Murray Leinster - The Pirates of Zan

“We cannot go back. We cannot ever return to Darth. We are lost men, doomed to wander forever among strangers, or to float as corpses between the stars.”

“What happened?” demanded Hoddan. “I’m taking you on a pirate cruise where the loot should be a lot better than last time!”

Thai wept. Hoddan astonishedly regarded his whiskery countenance, contorted with grief and dampened with tears.

“It happened at the castle,” said Thai miserably. “The man Derec, from Walden, had thrown a bomb at you. You seemed to be dead. But Don Loris was not sure. He fretted, as he does. He wished to send someone to make sure. The Lady Fani said: ‘I will make sure!’ She called me to her and said, Thai, will you fight for me?” And there was Don Loris suddenly nodding beside her. So I said, “Yes, my Lady Fani.’ Then she said: Thank you. I am troubled by Bron Hoddan.’ So what could I do? She said the same thing to each of us, and each of us had to say that he would fight for her. To each she said that she was troubled by you. Then Don Loris sent us out to look at your body. And now we are disgraced!”

Hoddan’s mouth opened and closed and opened again. He remembered this item of Darthian etiquette. If a girl asked a man if he would fight for her, and he agreed, then within a day and a night he had to fight the man she sent him to fight, or else he was disgraced. And disgrace on Darth meant that the shamed man could he plundered or killed by anybody who chose to do so — and he would be hanged by indignant authority if he resisted. It was a great deal worse than outlawry. It included scorn and contempt and opprobrium. It meant dishonor and humiliation and admitted degradation. A disgraced man was despicable in his own eyes. And Hoddan had kidnapped these men who’d been forced to engage themselves to fight him, and if they killed him they would obviously die in space, and if they didn’t they’d be ashamed to stay alive. The moral tone on Darth was probably not elevated, but etiquette was a force.

Hoddan thought it over. He looked up suddenly.

“Some of them,” he said wryly, “probably figure there’s nothing to do but go through with it, eh?”

“Yes,” said Thai dismally. “Then we will all die.”

“Hmm,” said Hoddan. The obligation is to fight. If you fail to kill me, that’s not your fault, is it? If you’re conquered you’re in the clear?”

“True. Too true!” Thai said miserably. “When a man is conquered he is conquered. His conqueror may plunder him, when the matter is finished, or he can spare him, then he may never fight his conqueror again.”

“Draw your knife,” said Hoddan. “Come at me.”

Thai made a bewildered gesture. Hoddan leveled a stun-pistol and said:

“BZZZ. You’re conquered. You came at me with your knife, and I shot you with my stun-pistol. It’s all over. Right?”

Thai gaped at him. Then he beamed. He expanded. He gloated. He frisked. He practically wagged a non-existent tail in his exuberance. He’d been shown an out when he could see none.

“Send in the others one by one,” said Hoddan. “I’ll take care of them. But Thai, why did the Lady Fani want me killed?”

Thai had no idea, but he did not care. Hoddan did care. He was bewildered and inclined to be indignant. A noble friendship like theirs — A spearman came in and saluted. Hoddan went through a symbolic duel, which was plainly the way the thing would have happened in reality. Others came in and went through the same process. Two of them did not quite grasp that it was a ritual, and he had to shoot them in the knife-arm. Then he hunted in the ship’s supplies for ointment for the blisters that would appear from stun-pistol bolts at such short range. As he bandaged the places, he again tried to find out why the Lady Fani had tried to get him carved up. Nobody could enlighten him.

But the atmosphere improved remarkably. Since each theoretic fight had taken place in private,, nobody was obliged to admit a compromise with etiquette. Hoddan’s followers ceased to brood. They developed huge appetites. Those who had been aground on Krim told zestfully of the monstrous hangovers they’d acquired there. It appeared that Hoddan was revered for the size of the benders he enabled his followers to hang on.

But there remained the fact that the Lady Fani had tried to get him massacred. He puzzled over it. The little yacht sped through space toward Walden. He tried to think how he’d offended Fani. He could think of nothing. He set to work on a new electronic setup which would make still another modification of the Lawlor space-drive possible. In the others, groups of electronic components were cut out and others substituted in rather tricky fashion from the control board. This was trickiest of all. It required the homemade vacuum tube to burn steadily when in use. But it was a very simple idea. Lawlor drive and landing-grid forcefields were formed by not dissimilar generators, and ball-lightning force-fields were in the same general family of phenomena. Suppose one made the field generator that had to be on a ship if it were to drive at all capable of all those allied, associated, similar forcefields? If a ship could make the fields that landing-grids did, it should be useful to pirates.

Hoddan’s present errand was neither pure nor simple piracy, but piracy it would be. The more he considered the obligation he’d taken on himself when he helped the emigrants, the more he doubted that he could lift it without long struggle. He was preparing to carry on that struggle for a long time. He’d more or less resigned himself to the postponement of his personal desires — Nedda for example.

But time passed, and he finished his electronic job. He came out of overdrive and made his observations and corrected his course. Finally, there came a moment when the fiery ball which was Walden’s sun shone brightly in the vision-plates. It writhed and spun in the vast silence of emptiness.

Hoddan drove to a point still above the five-diameter limit of Walden. He interestedly switched on the control which made his drive-unit manufacture landing-grip type forcefields. He groped for Walden, and felt the peculiar rigidity of the ship when the field took hold somewhere underground. He made an adjustment, and felt the ship respond. Instead of pulling a ship to ground, in the set-up he’d made, the new fields pulled the ground toward the ship. When he reversed the adjustment, instead of pushing the ship away to empty space, the new field pushed the planet.

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.”