careening through the other ships' paths in what
must have seemed to the planet's sunset area like a most unlikely
dancing of brand-new stars.

It was a gigantic traffic tangle, and Hoddan's boat drifted toward and
into it. He'd counted a hundred ships long before. His count now passed
two hundred and continued. Before he gave up he'd numbered two hundred
forty-seven space-oddities swarming to make a whirling band--a
ring--around the planet Darth.

He was fairly sure that he knew what they were, now. But he could not
possibly guess where they came from. And most mysterious of all was the
question of why they'd come out of faster-than-light drive to make of
themselves a celestial feature about a planet which had practically
nothing to offer to anybody.

Presently the spaceboat was in the very thick of the fleet. His
communicator spouted voices whose tones ranged from basso profundo to
high tenor, and whose ideas of proper astrogation seemed to vary more
widely still.

"_You there!_" boomed a voice with deafening volume. "_You're in our
clear-space! Sheer off!_"

The volume of a signal in space varies as the square of the distance.
This voice was thunderous. It came apparently from a nearby, pot-bellied
tripper ship of really ancient vintage. Rows of ports in its sides had
been welded over. It had rocket tubes whose size was indicative of the
kind of long-obsolete fuel on which it once had operated. Slenderer
nozzles peered out of the original ones now. It had been adapted to
modern propellants by simply welding modern rockets inside the old ones.
It was only half a mile away.

* * * * *

Hoddan's spaceboat floated on. The relative position of the two ships
changed slowly. Another voice said indignantly:

"_That's the same thing that missed us by less than a mile! You, there!
Stop acting like a squig! Get on your own course!_"

A third voice;

"_What boat's that? I don't recognize it! I thought I knew all the
freaks in this fleet, too!_"

A fourth voice said sharply:

"_That's not one of us! Look at the design! That's not us!_"

Other voices broke in. There was babbling. Then a harsh voice roared:

"_Quiet! I order it!_" There was silence. The harsh voice said heavily,
"_Relay the image to me._" There was a pause. The same voice said
grimly: "_It is not of our fleet. You, stranger! Identify yourself! Who
are you and why do you slip secretly among us?_"

Hoddan pushed the