Hoddan worked out the angles and the speeds. He had to dive past Walden, swing around its farther side, and come back like a boomerang so his and the liner's speed and line of motion would match up into a collision course. Then rockets . . .
He put the yacht on the line required. He threw on full power. Actually, he headed partly away from his intended victim. The little yacht plunged forward. Nothing seemed to happen. Time passed. Hoddan had nothing to do but worry. He worried.
Thal tapped on the door again.
"About time to get ready to fight?" he asked dolefully.
"Not yet," said Hoddan. "I'm running away from our victim, now."
Another half-hour. The course changed. The yacht was around behind Walden. The whole planet lay between it and its intended prey. The course of the small ship curved, now. It would pass almost close enough to clip the topmost tips of Walden's atmosphere. There was nothing for Hoddan to do but think morbid thoughts. He thought them.
The Lawlor drive began to burble. He cut it off. He sat gloomily in the control-room, occasionally glancing at the nearing expanse of rushing mottled surface presented by the now-nearby planet. Its attraction bent the path of the yacht. It was now a parabolic curve.
Presently the surface diminished a little. The yacht was increasing its distance from it. Hoddan used the telescope. He searched the space ahead with full-width field. He found the liner. It rose steadily. The grid still thrust it upward with an even, continuous acceleration. It had to be not less than forty thousand miles out before it could take to over-drive. But at that distance it would have an outward velocity which would take it on out indefinitely. At ten thousand miles, certainly, the grid-fields would let go.
They did. Hoddan could tell because the liner wobbled slightly. It was free. It was no longer held solidly. From now on it floated up on momentum.
Hoddan nibbled at his fingernails. There was nothing to be done for forty minutes more. Presently there was nothing to be done for thirty. For twenty. Ten. Five. Three. Two—
The liner was barely twenty miles away when Hoddan fired his rockets. They made a colossal cloud of vapor in emptiness. The yacht stirred faintly, shifted deftly, lost just a suitable amount of velocity—which now was nearly straight up from the planet—and moved with precision and directness toward the liner. Hoddan stirred his controls and swung the whole small ship. He flipped a switch that cut out certain elements of the Lawlor unit and cut in those others which made the modified drive unit into a ball-lightning projector.
A flaming speck of pure incandescence sped from the yacht through emptiness. It would miss . . . No! Hoddan swerved it. It struck the liner's hull. It would momentarily paralyze every bit of electric equipment in the ship. It would definitely not go unnoticed.
"Calling liner," said Hoddan painfully into a microphone. "Calling liner! We are pirates, attacking your ship. You have ten seconds to get into your lifeboats or we will hull you!"
He settled back, again nibbling at his fingernails. He was acutely disturbed. At the end of ten seconds the distance between the two ships was perceptibly less.
He flung a second ball-lightning bolt across the diminished space. He sent it whirling round and round the liner in a tight spiral. He ended by having it touch the liner's bow. Liquid light ran over the entire hull.
"Your ten seconds are up," he said worriedly. "If you don't get out—"
But then he relaxed. A boat-blister on the liner opened. The boat did not release itself. It could not possibly take on its complement of passengers and crew in so short a time. The opening of the blister was a sign of surrender.
The two first ball-lightning bolts were miniatures. Hoddan now projected a full-sized ball. It glittered viciously in emptiness. It sped toward the liner and hung off its side, menacingly. The yacht from Darth moved steadily closer. Five miles. Two.
"All out," said Hoddan regretfully. "We can't wait any longer!"
A boat darted away from the liner. A second. A third and fourth and fifth. The last boat lingered desperately. The yacht was less than a mile away when it broke free and plunged frantically toward the planet it had left a little while before. The other boats were already streaking downward, trails of rocket fumes expanding behind them. The crew of the landing-grid would pick them up for safe and gentle landing.
Hoddan sighed in relief. He played delicately upon the yacht's rocket controls. He carefully maneuvered the very last of the novelties he had built into the originally simple Lawlor drive unit. The two ships came together with a distant clanking sound. It seemed horribly loud.
Thal jerked open the door, ashen white.
"W-we hit something! Wh-when do we fight?"
"I forgot. The fighting's over," Hoddan said ruefully. "But bring your stun-pistols. Nobody'd stay behind, but somebody might have gotten left."
He rose, to take over the captured ship.
Chapter 9
Normally, at overdrive cruising speed, it would be a week's journey from Walden to the planet Krim. Hoddan made it in five days. There was reason. He wanted to beat the news of his piracy to Krim. He could endure suspicion, and he wouldn't mind doubt, but he did not want certainty of his nefarious behavior to interfere with the purposes of his call.
The spaceyacht, sealed tightly, floated in an orbit far out in emptiness. The big ship went down alone by landing-grid. It glittered brightly as it descended. When it touched ground and the grid's forcefields cut off, it looked very modern and very crisp and strictly businesslike. Actually, the capture of this particular liner was a bit of luck, for Hoddan. It was not one of the giant inter-cluster ships which make runs of thousands of light-years and deign to stop only at very major planets. It was a medium ship of five thousand tons, designed for service in the Horsehead Nebula region. It was brand-new and on the way from its builders to its owners when Hoddan interfered. Naturally, though, it carried cargo on its maiden voyage.
Hoddan spoke curtly to the control-room of the grid. "I'm non-sked," he explained. "New ship. I got a freak charter-party over on Walden for from here for Darth and have to get rid of my cargo. How about shifting me to delay space until I can talk to some brokers?"
The forcefields came on again and the liner moved very delicately to a position at the side of the grid's central space. There it would be out of the way.
Hoddan dressed himself carefully in garments found in the liner's skipper's cabin. He found Thal wearing an apron and an embittered expression. He ceased to wield a mop as Hoddan halted before him.
"I'm going ashore," said Hoddan crisply. "You're in charge until I get back."
"In charge of what?" demanded Thal bitterly. "Of a bunch of male housemaids! I run a mop! And me a Darthian gentleman! I thought I was being a pirate! What do I do? I scrub floors! I wash paint! I stencil cases in cargo-holds! I paint over names and put others in their places! Me, a Darthian gentleman!"
"No," said Hoddan. "A pirate. If you don't get back, you and the others can't work this ship, and presently the police of Krim will ask why. They'll recheck my careful forgeries, and you'll all be hung for piracy. So don't let anybody in. Don't talk to anybody. If you do, pfft!"