more in agreement with his grandfather than he'd
believed possible.

Outside the boat, birds which had dived to ground and cowered there
during the boat's descent now flew about again, their terror forgotten.
Horses which had galloped wildly in their pastures, or kicked in panic
in the castle stalls, returned to their oats and hay.

And there were human reactions. Don Loris had been in an excessively
fretful state of mind since the conclusion of his deal with the pair
from Walden. Hoddan had estimated that he ought to get a half-million
credits for Hoddan delivered to Derec and the Waldenian police. He'd
been unable to get the police official--Derec merely sat miserably by
and said nothing--to promise more than half so much. But he'd closed the
deal and sent for Hoddan--and Hoddan was gone.

Now the landing of this spaceboat roused a lively uneasiness in Don
Loris. It might be new bargainers for Hoddan. It might be anything.
Hoddan had said he had a secret. This might be it. Don Loris vexedly
tried to contrive some useful skulduggery without the information to
base it on.

Fani looked at the spaceboat with bright eyes. Thal was back at the
castle. He'd told her of Hoddan riding up to the spaceboat near another
chieftain's castle, entering it, and that then it had taken to the skies
in an aura of flames and smoke and thunder. Fani hoped that he might
have returned here in it. But she worried while she waited for him to do
something.

Hoddan did nothing. The spaceboat gave no sign of life.

The sun set, and the sky twinkled with darting lights which flew toward
the west and vanished. Twilight followed, and more lights flashed across
the heavens as if pursuing the sun. Fani had learned to associate three
and then nine such lights with spacecraft, but she could not dream of a
fleet of hundreds. She dismissed the lights from her mind, being much
more concerned with Hoddan. He would be in as bad a fix as ever if he
came out of the boat.

Twilight remained, a fairy half-light in which all things looked much
more charming than they really were. And Don Loris, reduced to peevish
sputtering by pure mystery, summoned Thal to him. It should be
remembered that Don Loris knew nothing of the disappearance of the
spaceboat from his neighbor's land. He knew nothing of Thal's journey
with Hoddan. But he did remember that Hoddan had seemed unworried at
breakfast and explained his calm by saying that he had a secret. The
feudal c