hulks and impractical oddities did not seem antique or freakish
to them. They had no standards in such matters. The planet Darth seemed
slightly off to one side in space, at some times, and at others it
seemed underfoot while at others it looked directly overhead. At all
times it moved visibly, while the spaceboat and the ships in orbit
seemed merely to float in nearly fixed positions. When the dark part of
Darth appeared to roll toward the spaceboat again all the bright specks
which were ships about them winked out of sight and there were only
faraway stars and a vast blackness off to one side like nothingness made
visible.

[Illustration]

The spearmen were wholly subdued when there was light once more and
eccentric shapes around them. There was a ring-ship--the hull like a
metal wheel with a huge tire, with pipe passages from the tire part to
the hub where the control room was located. It seemed unbelievable that
such a relic could still exist, dating as it did from the period before
gravity-fields could be put into spacecraft. It would have provided a
crazy sort of gravity by spinning as it limped from one place to
another. Whoever had collected this fleet for the emigrants from Colin
must have required only one thing--that there be a hull. Given something
that would hold air, a Lawlor drive, a gravity-unit, and air apparatus
would turn it into a ship that could go into overdrive and hence cross
the galaxy at need. Those who bargained with the emigrants had been
content to furnish nothing more than that.

But this could not be appreciated by Hoddan's involuntary crew. The
spaceboat drew up alongside the gigantic hulk which was the leader's.
The seven Darthians were still numbed by their kidnaping and the
situation in which they found themselves. They looked with dull eyes at
the mountainous object they approached. It had actually been designed as
a fighter-carrier of space, intended to carry smaller craft to fight
nonexistent warships under conditions which never came about. It must
have been sold for scrap a couple of hundred years since, and patched up
for this emigration.

Hoddan waited for the huge door to open. It did. He headed into the
opening, noticing as he did so that an object two or three times the
size of the spaceboat was already there. It cut down the room for
maneuvering, but a thing once done is easier thereafter. Hoddan got the
boat inside, and there was a very small scraping and the great doo