A spearman just behind Thai said:

“Dirty trick! I was with him to Walden, and he paid off good! A good man! Shoulda been a chieftain! Good man!”

Thai gingerly entered the spaceboat. He wrinkled his nose at the faint smell of explosive still inside. Another man came in. Another.

“Say!” one of them said in a conspiratorial voice. “We got our share of that loot from Walden. But he hadda share, too! What’d he do with it? He could’ve kept it in this boat here. We could take a quick look! What Don Loris don’t know don’t hurt him!”

“I’m going to find Hoddan first,” said Thai, with dignity. “We don’t have to carry him outside so’s Don Loris knows we’re looking for loot, but I’m going to find him first.”

There were other men in the spaceboat now. A full dozen of them. Their spears were very much in the way.

The boat-door closed quietly. Don Loris’ retainers stared at each other. The locking-dogs grumbled for half a second, sealing the door tightly. Don Loris’ retainers began to babble protestingly.

There was a roaring outside. The spaceboat stirred. The roaring rose to thunder. The boat lurched. It flung the spearmen into a sprawling, swearing, terrified heap at the rear end of the boat’s interior.

The boat went on out to space again. In the control-room Hoddan said dourly to himself:

“I’m in a rut I’ve got to figure out some way to ship a pirate crew without having to kidnap them. This is getting monotonous!”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THERE WAS a disturbed air which enveloped all the members of Hoddan’s crew, on the way to Walden. It was not exactly reluctance, because there was self-evident enthusiasm over the idea of making a pirate voyage under him. When men went off with Hoddan, they came back rich.

But nevertheless there was an uncomfortable sort of atmosphere in the renovated yacht. They’d transshipped from the spaceboat to the yacht through lifeboat-tubes, and they were quite docile about it because none of them knew how to get back to ground. Hoddan left the spaceboat with a timing signal set for use on his return. He’d done a similar thing off Krim. He drove the little yacht well out, until Darth was only a spotted ball with visible clouds and icecaps. Then he lined up for Walden, direct, and went into overdrive.

Within hours he noted the disturbing feel of things. His followers were not happy. They moped. They sat in comers and submerged themselves in misery. Large, massive men with drooping blond moustaches — ideal characters for the roles of pirates — had tears rolling down from their eyes at odd moments. When the ship was twelve hours on its way, the atmosphere inside it was funereal. The spearmen did not even gorge themselves on the food with which the yacht was stocked. And when a Darthian gentleman lost his appetite, something had to be wrong.

He called Thai into the control-room.

“What’s the matter with the gang?” he demanded vexedly. They look at me as if I’d broken all their hearts! Do they want to go back?”

Thai heaved a sigh, indicating depression beside which suicidal mania would be hilarity. He said pathetically:

“We cannot go back. We cannot ever return to Darth. We are lost men, doomed to wander forever among strangers, or to float as corpses between the stars.”

“What happened?” demanded Hoddan. “I’m taking you on a pirate cruise where the loot should be a lot better than last time!”

Thai wept. Hoddan astonishedly regarded his whiskery countenance, contorted with grief and dampened with tears.

“It happened at the castle,” said Thai miserably. “The man Derec, from Walden, had thrown a bomb at you. You seemed to be dead. But Don Loris was not sure. He fretted, as he does. He wished to send someone to make sure. The Lady Fani said: ‘I will make sure!’ She called me to her and said, Thai, will you fight for me?” And there was Don Loris suddenly nodding beside her. So I said, “Yes, my Lady Fani.’ Then she said: Thank you. I am troubled by Bron Hoddan.’ So what could I do? She said the same thing to each of us, and each of us had to say that he would fight for her. To each she said that she was troubled by you. Then Don Loris sent us out to look at your body. And now we are disgraced!”

Hoddan’s mouth opened and closed and opened again. He remembered this item of Darthian etiquette. If a girl asked a man if he would fight for her, and he agreed, then within a day and a night he had to fight the man she sent him to fight, or else he was disgraced. And disgrace on Darth meant that the shamed man could he plundered or killed by anybody who chose to do so — and he would be hanged by indignant authority if he resisted. It was a great deal worse than outlawry. It included scorn and contempt and opprobrium. It meant dishonor and humiliation and admitted degradation. A disgraced man was despicable in his own eyes. And Hoddan had kidnapped these men who’d been forced to engage themselves to fight him, and if they killed him they would obviously die in space, and if they didn’t they’d be ashamed to stay alive. The moral tone on Darth was probably not elevated, but etiquette was a force.

Hoddan thought it over. He looked up suddenly.

“Some of them,” he said wryly, “probably figure there’s nothing to do but go through with it, eh?”

“Yes,” said Thai dismally. “Then we will all die.”

“Hmm,” said Hoddan. The obligation is to fight. If you fail to kill me, that’s not your fault, is it? If you’re conquered you’re in the clear?”

“True. Too true!” Thai said miserably. “When a man is conquered he is conquered. His conqueror may plunder him, when the matter is finished, or he can spare him, then he may never fight his conqueror again.”

“Draw your knife,” said Hoddan. “Come at me.”

Thai made a bewildered gesture. Hoddan leveled a stun-pistol and said:

“BZZZ. You’re conquered. You came at me with your knife, and I shot you with my stun-pistol. It’s all over. Right?”

Thai gaped at him. Then he beamed. He expanded. He gloated. He frisked. He practically wagged a non-existent tail in his exuberance. He’d been shown an out when he could see none.

“Send in the others one by one,” said Hoddan. “I’ll take care of them. But Thai, why did the Lady Fani want me killed?”

Thai had no idea, but he did not care. Hoddan did care. He was bewildered and inclined to be indignant. A noble friendship like theirs — A spearman came in and saluted. Hoddan went through a symbolic duel, which was plainly the way the thing would have happened in reality. Others came in and went through the same process. Two of them did not quite grasp that it was a ritual, and he had to shoot them in the knife-arm. Then he hunted in the ship’s supplies for ointment for the blisters that would appear from stun-pistol bolts at such short range. As he bandaged the places, he again tried to find out why the Lady Fani had tried to get him carved up. Nobody could enlighten him.

But the atmosphere improved remarkably. Since each theoretic fight had taken place in private,, nobody was obliged to admit a compromise with etiquette. Hoddan’s followers ceased to brood. They developed huge appetites. Those who had been aground on Krim told zestfully of the monstrous hangovers they’d acquired there. It appeared that Hoddan was revered for the size of the benders he enabled his followers to hang on.

But there remained the fact that the Lady Fani had tried to get him massacred. He puzzled over it. The little yacht sped through space toward Walden. He tried to think how he’d offended Fani. He could think of nothing. He set to work on a new electronic setup which would make still another modification of the Lawlor space-drive possible. In the others, groups of electronic components were cut out and others substituted in rather tricky fashion from the control board. This was trickiest of all. It required the homemade vacuum tube to burn steadily when in use. But it was a very simple idea. Lawlor drive and landing-grid forcefields were formed by not dissimilar generators, and ball-lightning force-fields were in the same general family of phenomena. Suppose one made the field generator that had to be on a ship if it were to drive at all capable of all those allied, associated, similar forcefields? If a ship could make the fields that landing-grids did, it should be useful to pirates.