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 victim-followers once the spaceboat was still.
"This," he said in a manner which could only be described as one of smiling ferocity, "this 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 to 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' strong-hold with your loot after the one voyage. If you don't—" He grinned mirthlessly at them, "if you don't, out the airlock 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 vision screens, so ending any views 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, "Hmmmmm 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."
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 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 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 space 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 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 them 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 . . ."
"You're pirates now," Hoddan told him with a sort of genial bloodthirstiness. "You'll do what I tell you until we fight. Then you'll fight well or die. That's all you need to know!"
He left them. When men are to be led it is rarely wise to discuss policy or tactics with them. Most men work best when they know only what is expected of them. Then they can't get confused and they do not get ideas of how to do things better.
Hoddan inspected the yacht more carefully. There were still traces of decorative features which had nothing to do with spaceworthiness. But the mere antiquity of the ship made Hoddan hunt more carefully. He found a small compartment packed solidly with supplies. A supply cabinet did not belong where it was. He hauled out stuff to make sure. It was—it had been—a machine shop in miniature. In the early days, before space-phones were long-range devices, a yacht or a ship that went beyond orbital distance was strictly on its own. If there were a breakdown it was strictly of private concern. It had to be repaired by its own, or else. So all early spacecraft carried amazingly complete equipment for repairs. Only liners had been equipped that way in recent generations, and it is almost unheard-of for their tool shops to be used.
But there was the remnant of a shop on the yacht that Hoddan was using for his errand to Walden. He'd told the emigrant leaders that he went to ask for charity. He'd just assured his followers that their journey was for piracy. Now . . .