didn't know how to use the boat-blister lifeboat
tubes. Hoddan had to demonstrate. But shortly after there were twenty,
thirty, fifty of the folk from Colin, feverishly searching the ship and
incredulously reporting what they found.

"It's impossible!" said the old man. "It's impossible!"

"I wouldn't say that," said Hoddan. "It's unlikely, but it's happened.
I'm only afraid it's not enough."

"It is ... many times what we hoped," said the old man humbly. "Only--"
He stopped. "We are more grateful than we can say."

Hoddan took a deep breath.

"I'd like to take my crew back home," he explained. "And come back
and ... well ... perhaps I can be useful explaining things. And I'd like
to ask a great favor of you ... for my own work."

"But naturally," said the old man. "Of course. We will await your
return. Naturally! And ... perhaps we can ... we can arrange
something--"

Hoddan was relieved. There did seem a slightly strange limitation to the
happiness of the emigrants. They were passionately rejoiceful over the
agricultural machinery. But they seemed rather dutifully than truly
happy over the microfilm library. The vision-tape instructors were the
objects of polite comment only. Hoddan felt a vague discomfort. There
seemed to be a sort of secret desperation in the atmosphere, which they
would not admit or mention. But he was coming back. Of course.

He brought the spaceboat over to the new liner. He hooked onto a
lifeboat blister and his seven Darthians crawled through the lifeboat
tube. Hoddan pulled away quickly before somebody thought to ask why
there were no lifeboats in the places so plainly made for them.

He headed downward when the landmarks on Darth's surface told him that
Don Loris' castle would shortly come over the horizon. He was just
touching atmosphere when it did. The boat's rocket-tanks had been
refilled, and he burned fuel recklessly to make a dramatic landing
within a hundred yards of the battlements where Fani had once
thoughtfully had a coil of rope ready for him.

Heads peered at the lifeboat over those same battlements now, but the
gate was closed. It stayed closed. There was somehow an atmosphere of
suspicion amounting to enmity. Hoddan felt unwelcome.

"All right, boys," he said resignedly. "Out with you and to the castle.
You've got your loot from the voyage"--he'd counted out for each of them
rather more actual cash than any of them really believed in--"and I want
you to take this