The Murray Leinster Megapack

by Murray Leinster

  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 he ought to get a half-million credits for Hoddan delivered to Derec and the Waldenian police. He’d been unable to get the police official—Derec merely sat miserably by and said nothing—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. Thal was back at the castle. He’d told her of Hoddan riding up to the spaceboat near another chieftain’s castle, entering it, and that then it had taken to the skies in an aura of flames and smoke and thunder. Fani hoped that he might have returned here in it. 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 fairy half-light in which all things looked much more charming than they really were. And Don Loris, reduced to peevish sputtering by pure mystery, summoned Thal to him. It should be remembered that Don Loris knew nothing of the disappearance of the spaceboat from his neighbor’s land. He knew nothing of Thal’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 worried lest this spaceboat be it.

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

  Thal breathed heavily. He turned pale.

  “Where is he?” demanded Don Loris.

  “I don’t know,” said Thal. 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 Thal helplessly.

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

  “I don’t know,” said Thal.

  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?”

  “I don’t know,” said Thal 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.”

  Thal saluted. With his teeth tending to chatter, 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, Thal?” demanded one of them as Thal arranged them in two lines to make a proper military appearance, spears dressed upright and garrison-shields on their left arms.

  “Frrrrd harch!” barked Thal, and they swung into motion. “Two, three, four, Hup, two, three, four. Hup, two, three—” The cadence was established.

  Thal said gloomily, “Don Loris said to find out who landed that thing out yonder. And he keeps asking me 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-shaft 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 Thal. “Hup, two, three—”

  “Don Loris’ 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 characters 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-m-m.… Here’s this thing, Thal. What do we do with it?”

  “Hrrrmp, halt!” barked Thal. 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 Thal, came to a second halt.

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

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

  Hoddan opened the door. He nodded cheerfully to Thal.

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

  Thal hesitated and was lost. The others obeyed. There were clatterings as the steel spearheads came to rest against the metal hull. Six of Don Loris’ retainers followed Thal admiringly into the spaceboat’s interior, to gaze at it and that Bron Hoddan who so recently had given three of them and nearly half a score of their fellows 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 visionscreens to see around with.”

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

  “With the boatport 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 acceleratio
n.

  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 merely 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 sat unanimously very still, because they could see in the vision plates 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, well below them.

  “I’m glad you boys came along,” said Hoddan. “We’ll 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!”

  Thal 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, because 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 he’d taken them for, no matter where it led.

  Numbly, they waited for what would befall.

  VIII

  Hoddan did not worry about his followers—captives—noting the obsolescence of the space fleet into which they presently drifted. Ancient hulks and impractical oddities did not seem antique or freakish to them. They had no standards in such matters. The planet Darth seemed slightly off to one side in space, at some times, and at others it seemed underfoot while at others it looked directly overhead. At all times it moved visibly, while the spaceboat and the ships in orbit seemed merely to float in nearly fixed positions. When the dark part of Darth appeared to roll toward the spaceboat again all the bright specks which were ships about them winked out of sight and there were only faraway stars and a vast blackness off to one side like nothingness made visible.

  The spearmen were wholly subdued when there was light once more and eccentric shapes around them. There was a ring-ship—the hull like a metal wheel with a huge tire, with pipe passages from the tire part to the hub where the control room was located. It seemed unbelievable that such a relic could still exist, dating as it did from the period before gravity-fields could be put into spacecraft. It would have provided a crazy sort of gravity by spinning as it limped from one place to another. Whoever had collected this fleet for the emigrants from Colin must have required only one thing—that there be a hull. Given something that would hold air, a Lawlor drive, a gravity-unit, and air apparatus would turn it into a ship that could go into overdrive and hence cross the galaxy at need. Those who bargained with the emigrants had been content to furnish nothing more than that.

  But this could not be appreciated by Hoddan’s involuntary crew. The spaceboat drew up alongside the gigantic hulk which was the leader’s. The seven Darthians were still numbed by their kidnaping and the situation in which they found themselves. They looked with dull eyes at the mountainous object they approached. It had actually been designed as a fighter-carrier of space, intended to carry smaller craft to fight nonexistent warships under conditions which never came about. It must have been sold for scrap a couple of hundred years since, and patched up for this emigration.

  Hoddan waited for the huge door to open. It did. He headed into the opening, noticing as he did so that an object two or three times the size of the spaceboat was already there. It cut down the room for maneuvering, but a thing once done is easier thereafter. Hoddan got the boat inside, and there was a very small scraping and the great door closed before the boat could drift out again.

  Hoddan turned to his companions—followers—victims, once the spaceboat was still.

  “This,” he said in a manner which could only be described as one of smiling ferocity, “is a pirate ship, belonging to the pirate fleet we passed through on the way here. It’s manned by characters so murderous that their leaders don’t dare land anywhere away from their home star-cluster, or all the galaxy would combine against them, to exterminate them or be exterminated. You’ve joined that fleet. You’re going to get out of this boat and march over that ship yonder. Then you’re going to be space pirates under me.”

