t possible! That would be a space fleet! And
there were no space fleets! Walden would certainly have never sent more
than one ship to demand his surrender to its police. The Space Patrol
never needed more than one ship anywhere. Commerce wouldn't cause ships
to travel in company. Piracy-- There couldn't be a pirate fleet! There'd
never be enough loot anywhere to keep it in operation. Nine spaceships
at one time--traveling in orbit around a primitive planet like Darth--a
fleet of spaceships.

It couldn't happen! Hoddan couldn't conceive of such a thing. But a
recently developed pessimism suggested that since everything else, to
date, had been to his disadvantage, this was probably a catastrophe
also.

He groaned and lay down to sleep again.

VI

When frantic bangings on the propped-shut door awakened him next
morning, he confusedly imagined that they were noises in the
communicator headphones, and until he heard his name called tried
drearily to make sense of them.

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 and tearful and
solicitous and angry.

He rolled out of bed and found himself dressed. He hadn't slept the full
night. At one time he couldn't rest for thinking about the sounds in the
communicator when he listened at the spaceport. He listened again, and
what he heard made him get his clothes on for action. That was when he
heard a distinctly Waldenian voice, speaking communications speech with
crisp distinctness, calling the landing grid. The other voices were not
Waldenian ones and he grew dizzy trying to figure them out. But he was
clothed and ready to do whatever proved necessary when he realized that
he had the landing grid receiver, that there would be no reception even
of the Waldenian call until the landing grid crew had built another out
of spare parts in store, and even then couldn't do much until they'd
painfully sorted out and re-spliced all the tangled wires that Hoddan
had cut. That had to be done before the grid could be used again.

He'd gone back to sleep while he tried to make sense of things. Now,
long after daybreak, he shook himself and made sure a stun-pistol was
handy. Then he said:

"Hello. I'm awake. What's up? Why all the noise?"

"Come out of there!" cried Fani's voice, simul