But suddenly he opened his eyes. Somebody banged on the door once more. A voice cried angrily:
"Bron Hoddan! Wake up or I'll go away and let whatever happens to you, happen! Wake up!"
It was the voice of the Lady Fani, at once indignant, tearful, solicitous and angry.
"Hello. I'm awake. What's up?"
"Come out of there!" cried Fani's voice, simultaneously exasperated and filled with anxiety. "Things are happening! Somebody's here from Walden! They want you!"
Hoddan could not believe it. It was too unlikely. But he opened the door and Thal came in, and Fani followed.
"Good morning," said Hoddan automatically.
Thal said mournfully:
"A bad morning, Bron Hoddan! A bad morning! Men from Walden came riding over the hills."
"How many?"
"Two," said Fani angrily. "A fat man in a uniform, and a young man who looks like he wants to cry. They had an escort of retainers from one of my father's neighbors. They were stopped at the gate, of course, and they sent a written message to my father, and he had them brought inside right away."
Hoddan shook his head.
"They probably said that I'm a criminal and that I should be sent back to Walden. How'd they get down? The landing-grid isn't working."
"They landed in something that used rockets," Fani said viciously. "It came down close to a castle over that way—only six or seven miles from the spaceport. They asked for you. They said you'd landed from the last liner from Walden. And because you and Thal fought so splendidly, why everybody's talking about you. So the chieftain over there accepted a present of money from them, and gave them horses as a return gift, and sent them here with a guard. Thal talked to the guards. The men from Walden have promised huge gifts of money if they help take you back to the thing that uses rockets."
"I suspect," said Hoddan, "that it would be a spaceboat. Yes. With a built-in, tool-steel cell to keep me from telling anybody how to make—" He stopped and grimaced. "They'd take me to the spaceport in a soundproof can and I'd be hauled back to Walden. Fine!"
"What are you going to do?" asked Fani anxiously.
Hoddan's ideas were not clear. But Darth was not a healthy place for him. It was extremely likely, for example, that Don Loris would feel that the very bad jolt he'd given that astute schemer's plans, by using stun-pistols at the spaceport, had been neatly canceled out by his rescue of Fani. He would regard Hoddan with a mingled gratitude and aversion that would amount to calm detachment. Don Loris could not be counted on as a really warm, personal friend.
On the other hand, the social system of Darth was not favorable to a stranger with an already lurid reputation for fighting. Another disadvantage was that his weapons would be useless unless frequently recharged; he couldn't count on always being able to do that.
As a practical matter, his best bet was probably to investigate the nine inexplicable ships overhead. They hadn't cooperated with the Waldenians. It could be inferred that no confidential relationship existed up there. It was even possible that the nine ships and the Waldenians didn't know of each other's presence. There is a lot of room in space. If both called on ship-frequency and listened on ground-frequency, they would not have picked up each other's summons to the ground.
"You've got to do something!" insisted Fani. "I saw father talking to them! He looked happy, and he never looks happy unless he's planning some skulduggery!"
"I think," said Hoddan, "that I'll have some breakfast, if I may. As soon as I fasten up my shipbag."
Thal said mournfully:
"If anything happens to you, something will happen to me too, because I helped you."
"Breakfast first," said Hoddan. "That, as I understand it, should make it disgraceful for your father to have my throat cut. But beyond that . . ." He said gloomily, "Thal, get a couple of horses outside the wall. We may need to ride somewhere. I'm very much afraid we will. But first I'd like to have some breakfast."
"But aren't you going to face them? You could shoot them!" Fani said.
Hoddan shook his head.
"It wouldn't solve anything. Anyhow a practical man like your father won't sell me out before he's sure I can't pay off better. I'll bet on a conference with me before he makes a deal."
Fani stamped her foot.
"Outrageous! Think what you saved me from!"
But she did not question the possibility, Hoddan observed.
"A practical man can always make what he wants to do look like a noble sacrifice of personal inclinations to the welfare of the community," Hoddan commented. "Now I've decided that I've got to be practical myself, and that's one of the rules. How about breakfast?"
He strapped the shipbag shut on the stun-pistols his pockets would not hold. He made a minor adjustment to the communicator. It was not ruined, but nobody else could use it without much labor finding out what he'd done. This was the sort of thing his grandfather on Zan would have advised. His grandfather's views were explicit.
"Helping one's neighbor," the old man had said frequently, "is all right as a two-way job. But maybe he's laying for you. You get a chance to fix him so he can't do you no harm and you're a lot better off and he's one hell of a better neighbor!"
This was definitely true of the men from Walden. Hoddan guessed that Derec was one of them. The other would represent the police or the planetary government. It was probably just as true of Don Loris and others.
Hoddan found himself disapproving of the way the cosmos was designed.
As he sat at breakfast, Fani looked at him with interesting anxiety; he was filled with forebodings. The future looked dark. Yet what he asked of fate and chance was so simple! He asked only a career, riches, and a delightful girl to marry and the admiration of his fellow citizens. Trivial things! But it looked like he'd have to do battle for even such minor gifts of destiny.
Fani watched him eat.
"I don't understand you," she complained. "Anybody else would be proud of what he'd done and angry with my father. Or don't you think he'll act ungratefully?"
"Of course I do!" said Hoddan.
"Then why aren't you angry?"
"I'm hungry," said Hoddan.
"And you take it for granted that I want to be properly grateful," said Fani in one breath, "and yet you haven't show the least appreciation of my getting two horses over in that patch of woodland yonder!" She pointed and Hoddan nodded. "Besides having Thal there with orders to serve you faithfully—"
She stopped short. Don Loris appeared, beaming, at the top of the steps leading from the great hall where the conferences took place. He regarded Hoddan benignly.
"This is a very bad business, my dear fellow," he said benevolently. "Has Fani told you of the people who arrived from Walden in search of you? They tell me terrible things about you!"
"Yes," said Hoddan. He prepared a roll for biting. He continued, "One of them, I think, is named Derec. He's to identify me so good money isn't wasted paying for the wrong man. The other man's a policeman, isn't he?" He reflected a moment. "If I were you, I'd start talking at a million credits. You might get half that."
He bit into the roll as Don Loris looked shocked.
"Do you think," he asked indignantly, "that I would give up the rescuer of my daughter to emissaries from a foreign planet to be locked in a dungeon for life?"
"Not in those words," conceded Hoddan. "But after all, despite your deep gratitude to me, there are such things as one's duty to humanity as a whole. And while it would cause you bitter anguish if someone dear to you represented a danger to millions of innocent women and children—still, under such circumstances you might feel it necessary to do violence to your own emotions."
Don Loris looked at him with abrupt suspicion. Hoddan waved the roll.