There was no practical difference, of course. The effect was simply that the spaceyacht now carried its own landing-grid. It could descend anywhere and ascend from anywhere without using rockets. Moreover, it could hover without using power.
Hoddan was pleased. He took the yacht down to a bare four hundred-mile altitude. He stopped it there. It was highly satisfactory. He made quite certain that everything worked as it should. Then he made a call on the space-communicator.
“Calling ground,” said Hoddan. “Calling ground. Pirate ship calling ground!”
He waited for an answer. Now he’d set the results of his efforts and planning. He was apprehensive, of course. There was much responsibility on his shoulders. There was the liner he’d captured and looted and given to the emigrants. There were his followers on the yacht, now enthusiastically sharpening their two-foot knives in expectation of loot. He owed these people something. For an instant he thought of the Lady Fani and wondered how he could make reparation to her for whatever had hurt her feelings.
A whining, bitterly unhappy voice came to him.
“Pirate ship!” said the voice plaintively, “we received the fleet’s warning. Please state where you intend to descend. We will take measures to prevent disorder. Repeat, please state where you intend to descend and we will take measures to prevent disorder.”
Hoddan drew a sharp breath of relief. He named a spot — a high-income, residential small city, some forty miles from the planetary capitol. He set his controls for a very gradual descent. He went out to where his followers made grisly zinging noises where they honed their knives.
“Well land,” said Hoddan sternly, “in about three-quarters of an hour. You will go ashore and loot in parties of not less than three! Thai, you will be ship-guard and receive the plunder and make sure that nobody from Walden gets on board. You will not waste time committing atrocities on the population!”
He went back to the control-room. He turned to general communication bands and listened to the broadcasts down below.
“Special Emergency Bulletin!” boomed a voice. “Pirates are landing in the city of Ensfield, forty miles from Walden City. The population is instructed to evacuate immediately, leaving all action to the police. Repeat! The population will evacuate Ensfield, leaving all action to the police. Take nothing with you. Take nothing with you. Leave at once.”
Hoddan nodded approvingly. The voice boomed again:
“Special Emergency Bulletin! Pirates are landing. Evacuate. Take nothing with you. Leave at once.”
He turned to another channel. An excited voice barked:
“Seems to be only the one pirate ship, which has been located hovering in an unknown manner over Ensfield. We are rushing cameramen to the spot and will try to give on-the-spot, as-it-happens coverage of the landing of pirates on Walden, their looting of the city of Ensfield, and the traffic jams inevitable in the departure of the citizens before the pirate ship touches ground. For background information on this the most exciting event in planetary history, I take you to our editorial rooms.” Another voice took over instantly. “It will be remembered that some days since the gigantic pirate fleet then overhead sent down a communication to the planetary government, warning that single ships would appear to loot and giving notice that any resistance—”
Hoddan felt a contented, heart-warming glow. The emigrant fleet had most faithfully carried out its leader’s promise to let down a letter from space while in orbit around Walden. The emigrants, of course, did not know the contents of the letter. Blithely, cheerfully, and dutifully, they gave the appearance of monstrous piratical strength. They had awed Walden thoroughly. And then they’d gone on, faithfully leaving similar letters and similar impressions on Krim, Lohala, Tralee, Famagusta, and all throughout the Coalsack stars until the stock of addressed missives ran out. They would perform this kindly act out of gratitude to Hoddan.
And every planet they visited would be left with the impression that the fleet overhead was that of bloodthirsty space-marauders who would presently send single ships to collect loot, which must be yielded without resistance. Such looting expeditions were to be looked for regularly and must be submitted to under penalty of unthinkable retribution from the monster fleet of space.
Now, as the yacht descended on Walden, it represented that mythical but impressive piratical empire. He listened with genuine pleasure to the broadcasts. When low enough, he even “picked up the pictures of highways thronged with fugitives from the to-be-looted town. He saw Waldenian police directing the traffic of flight. He saw other traffic heading toward the city. Walden was the most highly civilized planet in the Nurmi Cluster, and its citizens had had no worries at all except about the tranquilizers to enable them to stand it. When something genuinely exciting turned up, they wanted to be there to see it.
The yacht descended below the clouds. Hoddan turned on an emergency flare to make a landing by. Sitting in the control-room he saw his own ship as the broadcast-cameras picked it up and relayed it to millions of homes. He was impressed. It was a glaring eye of fierce light, descending deliberately with a dark and mysterious spacecraft behind it. He heard the chattered, on-the-spot news accounts of the happening. He saw the people who had not left Ensfield joined by avid visitors. He saw all of them held back by police, who frantically shepherded them away from the area in which the pirates should begin their horrid work.
Hoddan even watched pleasurably from his control-room as the cameras daringly showed the actual touch-down of the ship: the dramatic slow opening of its port: the appearance of authentic pirates in the opening, armed to the teeth, bristling ferociously, glaring about them at the silent, deserted streets of the city left to their mercy.
It was a splendid broadcast. Hoddan would liked to have stayed and watched all of it. But he had work to do. He had to supervise the pirate raid.
It was, as it turned out, simple enough. Looting parries of three pirates each, moved skulking about, seeking plunder. Quaking cameramen dared to ask them, in shaking voices, to pose for the news cameras. It was a request no Darthian gentleman, even in an act of piracy, could possibly refuse. They posed, making pictures of malignant ruffianism.
Commentators, adding informed comment to delectably thrilling pictures, observed crisply that this did not mean that Darth as an entity had turned pirate, but only that some of her citizens had joined the pirate fleet.
The camera crews then asked apologetically if they would permit themselves to be broadcast in the act of looting. Growling savagely for their public, and occasionally adding even a fiendish “Hal” they obliged. The cameramen helped pick out good places to loot for the sake of good pictures. The pirates cooperated in a fine, dramatic style. Millions watching vision sets all over the planet shivered in delicious horror as the pirates went about their nefarious enterprise.
Presently the press of onlookers could not be held back by police. They surrounded the pirates. Some, greatly daring, asked for autographs. Girls watched them with round, frightened, fascinated eyes. Younger men found it vastly thrilling to carry burdens of loot back to the pirate ship for them. Thai complained hoarsely that the ship was getting overloaded. Hoddan ordered greater discrimination, but his pirates by this time were in the position of directors rather than looters themselves. Romantic Waldenian admirers smashed windows and brought them treasure, for the reward of a scowling acceptance.