"I tell y', piracy's what keeps the galaxy's business thriving. Everybody knows business suffers when retail trade slacks down. It backs up the movement of inventories. They get too big. That backs up orders to the factories. They lay off men. And when men are laid off they don't have money to spend, so retail trade slacks off some more, and that backs up inventories some more, and that backs up orders to factories and makes unemployment and hurts retail trade again. It's a feedback. See?" It was Hoddan's grandfather's custom, at this point, to stare shrewdly at each of his listeners in turn. "But suppose somebody pirates a ship? The owners don't lose. It's insured. They order another ship built right away. Men get hired to build it and they're paid money to spend in retail trade and that moves inventories and industry picks up. More'n that, more people insure against piracy. Insurance companies hire more clerks and bookkeepers. They get more money for retail trade and to move inventories and keep factories going and get more people hired. Y'see . . . it's piracy that keeps business in this galaxy goin'!"
Hoddan had doubts about this, but it could not be entirely wrong. He'd put a good part of the proceeds of his piracy in risk-insurance stocks, and he counted on them to make all his actions as benevolent to everybody concerned as his intentions had been, and were. But it might not be true enough. It might be less than—well—sufficiently true in a particular instance. And therefore . . .
Then he saw how things could be worked out so that there could be no doubt. He began to work out the details. He drifted off to sleep in the act of composing a letter in his head to his grandfather on the pirate planet Zan.
When morning came on Krim, catawheel trucks came bringing gigantic agricultural machines. There came generators, turbines and tanks of plastic; another bevy of trucks brought vision-tape instructors and great boxes full of tape for them. There were machine tools and cutting-tips—these last in vast quantity—and very many items that the emigrants of Colin probably would not expect, and might not even recognize. The cargo holds of the liner filled.
He went to the office of his attorneys. He read and signed papers, in an atmosphere of great dignity and ethical purpose. The lawyer's clerk attended him to the police office, where seven dreary Darthians with over-sized hangovers tried dismally to cheer themselves by memories of how they got that way. He got them out and to the ship. The lawyer's clerk produced a rather weighty if small box with an air of extreme solemnity.
"The currency you wanted, sir."
"Thank you," said Hoddan. "That's the last of our business?"
"Yes, sir," said the clerk. He hesitated, and for the first time showed a trace of human curiosity. "Could I ask a question, sir, about piracy?"
"Why not?" asked Hoddan. "Go ahead."
"When you—ah—captured this ship, sir," said the clerk hopefully, "Did you—ah—shoot the men and keep the women?"
Hoddan sighed.
"Much," he said regretfully, "much as I hate to spoil an enlivening theory—no. These are modern days. Efficiency has invaded even the pirate business. I used my crew for floor scrubbing and cooking."
He closed the port gently and went up to the control-room to call the landing-grid operators. In minutes the captured liner, loaded down again, lifted toward the stars.
And all the journey back to Darth was as anticlimatic as that. There was no trouble finding the spaceyacht in its remote orbit. Hoddan sent out an unlocking signal, and a keyed transmitter began to send a signal on which to home. When the liner nudged alongside it, Hoddan's last contrivance operated and the yacht clung fast to the larger ship's hull. There were four days in overdrive. There were three or four pauses for position-finding. The stopover on Krim had cost some delay, but Hoddan arrived back at a positive sight of Darth's sun within a day or so. Then there was little or no time lost in getting into orbit with the junk yard spacefleet of the emigrants. Shortly thereafter he called the leader's ship with only mild worries about possible disasters that might have happened while he was away.
"Calling the leader's ship," he said crisply. "Calling the leader's ship! This is Bron Hoddan, reporting back from Walden with a ship and machinery contributed for your use!"
The harsh voice of the bearded old leader of the emigrants seemed somehow broken when he replied. He called down blessings on Hoddan, who could use them. Then there was the matter of getting the emigrants on board the new ship. They didn't know how to use the lifeboat tubes. Hoddan had to demonstrate. But shortly after, there were twenty, thirty, fifty of the folk from Colin, feverishly searching the ship and incredulously reporting what they found.
"It's impossible!" said the old man. "It's impossible!"
"I wouldn't say that," said Hoddan. "It's unlikely, but it's happened. I'm only afraid it's not enough."
"It is many times more than what we hoped," said the old man humbly. "Only—" he stopped. "We are more grateful than we can say."
Hoddan took a deep breath.
"I'd like to take my crew back home," he explained. "And come back. Perhaps I can be useful explaining things. And I'd like to ask a great favor of you—for my own work."
"But naturally," said the old man. "Of course. We will await your return."
Hoddan was relieved. There seemed to be a strange limitation to the happiness of the emigrants. They were passionately rejoiceful over the agricultural machinery. But they seemed dutifully rather than truly happy over the microfilm library. The vision-tape instructors were the objects of polite comment only. Hoddan felt a vague discomfort. There seemed to be a sort of secret desperation in the atmosphere, which they would not admit or mention. But he was coming back. Of course.
He brought the spaceboat over to the new liner. He hooked onto a lifeboat blister and his seven Darthians crawled through the lifeboat tube. Hoddan pulled away quickly before somebody thought to ask why there were no lifeboats in the places so plainly made for them.
He headed downward when the landmarks on Darth's surface told him that Don Loris' castle would shortly come over the horizon. He was just touching atmosphere when it did. The boat's tanks had been refilled, and he burned fuel recklessly to make a dramatic landing within a hundred yards of the battlements where Fani had once thoughtfully had a coil of rope ready for him.
Heads peered at the lifeboat over those same battlements now, but the gate was closed. It stayed closed. There was somehow an atmosphere of suspicion amounting to enmity. Hoddan felt unwelcome.
"All right, boys," he said resignedly. "Out with you and to the castle. Here's your loot from the voyage." He counted out for each of them rather more actual cash than any of them really believed in. "And I want you to take this box to Don Loris. It's a gift from me. And I want to consult with him about cooperation between the two of us in some plans I have. Ask if I may come and talk to him."
His seven former spearmen tumbled out. They marched gleefully to the castle gate. Hoddan saw them make a tantalizing display of the large sums of cash to the watchers above them. Thal held up the box for Don Loris. It was the box the lawyer's clerk had turned over to him, with a tidy sum in cash in it. The sum was partly depleted now. Hoddan had paid off his involuntary crew with it. But there was still more in it than Don Loris would have gotten from Walden for selling him out.
The castle gate opened, as if grudgingly. The seven went in.
Time passed. Much time. Hoddan went over the arguments he meant to use on Don Loris. He needed to make up a very great sum, and it could be done thus-and-so, but thus-and-so required occasional pirate raids, which called for crews, and if Don Loris would encourage his retainers . . . He could have gone to another Darthian chieftain, of course, but he knew what kind of scoundrel Don Loris was. He'd have to find out about another man.