hunderous
bang outside, and the lifeboat reacted as if to a slight shock. The
visionscreens showed a cloud of dust at the spaceboat's stern, roused by
a deliberate explosion in the rocket tubes. It also showed the retainers
in full flight.

He waited until they were in safety and made the standard take-off
preparations. A horrific roaring started up outside. He touched controls
and a monstrous weight pushed him back in his seat. The rocket swung,
and lifted, and shot skyward with greater acceleration than before.

It went up at a lifeboat's full fall-like rate of climb, leaving a trail
of blue-white flame behind it. All the surface of Darth seemed to
contract swiftly below him. The spaceport and the town rushed toward a
spot beneath the spaceboat's tail. They shrank and shrank. He saw other
places. Mountains. Castles. He saw Don Loris' stronghold. Higher, he saw
the sea.

The sky turned purple. It went black with specks of starshine in it.
Hoddan swung to a westward course and continued to rise, watching the
star-images as they shifted on the screens. The image of the sun, of
course, was automatically diminished so that it was not dazzling. The
rockets continued to roar, though in a minor fashion because there was
no longer air outside in which a bellow could develop.

* * * * *

Hoddan painstakingly made use of those rule-of-thumb methods of
astrogation which his piratical forebears had developed and which a boy
on Zan absorbed without being aware. He wanted an orbit around Darth. He
didn't want to take time to try to compute it. So he watched the
star-images ahead and astern. If the stars ahead rose above the planet's
edge faster than those behind sank down below it--he would be climbing.
If the stars behind sank down faster than those ahead rose up--he would
be descending. If all the stars rose equally he'd be climbing straight
up, and if they all dropped equally he'd be moving straight down. It was
not a complex method, and it worked.

Presently he relaxed. He sped swiftly back past midday and toward the
sunrise line on Darth. This was the reverse of a normal orbit, but it
was the direction followed by the ships up here. He hoped his orbit was
lower than theirs. If it was, he'd overtake them from behind. If he were
higher, they'd overtake him.

He turned on the space phone. Its reception-indicator was piously placed
at "Ground." He shifted it to "Space," so that it would pick u