ugh a door
leading to some other part of this ship.

Hoddan nodded to himself. The costume was odd. It was awkward. It was
even primitive, but not in the fashion of the soiled but gaudily colored
garments of Darth. These men wore unrelieved black, with gray shirts.
There was no touch of color about them. Even the younger ones wore
beards. And of all unnecessary things, they wore flat-brimmed hats--in a
spaceship!

Hoddan opened the boat door and said politely:

"Good morning. I'm Bron Hoddan. You were talking to me just now."

The oldest and most fiercely bearded of the men said harshly:

"I am the leader here. We are the people of Colin." He frowned when
Hoddan's expression remained unchanged. "The people of Colin!" he
repeated more loudly. "The people whose forefathers settled that planet,
and brought it to be a world of peace and plenty--and then foolishly
welcomed strangers to their midst!"

"Too bad," said Hoddan. He knew what these people were doing, he
believed, but putting a name to where they'd come from told him nothing
of what they wanted of Darth.

"We made it a fair world," said the bearded man fiercely. "But it was my
great-grandfather who destroyed it. He believed that we should share it.
It was he who persuaded the Synod to allow strangers to settle among us,
believing that they would become like us."

* * * * *

Hoddan nodded expectantly. These people were in some sort of trouble or
they wouldn't have come out of overdrive. But they'd talked about it
until it had become an emotionalized obsession that couldn't be
summarized. When they encountered a stranger, they had to picture their
predicament passionately and at length.

This bearded man looked at Hoddan with burning eyes. When he went on, it
was with gestures as if he were making a speech, but it was a special
sort of speech. The first sentence told what kind.

"They clung to their sins!" said the bearded man bitterly. "They did not
adopt our ways! Our example went for naught! They brought others of
their kind to Colin. After a little they laughed at us. In a little more
they outnumbered us! