The Pirates of Zan

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE SPACEBOAT floated on upon a collision course with the arriving fleet. That would not mean, of course, actual contact with any of the strange vessels themselves. Crowded as the sunlit specks might seem from Darth’s night-side shadow, they were sufficiently separated. It was more than likely that even with ten-mile intervals the ships would be considered much too crowded. But they came pouring out of emptiness to go into a swirling, plainly pre-intended orbit about the planet from which Hoddan had risen less than an hour before.

It was a gigantic traffic tangle, and Hoddan’s boat drifted toward and into it. He’d counted a hundred ships long before he gave up, he’d numbered two hundred forty-seven of the oddities swarming to make a whirling band — a ring-around the planet Darth.

He was fairly sure that he knew what they were, now. But he could not possibly guess where they came from. And most mysterious of all was the question of why they’d come out of faster-than-light drive to make of themselves a celestial feature about a planet which had practically nothing to offer to anybody.

Presently the spaceboat was in the very thick of the fleet. His communicator spouted voices whose tones ranged from basso profundo to high tenor, and whose ideas of proper astrogation seemed to vary more widely still.

“You there!” boomed a voice with deafening volume. “You’re in our clear-space! Sheer off!”

The volume of a signal in space varies as the square of the distance. This voice was thunderous. It came apparently from a nearby, potbellied ship of ancient vintage.

Hoddan’s spaceboat floated on. The relative position of the two ships changed slowly. Another voice said indignantly:

“That’s the same thing that missed us by less than a mile! You, there! Stop acting like a squig! Get on your own course!”

A third voice:

“What boat’s that? I don’t recognize it! I thought I knew all the freaks in this fleet, too!”

A fourth voice said sharply:

“That’s not one of us! Look at the design! That’s not us!”

Other voices broke in. There was babbling. Then a harsh voice roared:

“Quiet! I order it!” There was silence. The harsh voice said heavily, “Relay the image to me.” There was a pause. The same voice said grimly: “It is not of our fleet. You, stranger! Identify yourself! Who are you and why did you slip secretly among us?”

Hoddan pushed the transmit button.

“My name is Bron Hoddan,” he said. “I came up to find out why three ships, and then nine ships, went into orbit around Darth. It was somewhat alarming. Our landing-grid’s disabled, anyhow, and it seemed wisest to look you over before we communicated and possibly told you something you might not believe.” The harsh voice said as grimly as before:”

“You come from the planet below us? Darth? Why is your ship so small? The smallest of ours is greater.”

“This is a lifeboat,” said Hoddan pleasantly. “It’s supposed to be carried on larger ships in case of emergency.”

“If you will come to our leading ship,” said the voice, “we will answer all your questions. I will have a smoke flare set off to guide you.”

Hoddan said to himself:

No threats and no offers. I can guess why there are no threats. But they should offer something!

He waited. There was a sudden, huge eruption of vapor in space some two hundred miles away. Perhaps an ounce of explosion had been introduced into a rocket tube and fired. The smoke particles, naturally ionized, added their self-repulsion to the expansiveness of the explosive’s gases. A cauliflower-like shape of filmy whiteness appeared and grew larger and thinner.

Hoddan drove toward the spot. He swung the boat around and killed its relative velocity. The leading ship was a sort of gigantic, shapeless, utterly preposterous ark-like thing. Hoddan could neither imagine a purpose for which it could have been used, nor a time when men would have built anything like it. Its huge sides seemed to be made exclusively of great doorways now tightly closed.

One of those doorways gaped wide. It would have admitted a good-sized modern ship. A nervous voice essayed to give Hoddan directions for getting the spaceboat inside what was plainly an enormous hold now pumped empty of air. He grunted and made the attempt. It was tricky. He sweated when he cut off his power. But he felt fairly safe. Rocket flames would burn down such a door, if necessary. He could work havoc if hostilities began.

The great door swung shut. The outside-pressure needle swung sharply and stopped at thirty centimeters of mercury pressure. There was a clanging. A smaller door evidently opened somewhere. Lights came on. Then figures appeared through a door leading to some other part of this ship.

Hoddan nodded to himself. The costume was odd. It was awkward. It was even primitive, but not in the fashion of the soiled, gaudily-colored garments of Darth. These men wore unrelieved black, with gray shirts. There was no touch of color about them. Even the younger ones wore beards. And of all unnecessary things, they wore flat-brimmed hats — in a spaceship!

Hoddan opened the door and said politely:

“Good morning. I’m Bron Hoddan. You were talking to me.”

The oldest and most fiercely bearded of the men said harshly:

“I am the leader here. We are the people of Colin.” He frowned when Hoddan’s expression remained unchanged. “The people of Colin!” he repeated more loudly. “The people whose forefathers settled that planet, and made it a world of peace and plenty, and then foolishly welcomed strangers to their midst!”

“Too bad,” said Hoddan. He knew what these people were doing, he believed, but putting a name to where they’d come from told him nothing of what they wanted of Darth.

“We made it a fair world,” said the bearded man fiercely. “But it was my great-grandfather who destroyed it. He believed that we should share it. It was he who persuaded the Synod to allow strangers to settle among us, believing that they would become like us.”

Hoddan nodded expectantly. These people were in some sort of trouble or they wouldn’t have come out of over-drive. But they’d talked about it until it had become an emotionalized obsession that couldn’t be summarized. When they encountered a stranger, they had to picture their predicament passionately and at length.

This bearded man looked at Hoddan with burning eyes. When he went on, it was with gestures as if he were making a speech. But it was a special sort of speech. The first sentence told what kind.

“They clung to their sins!” said the bearded man bitterly. “They did not adopt our ways! Our example went for naught! They brought others of their kind to Colin. After a little they laughed at us. In a little more they outnumbered us! Then they ruled that the laws of our Synod should not govern them. And they lured our young people to imitate them — frivolous, sinful, riotous folk that they were!”

Hoddan nodded again. There were elderly people on Zan who talked like this. Not his grandfather! If you listened long enough they’d come to some point or other, but they had arranged their thoughts so solidly that any attempt to get quickly at their meaning would only produce confusion.

“Twenty years since,” said the bearded man with an angry gesture, “we made a bargain. We held a third of all the land of the planet, but our young men were falling away from the ways of their fathers. We made a bargain with the newcomers. We would trade our lands, our cities, our farms, our highways, for ships to take us to a new world, and food for the journey and machines for the taming of the planet we would select. We sent some of our number to find a world to which we could move. Ten years back, they returned. They had found it. The planet Thetis.”

Again Hoddan had no reaction. The name meant nothing.

“We began to prepare,” said the old man, his eyes flashing. “Five years since, we were ready. But we had to wait three more before the bargainers were ready to complete the trade. They had to buy and collect the ships. They had to design and build the machinery we would need. They had to collect the food supplies. Two years ago we moved our animals into the ships, and loaded our food and our furnishings, and took our places. We set out. For two years we have journeyed toward Thetis.”

Hoddan felt an instinctive respect for people who would undertake to move themselves, the third of the population of a planet, over a distance that meant years of voyaging. They might have tastes in costume that he did not share, and they might go in for elaborate oratory instead of matter-of-fact statement, but they had courage.

“Yes, sir,” said Hoddan. “I take it this brings us up to the present.”

“No,” said the old man. “Six months ago we considered that we might well begin to train the operators of the machines we would use on Thetis. We uncrated machines. We found ourselves cheated!”

Hoddan found that he could make a fairly dispassionate guess of what advantage — say — Nedda’s father would take of people who would not check on his good faith for two years and until they were two years’ journey away.

“How badly were you cheated?” asked Hoddan.

“Of our lives!” said the angry old man. “Do you know machinery?”

“Some kinds,” admitted Hoddan.

“Come,” said the leader of the fleet.

With a sort of dignity that was theatrical only because he was aware of it, the leader of the people of Colin showed the way. The hold was packed tightly with cases of machinery. One huge crate had been opened and its contents fully disclosed. Others had been hacked at enough to show their contents.

The uncrated machine was a jungle plow. It was a powerful piece of equipment which would attack jungle on a thirty-foot front, knock down all vegetation up to trees of four-foot diameter, shred it, loosen and sift the soil to a three-foot depth, and leave behind it smoothed, broken, pulverized dirt mixed with ground-up vegetation ready to break down into humus. Such a machine would clear tens of acres in a day, turning jungle into farm land ready for crops.

“We ran this for five minutes,” said the bearded man fiercely as Hoddan nodded. He lifted a motor hood.

The motors were burned out. Worthless insulation. Gears were splintered and smashed. Low-grade metal castings. Assembly-bolts had parted. Tractor treads were bent and cracked. It was not a machine except in shape. It was a mock-up in worthless materials which probably cost its maker the twentieth part of what an honest jungle plow would cost to build.

Hoddan felt the anger any man feels when he sees betrayal of that honor a competent machine represents. “It’s not all like this!” he said incredulously. “Some is worse,” said the old man, with dignity. “There are crates which are marked to contain turbines. Their contents are ancient, worn-out brick-making machines. There are crates marked to contain generators. They are filled with corroded irrigation pipes and broken castings. We have shiploads of crush-baled, rusted sheet-metal trimmings! We have been cheated of our lives!”

Hoddan found himself sick with honest fury. The population of one-third of a planet, packed into spaceships for two years and more, would be appropriate subjects for sympathy at the best of times. But it was only accident that had kept these people from landing on Thetis by rocket-since none of their ships would be expected ever to rise again — and from having their men go out and joyfully hack at alien jungle to make room for their machines to land — and then find out they’d brought scrap metal for some thousands of light-years to no purpose.

They’d have starved outright. In fact, they were in not much better case right now. Because there was nowhere else that they could go! There was no new colony which could absorb so many people, with only their bare hands for equipment to live by. There was no civilized, settled world which could admit so many paupers without starving its own population. There was nowhere for these people to go! Hoddan’s anger took on the feeling of guilt He could do nothing, and something had to be done.

“Why — why did you come to Darth?” he asked. “What can you gain by orbiting here? You can’t expect—” The old man faced him. “We are beggars,” he said with bitter dignity. “We stopped here to ask for charity… for the old and worn-out machines the people of Darth can spare us. We will be grateful for even a single rusty plow. Because we have to go on. We can do nothing else. We will land on Thetis. And one plow can mean that a few of us will live who would otherwise die.”

Hoddan ran his hands through his hair. This was not his trouble, but he could not ignore it.

“But again, why Darth?” he asked helplessly. “Why not stop at a world with riches to spare? Darth’s a poor place.”

“Because it is the poor who are generous,” said the bearded man evenly.

Hoddan paced up and down. Presently he said jerkily:

“With all the good will in the world… Darth is poverty-stricken. It has no industries. It has no technology. It has not even roads! It is a planet of little villages and tiny towns. A ship from elsewhere stops here only once a month. Ground communications are almost non-existent. To spread the word of your need over Darth would require months. But to collect what might be given, without roads or even wheeled vehicles — it’s impossible! And I have the only space-vessel on the planet, and it’s not fit for a journey between suns.”

The bearded man waited with a sort of implacable despair.

“But,” continued Hoddan grimly, “I have an idea. I have contacts on Walden. The government of Walden does not regard charity with favor. The need for charity seems a — ah — a criticism of the Waldenian standard of living.”

The bearded man said coldly:

“I can understand that. The hearts of the rich are hardened. The existence of the poor is a reproach to them.”

But Hoddan began suddenly to see real possibilities. This was not a direct move toward the realization of his personal ambitions. But on the other hand, it wasn’t a movement away from them. Hoddan suddenly remembered an oration he’d heard his grandfather give many, many times in the past.

Straight thinking, the old man had said obstinately, is a delusion. You think things out clear and simple, and you can see yourself ruined and your family starving any day! Real things ain’t simple! Any time you try to figure things out so they’s simple and straightforward, you’re gain against nature and you’re going to get ’em mixed up! So when something happens and you’re in a straightforward, hopeless fix, why, you go along with nature! Make it as complicated as you can, and the people who want you in trouble will get hopeless confused and you can get out!

Hoddan adverted to his grandfather’s wisdom, not making it the reason for doing what he could, but accepting the fact that it might possibly apply. He saw one possibility right away. It looked fairly good. After a minute’s examination it looked better. It was astonishing how plausible…

“Hmmmmmm,” he said. “I have planned work of my own, as you may have guessed. I am here because of — ah — people on Walden. If I could make a quick trip to Walden my — hm — present position might let me help you. I cannot promise very much, but if I can borrow even the smallest of your ships for the journey my spaceboat can’t make, why, I may be able to do something. Much more than can be done on Darth!”

The bearded man looked at his companions.

“He seems frank,” he said, “and we can lose nothing. We have stopped our journey and are in orbit. We can wait. Our people should not go to Walden. Fleshpots—”

“I can find a crew,” said Hoddan cheerfully. Inwardly he was tremendously relieved. “If you say the word, I’ll go down to ground and come back with them. I’ll want a very small ship!”

“It will be,” said the old man. “We thank you.”

“Get it inboard, here,” suggested Hoddan, “so I can come inside as before, transfer my crew without spacesuits, and leave my boat in your care until I come back.”

“It shall be done,” said the old man firmly. He added gravely, “You must have had an excellent upbringing, young man, to be willing to live among the poverty-stricken people you describe, and to be willing to go so far to help strangers like ourselves.”

“Eh?” Then Hoddan said enigmatically. “What lessons I shall apply to your affairs, I learned at the knee of my beloved grandfather.”

Of course, his grandfather was head of the most notorious gang of pirates on the disreputable planet Zan, but Hoddan found himself increasingly respectful of the old gentleman as he gained experience on various worlds.

He went briskly back to his spaceboat. On the way he made verbal arrangements for the enterprise he’d envisioned so swiftly. It was remarkable how two sets of troubles could provide suggestions for their joint alleviation. He actually saw possible achievement before him. Even in electronics!

By the time the cargo-hold was again pumped empty and the great door opened to the vastness of space, Hoddan had a very broad view of things. He’d said that same day to Fani that a practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a sacrifice for others’ welfare. He began to suspect, now, that the welfare of others can often coincide with one’s own.

He needed some rather extensive changes in the relationship of the cosmos to himself. Walden was prepared to pay bribes for him. Don Loris felt it necessary to have him confined somewhere. There were a number of Darthian gentlemen who would assuredly like to slaughter him if he weren’t kept out of their reach in some cozy dungeon. But up to now there had been not even a practical way to leave Darth, to act upon Walden, or even to change his status in the eyes of Darthians.

He backed out of the big ship and consulted the charts of the lifeboat. They had been consulted before, of course, to locate the landing-grid which did not answer calls. He found its position. He began to compare the chart with what he saw from out here in orbit above Darth. He identified a small ocean, with Darth’s highest mountain chain just beyond its eastern limit. He identified a river system, emptying into that sea. And here he began to get rid of his excess velocity, because the landing-grid was not very far distant.

To a scientific pilot, his maneuvering from that time on would have been a complex task. The advantage of computation over astrogation by ear, however, is largely a matter of saving fuel. A perfectly computed course for landing will get down to ground with the use of the least number of centigrams of fuel. But fuel-efficient maneuvers are rarely time-efficient ones.

Hoddan hadn’t the time or the data for computation. He swung the spaceboat end for end, very judgematically used rocketpower to slow himself to a suitable east-west velocity, and at the last and proper instant applied full power for deceleration and went down practically like a stone. One cannot really learn this. It has to be absorbed through the pores of one’s skin. That was the way Hoddan had absorbed it, on Zan.

Within minutes, then, the stronghold of Don Loris was startled by a roaring mutter in the sky overhead. Helmeted sentries on the battlements stared upward. The mutter rose to a howl, and the howl to the volume of thunder, and the thunder to a very great noise which made loose pebbles dance and quiver.

Then there was a speck of white cloudiness in the late afternoon sky. It grew swiftly in size, and a winking blue-white light appeared in its center. That light grew brighter and the noise managed somehow to increase and presently the ruddy sunlight was diluted by light from the rockets.

Then, abruptly, the rockets cut off, and something dark plunged downward, and the rockets flamed again and a vast mass of steam arose from scorched ground. The space-boat lay in a circle of wildly smoking, carbonized Darthian soil. The return of tranquility after so much tumult was startling.

Absolutely nothing happened. Hoddan unstrapped himself from the pilot’s seat, examined his surroundings thoughtfully, and turned off the vision apparatus. He went back and examined the feeding arrangements of the boat. He’d had nothing to eat since breakfast in this same time zone. The food in store was extremely easy to prepare and not especially appetizing. He ate with great deliberation, continuing to make plans which milked the necessities of the emigrants from Colin to his own plans and predicaments. He also thought very respectfully about his grandfather’s opinions on many subjects, including space-piracy. Hoddan found himself much more in agreement with his grandfather than he’d believed possible.

Outside the boat, birds which had dived to ground and cowered there during the boat’s descent now flew about again, their terror forgotten. Horses which had galloped wildly in their pastures, or kicked in panic in the castle stalls, returned to their oats and hay.

And there were human reactions. Don Loris had been in an excessively fretful state of mind since the conclusion of his deal with the pair from Walden. Hoddan had estimated that Don Loris ought to get a half-million credits for delivering him to Derec and the Waldenian police. But actually Don Loris had been unable to get the cop to promise more than half so much. But he’d closed the deal and sent for Hoddan — and Hoddan was gone.

Now the landing of this spaceboat roused a lively uneasiness in Don Loris. It might be new bargainers for Hoddan. It might be anything. Hoddan had said he had a secret. This might be it. Don Loris vexedly tried to contrive some useful skulduggery without the information to base it on.

Fani looked at the spaceboat with bright eyes. Thai was back at the castle. He’d told her of Hoddan riding up to the spaceboat near another chieftain’s castle, entering it, and then taking to the skies in an aura of flames, smoke and thunder. Fani hoped that he might have returned. But she worried while she waited for him to do something.

Hoddan did nothing. The spaceboat gave no sign of life.

The sun set, and the sky twinkled with darting lights which flew toward the west and vanished. Twilight followed, and more lights flashed across the heavens as if pursuing the sun. Fani had learned to associate three and then nine such lights with spacecraft, but she could not dream of a fleet of hundreds. She dismissed the lights from her mind, being much more concerned with Hoddan. He would be in as bad a fix as ever if he came out of the boat.

Twilight remained, a half-light in which all things looked much more charming than they really were. And Don Loris, reduced to peevish sputtering, summoned Thai. It should be remembered that Don Loris knew nothing of the disappearance of the spaceboat from his neighbor’s land. He knew nothing of Thai’s journey with Hoddan. But he did remember that Hoddan had seemed unworried at breakfast and explained his calm by saying that he had a secret. The feudal chieftain was worried that this spaceboat contained Hoddan’s secret.

“Thai,” said Don Loris peevishly, sitting beside the great fireplace in the enormous hall. “Thai, you know this Bron Hoddan better than anybody else.”

Thai breathed heavily. He turned pale.

“Where is he?” demanded Don Loris.

“I don’t know,” said Thai. It was true. So far as he was concerned, Hoddan had vanished into the sky.

“What does he plan to do?” demanded Don Loris.

“I don’t know,” said Thai helplessly.

“Where does that — that thing outside the castle come from?”

“I don’t know,” said Thai.

Don Loris drummed on the arm of his intricately carved chair.

“I don’t like people who don’t know things!” he said fretfully. “There must be somebody in that thing. Why don’t they show themselves? What are they here for? Why did they come down, especially here? Because of Bron Hoddan?” don’t know,” said Thai humbly.

“Then go find out!” snapped Don Loris. “Take a reasonable guard with you. The thing must have a door. Knock on it and ask who’s inside and why they came here. Tell them I sent you to ask.”

Thai saluted. With his teeth chattering, he gathered a half-dozen of his fellows and went tramping out the castle gate. Some of the half-dozen had been involved in the rescue of the Lady Fani from Ghek. They were still in a happy mood because of the plunder they’d brought back. It was much more than a mere retainer could usually hope for in a year.

“What’s this all about, Thai?” demanded one of them as Thai arranged them in two lines to make a proper military appearance, spears dressed upright and shields on their left arms.

“Frrrrd harch!” barked Thai, and they swung into motion. Thai said gloomily, “Don Loris said to find out who landed that thing out yonder. He keeps asking about Bron Hoddan, too.”

He strode in step with the others. The seven men made an impressively soldierly group, tramping away from the castle wall.

“What happened to’ him?” asked a rear-file man. He marched on, eyes front, chest out, spear swinging splendidly in time with his marching. “That lad has a nose for loot! Don’t take it himself, though. If he set up in business as a chieftain, now—”

“Hup, two, three, four,” muttered Thai. “Hup, two, three—”

“Don Loris’s a hard chieftain,” growled the right-hand man in the second file. “Plenty of grub and beer, but no fighting and no loot. I didn’t get to go with you the other day, but what you brought back…”

“Wasn’t half of what was there,” mourned a front-file man. “Wasn’t half! Those pistols he issued got shot out and we had to get outta there fast! Hm… here’s this thing, Thai. “What do we do with it?”

“Hrrrmp, halt!” barked Thai. He stared at the motionless, seemingly lifeless, shapeless spaceboat. He’d seen one like it earlier today. That one spouted fire and went up out of sight. He was wary of this one. He grumbled. “Those pipes in the back of it, steer clear of ’em. They spit fire. No door on this side. Don Loris said knock on the door. We go around the front. Frrrrd harch! two, three, four, hup, two, three, four. Left turn here and mind those rocks. Don Loris’d give us hell if somebody fell down. Left turn again. Hup, two, three, four.”

The seven men tramped splendidly around the front of the lifeboat. On the far side, its bulk hid even Don Loris’ castle from view. The six spearmen, with Thai, came to a second halt.

“Here goes,” rumbled Thai. “I tell you, boys, if she starts to spit fire, you get the hell away!”

He marched up to spaceboat’s port. He knocked on it There was no response. He knocked again.

Hoddan opened the door. He nodded cheerfully to Thai.

“Afternoon, Thai! Glad to see you. I’ve been hoping you’d come over this way. Who’s with you?” He peered through the semi-darkness. “Some of the boys, eh? Come in!” He beckoned and said casually, “Lean your spears against the hull, there.”

Thai hesitated and was lost. The others obeyed. There were clatterings as the spears came to rest against the metal hull. Six of Don Loris’ retainers followed Thai admiringly into the spaceboat’s interior, to gaze at it and at Bron Hoddan who so recently had given them the chance to loot a nearby castle.

“Sit down!” said Hoddan cordially. “If you want to feel what a spaceboat’s really like, clasp the seat-belts around you. You’ll feel exactly like you’re about to make a journey out of atmosphere. That’s it, lean back. You notice there are no viewports in the hull? That’s because we use these vision screens to see around with.”

He flicked on the screens. Thai and his companions were charmed to see the landscape outside portrayed on screens. Hoddan shifted the sensitivity point toward infrared, and details came out that would have been invisible to the naked eye.

“With the port closed,” said Hoddan, “like this,” the port clanged shut and grumbled for half a second as the locking-dogs went home, “we’re all set for take-off. I need only get into the pilot’s seat…” he did so, “and throw on the fuel pump.” A tiny humming sounded. “And we move when I advance this throttle!”

He pressed the firing-stud. There was a soul-shaking roar. There was a terrific pressure. The seven men from Don Loris’ stronghold were pressed back in their seats with an overwhelming, irresistible pressure which held them absolutely helpless. Their mouths dropped open. Appalled protests tried to come out, but were pushed back by the seemingly ever-increasing acceleration.

The screens, showing the outside, displayed a great and confused tumult of smoke and fumes and dust to rearward. They showed only stars ahead. Those stars grew brighter and brighter, as the roar of the rockets diminished to a deafening sound. Suddenly the disk of the local sun appeared, rising above the horizon to the west. The spaceboat, naturally, overtook it as it rose into an orbit headed east to west instead of the other way about.

Presently Hoddan turned off the fuel pump. He turned to look thoughtfully at the seven men. They were very pale. They all sat very still, because they could see in the vision-screens that a strange, mottled, again-sunlit surface flowed past them with an appalling velocity. They were very much afraid that they knew what it was. They did. It was the surface of the planet Darth.

Tin glad you boys came along,” said Hoddan. “Well catch up with the fleet in a moment or two. The pirate fleet, you know! I’m very pleased with you. Not many groundlings would volunteer for space-piracy, not even with the loot there is in it.”

Thai choked slightly, but no one else made a sound. No one even protested. Protests would have been no use. There were looks of anguish, but nothing else. Hoddan was the only one in the spaceboat who had the least idea of how to get it down again. His passengers had to go along for the ride, no matter where it led.

Numbly, they waited for what would befall.