“Idiot! Think of the Lady Fani!”

The Lady Fani suddenly smiled tremulously.

“Wonderful!” she said. “They don’t dare do anything while you’re as close to me as this!”

“Do you suppose,” asked Hoddan, “I could count on that?”

“I’m certain of it!” said Fani. “And I think you’d better.”

“Then, excuse me,” said Hoddan with great politeness.

He swung her up and over his shoulder. With a stun-pistol in his free hand he headed down the hall.

“Outside,” she said zestfully, “get out the side door and turn left, and nobody can jump down on your neck. Then left again to the gate.”

He obeyed. Now and again he got in a pot-shot with his pistol. Don Loris had turned the castle into a very pretty trap. The Lady Fani said plaintively:

“This is terribly undignified, and I can’t see where we’re going. Where are we now?”

“Almost at the gate,” panted Hoddan. “At it, now.” He swung out of the massive entrance to Don Loris’ stronghold. “I’ll put you down now.”

“I wouldn’t,” said the Lady Fani. “I think you’d better make for the spaceboat exactly as we are.”

Again Hoddan obeyed, racing across the open ground. Howls of fury followed him. It was evidently the opinion of the castle that the Lady Fani was to be abducted in the place of the seven returned spearmen.

Hoddan, breathing hard, reached the spaceboat. He put Fani down and said anxiously:

“You’re all right? I’m very much in your debt! I was in a spot!” Then he nodded toward the castle. “They’re upset, aren’t they? They must think I mean to kidnap you.”

The Lady Fani beamed.

“It would be terrible if you did,” she said hopefully. “I couldn’t do a thing to stop you! And a successful public abduction’s a legal marriage, on Darth! Wouldn’t it be terrible?”

Hoddan mopped his face and patted her reassuringly on the shoulder.

“Don’t worry!” he said warmly. “You just got me out of an awful fix! You’re my friend! And anyhow I’m going to marry a girl on Walden, named Nedda. Goodbye, Fani! Keep clear of the rocket blast.”

He went into the boat’s port, turned to smile paternally back at her, and shut the port behind him. Seconds later the spaceboat took off. It left behind clouds of rocket smoke.

And, though Hoddan hadn’t the faintest idea of it, he had left behind the maddest girl in several solar systems.

CHAPTER TEN

IT is THE custom of all men, everywhere, to be obtuse where women are concerned: Hoddan went skyward in the space-boat with feelings of warm gratitude toward the Lady Fani. He had not the slightest inkling that she had anything but the friendliest of feelings toward him.

As Hoddan drove on up and up, the sky became deep purple and then black velvet set with flecks of fire. He was relieved by the welcome he’d received earlier today from the emigrants, but he remained slightly puzzled by a very faint impression of desperation remaining. He felt very virtuous on the whole, however, and his plans for the future were specific. He’d already composed a letter to his grandfather, which he’d ask the emigrant fleet to deliver. He had another letter in mind, a form letter — practically a public-relations circular — which he hoped to whip into shape before the emigrants got too anxious to be on their way. He considered that he needed to earn a little more of their gratitude so he could make everything come out even; everybody being satisfied and happy but himself.

For himself he anticipated only the deep satisfaction of accomplishment. He’d wanted to do great things since he was a small boy. He’d gone to Walden in the hope of achievement. There, of course, he failed because in a free economy, industrialists consider that freedom is the privilege of being stupid without penalty. But Hoddan now believed himself in the fascinating situation of having knowledge and abilities which were needed by other people.

It was only when he’d made contact with the fleet, and was in the act of maneuvering toward a boat-blister on the liner he’d brought back, that doubts again assailed him. He had done a few things — accomplished little. He’d devised a broadcast-power receptor and a microwave projector and he’d turned a Lawlor drive into a ball-lightning projector and worked out a few little things like that. But the first had been invented before by somebody in the Cetis cluster, and the second could have been made by anybody and the third was standard practice on Zan. He still had to do something significant.

When he made fast to the liner and crawled through the tube to its hull, he was in a state of doubt which passed very well for modesty.

The bearded old man received him in the skipper’s quarters, which Hoddan himself had occupied for a few days. He looked very weary. He seemed to have aged, in hours.

“We grow more astounded by the minute,” he told Hoddan heavily, “by what you have brought us. Ten shiploads like this and we would be better equipped than we believed ourselves in the beginning. It looks as if some thousands of us will now be able to survive our colonization of the planet Thetis.”

Hoddan gaped at him. The old man put his hand on Hoddan’s shoulder.

“We are grateful,” he said with a pathetic attempt at warmth. “Please do not doubt that! It is only that… that… I cannot help wishing very desperately that… that instead of unfamiliar tools for metal-working and machines with tapes which show pictures — I wish that even one more jungle plow had been included!”

Hoddan’s jaw dropped. The people of Colin wanted planet-subduing machinery. They wanted it so badly that they did not want anything else. They could not even see that anything else had any value at all. Most of them could only look forward to starvation when the ships’ supplies were exhausted, because not enough ground could be broken and cultivated early enough to grow food enough in time.

“Would it,” asked the old man desperately, “would it be possible to exchange these useless machines for others that will be useful?”

“Let me talk to your mechanics, sir,” said Hoddan unhappily. “Maybe something can be done.”

He restrained himself from tearing his hair as he went to where the mechanics of the fleet looked over their new equipment He’d come up to the fleet again to gloat and do great things for people who needed him and knew it. But he faced the hopelessness of people to whom his utmost effort seemed mockery because it was so far from being enough.

He gathered together the men who’d tried to keep the fleet’s ships in working order during their flight. They were competent men, of course. They were resolute. But now they had given up hope. Hoddan began to lecture them. They needed machines. He hadn’t brought the machines they wanted, perhaps, but he’d brought the machines to make them with. Here were automatic shapers, turret lathes, dicers. He’d brought these because they already had the raw material — the ships themselves! Even some of the junk they carried in crates was good metal, merely worn out in its present form. They could make anything they needed with what he’d brought them. For example, he’d show them how to make a lumber saw.

He showed them how to make the slender, rapier-like revolving tool with which a man stabbed a tree and cut outward with the speed of a hot knife cutting butter. And one could mount it so, and cut out planks and beams for temporary bridges and such constructions.

They watched, baffled. They gave no sign of hope. They did not want lumber saws. They wanted jungle-breaking machinery.

“I’ve brought you everything!” he insisted. “You’ve got a civilization, compact, on this ship! You’ve got life instead of starvation! Look at this. I’ll make a water pump to irrigate your fields!”

Before their eyes he turned out an irrigation pump on an automatic shaper. He showed them that the shaper went on, by itself, making other pumps without further instructions.