Gloomily, he explained matters to his attorneys. They pointed out that he had a duty, an obligation, from the nature of his unexpected success. If he let things go, now, the currently thriving business of risk insurance would return to its former unimportance. His companies — they were his, now — had taken on extra help. More bookkeepers and accountants worked for him this week than last. More mail clerks, secretaries, janitors and scrubwomen. Even more vice-presidents! He would administer a serious blow to the economy of Krim if he caused a slackening of employment by letting his companies go to pot. A slackening of employment would cause a drop in retail trade, an increase in inventories, a depression in industry.

Hoddan thought gloomily of his grandfather. He’d written to the old gentleman and the emigrant fleet would have delivered the letter. He couldn’t disappoint his grandfather! He morbidly accepted his attorney’s advice, and they arranged immediately to take over the forty-first as well as the forty-second and -third floors of the building their offices were in. Commerce would march on.

And Hoddan headed for Darth. He had to return his crew, and there was something else. Several something elses. He arrived in that solar system and put his yacht in a search orbit, listening for the signal the spaceboat should give for him to come on. He found it. He maneuvered to come alongside, and there was blinding light everywhere. Alarms rang. Lights went out. Instruments registered impossibilities, the rockets fired crazily, and the whole ship reeled. Then a voice roared out of the communicator:

“Stand and deliver! Surrender and y’ll be allowed to go to ground. But if y’even hesitate I’ll hull ye and heave ye out to space without a spacesuit!”

Hoddan winced. Stray sparks had flown about everywhere inside the spaceyacht. A ball-lightning bolt, even of only warning size, makes things uncomfortable when it strikes. Hoddan’s fingers tingled as if they’d been asleep. He threw on the transmitter switch and said with annoyance in his voice:

“Hello, grandfather. This is Bron. Have you been waiting for me long?”

He heard his grandfather swear disgustedly. A few minutes later, a badly battered, blackened, scuffed old spacecraft came rolling up on rocket impulse and stopped with a billowing of rocket fumes. Hoddan threw a switch and used the landing-grid field he’d used on Walden in another fashion. The ships came together with fine precision, lifeboat tube to lifeboat tube. He heard his grandfather swear in amazement.

“That’s a little trick I worked out, grandfather,” said Hoddan into the transmitter. “Come aboard. I’ll pass it on.” His grandfather presently appeared, scowling and suspicious. His eyes shrewdly examined everything, including the loot trucked in every available space. He snorted.

“All honestly come by,” said Hoddan morbidly, “It seems I’ve got a license to steal. I’m not sure what to do with it.”

His grandfather stared at a placard on the wall. It said archly: Remember! A Lady is Present! Nedda had put it up.

“Hmph!” said his grandfather. “What’s a woman doing on a pirate ship? That’s what your letter talked about!”

“They get on,” said Hoddan, wincing, “like mice. You’ve had mice on a ship, haven’t you? Come in the control-room and I’ll explain.”

He did explain, up to the point where his arrangements to pay back for a ship and cargo turned into a runaway success, and now he was responsible for the employment of innumerable bookkeepers and clerks in the insurance companies he’d come to own. There was also the fact that as the emigrant fleet went on, about fifty more planets would require the attention of pirate ships from time to time, or there would be disillusionment and injury to the economic system.

“Organization,” said his grandfather, “does wonders for a tender conscience like you’ve got. What else?”

Hoddan explained the matter of his Darthian crew and how Don Loris might consider them disgraced because they hadn’t cut his throat. Hoddan had to take care of the matter. And there was Nedda… Fani came into the story somehow, too. Hoddan’s grandfather grunted, at the end.

“We’ll go down and talk to this Don Loris,” he said pugnaciously. “I’ve dealt with his kind before. While we’re down, your Cousin Oliver’ll take a look at this new grid-field job. We’ll put it on my ship. Hm… how about the rime down below? Never land long after daybreak. Early in the morning, people ain’t at their best.”

Hoddan looked at Darth, rotating deliberately below him.

“It’s not too late, sir,” he said. “Will you follow me down?”

His grandfather nodded briskly, took another comprehensive look at the loot from Walden, and crawled back through the tube to his own ship.

So it was not too long after dawn, in that time zone, when a sentry on the battlements of Don Loris’ castle felt a shadow over his head. He jumped a foot and stared upward. Then his hair stood up on end and almost threw his steel helmet off. He stared, unable to move a muscle.

There was a ship above him. It was not a large ship, but he could not judge of such matters. It was not supported by rockets. It should have been falling horribly to smash him under its weight. It wasn’t. Instead, it floated down with a very fine precision, like a ship being landed by grid, and settled delicately to the ground some fifty yards from the base of the castle wall.

Immediately thereafter there was a muttering roar. It grew to a howl: a bellow: it became thunder. It increased from that to a noise so stupendous that it ceased altogether to be heard, and was only felt as a deep-toned bartering at one’s chest. When it ended there was a second ship resting in the middle of a very large scorched place close by the first.

A landing-ramp dropped down from the bartered craft. It neatly spanned the scorched and still-smoking patch of soil. A port opened. Men came out, following a jaunty small figure with bushy gray whiskers. They dragged an enigmatic object behind them.

Hoddan came out of the yacht. His grandfather said waspishly:

“This the castle?”

He waved at the massive pile of cut gray stone, with walls twenty feet thick and sixty high.

“Yes, sir,” said Hoddan.

“Hm,” snorted his grandfather. “Looks flimsy to me!” He waved his hand again. “You remember your cousins.”

Familiar, matter-of-fact nods came from the men of the battered ship. Hoddan hadn’t seen any of them for years, but they were his kin. They wore commonplace, workaday garments, but carried weapons slung negligently over their shoulders. They dragged the cryptic object behind them without particular formation or apparent discipline, but somehow they looked capable.

Hoddan and his grandfather strolled to the castle gate, their companions a little to their rear. They came to the gate. Nothing happened. Nobody challenged. There was the feel of peevish refusal to associate with persons who landed in spaceships.

“Shall we hail?” asked Hoddan.

“Nah!” snorted his grandfather. “I know his kind! Make him make the advances.” He waved to his descendants. “Open it up.”

Somebody casually pulled back a cover and reached in and threw switches.

“Found a power broadcast unit,” grunted Hoddan’s grandfather, “on a ship we took. Hooked it to the ship’s space-drive. When y’can’t use the space-drive, you still got power. Your cousin, Oliver whipped this thing up.”

The enigmatic object made a spiteful noise. The castle gate shuddered and fell halfway from its hinges. The thing made a second noise. Stones splintered and began to collapse. Hoddan admired. Three more unpleasing but not violently loud sounds. Half the wall on either side of the gate was rubble, collapsing partly inside and partly outside the castle’s proper boundary.

Figures began to wave hysterically from the battlements. Hoddan’s grandfather yawned slightly.