  They quivered, but did not protest.

  “I’ll try you for one voyage,” he told them. “There will be plunder. There will be pirate revels. If you serve faithfully and fight well, I’ll return you to Don Loris’ stronghold with your loot after the one voyage. If you don’t—” He grinned mirthlessly at them—”out the air lock with you, to float forever between the stars. Understand?”

  The last was pure savagery. They cringed. The outside-pressure meter went up to normal. Hoddan turned off the visionscreens, so ending any view of the interior of the hold. He opened the port and went out. Sitting in something like continued paralysis in their seats, the seven spearmen of Darth heard his voice in conversation outside the boat. They could catch no words, but Hoddan’s tone was strictly businesslike. He came back.

  “All right,” he said shortly. “Thal, march ’em over.”

  Thal gulped. He loosened his seat belt. The enlistment of the seven in the pirate fleet was tacitly acknowledged. They were unarmed save for the conventional large knives at their belts.

  “Frrrd, harch!” rasped Thal with a lump in his throat. “Two, three, four. Hup two, three, four. Hup—”

  Seven men marched dismally out of the spaceboat and down to the floor of the huge hold. Eyes front, chests out, throats dry, they marched to the larger but still small vessel that shared this hold compartment. They marched into that ship. Thal barked, “Halt!” and they stopped. They waited.

  Hoddan came in very matter-of-factly only moments later. He closed the entrance port, so sealing the ship. He nodded approvingly.

  “You can break ranks now,” he said. “There’s food and such stuff around. The ship’s yours. But don’t turn knobs or push buttons until you’ve asked me what for!”

  He went forward, and a door closed behind him.

  He looked at the control board, and could have done with a little information himself. When the ship was built, generations ago, there’d been controls installed which would be quite useless now. When the present working instruments were installed, it had been done so hastily that the wires and relays behind them were not concealed, and it was these that gave him the clues to understand them.

  The space ark’s door opened. Hoddan backed his ship out. Its rockets had surprising power. He reflected that the Lawlor drive wouldn’t have been designed for this present ship, either. There’d probably been a quantity order for so many Lawlor drives, and they’d been installed on whatever needed a modern drive-system, which was every ship in the fleet. But since this was one of the smallest craft in the lot, with its low mass it should be fast.

  “We’ll see,” he said to nobody in particular.

  Out in emptiness, but naturally sharing the orbit of the ship from which it had just come, Hoddan tried it out tentatively. He got the feel of it. Then as a matter of simple, rule-of-thumb astrogation, he got from a low orbit to a five-diameter height where the Lawlor drive would take hold by mere touches of rocket power. It was simply a matter of stretching the orbit to extreme eccentricity as all the ships went round the planet. After the fourth go round he was fully five diameters out at aphelion. He touched the Lawlor drive button and everybody had that very peculiar disturbance of all their senses which accompanies going into overdrive. The small craft sped through emptiness at a high multiple of the speed of light.

  Hoddan’s knowledge of astrogation was strictly practical. He went over his ship. From a look at it outside he’d guessed that it once had been a yacht. Various touches inside verified that idea. There were two staterooms. All the hull-spac
e was for living and supplies. None was for cargo. He nodded. There was a faint mustiness about it. But there’d been a time when it was some rich man’s pride.

  He went back to the control room to make an estimate. From the pilot’s seat one could see a speck of brightness directly ahead. Infinitesimal dots of brightness appeared, grew swiftly brighter and then darted outward. As they darted they disappeared because their motion became too swift to follow. There were, of course, methods of measuring this phenomenon so that one could get an accurate measure of one’s speed in overdrive. Hoddan had no instrument for the purpose. But he had the feel of things. This was a very fast ship indeed, at full Lawlor thrust.

  Presently he went out to the central cabin. His followers had found provisions. There were novelties—hydroponic fruit, for instance—and they’d gloomily stuffed themselves. They were almost resigned, now. Memory of the loot he’d led other men to at Ghek’s castle inclined them to be hopeful. But they looked uneasy when he stopped where they were gathered.

  “Well?” he said sharply.

  Thal swallowed.

  “We have been companions, Bron Hoddan,” he said unhappily. “We fought together in great battles, two against fifty, and we plundered the slain.”

  “True enough,” agreed Hoddan. If Thal wanted to edit his memories of the fighting at the spaceport, that was all right with him. “Now we’re headed for something much better.”

  “But what?” asked Thal miserably. “Here we are high above our native world—”

  “Oh, no!” said Hoddan. “You couldn’t even pick out its sun, from where we are now!”

  Thal gulped.

  “I…do not understand what you want with us,” he protested. “We are not experienced in space! We are simple men—”