He turned on the vision screens, which provided the control-room and the rest of the boat with an unobstructed view in all directions. He was satisfied.

The knocks because hangings. Something approaching indignation could be deduced. The guards around the space-boat felt that Hoddan was taking an unfair amount of time to pick the cream of the loot inside.

He got a glass of water. It was excellent. A second.

The hangings became violent hammerings.

Hoddan seated himself leisurely in the pilot’s seat and turned small knobs. He waited. He touched a button. There was a mildly thunderous bang outside, and the lifeboat reacted as if to a slight shock. The vision screens showed a cloud of dust at the spaceboat’s stern, roused by a deliberate explosion in the rocket tubes. It also showed the retainers in full flight.

He waited until they were in safety and made the standard take-off preparations. A horrific roaring started up outside. He touched controls and a monstrous weight pushed him back in his seat. The rocket swung, lifted, and shot skyward with greater acceleration than before.

It went up at a lifeboat’s full fall-like rate of climb, leaving a trail of blue-white flame behind it. All the surface of Darth seemed to contract swiftly below. The spaceport and the town rushed toward a spot beneath the spaceboat’s tail. They shrank and shrank. He saw other places. Mountains. Castles. He saw Don Loris’ stronghold. Higher, he saw the sea.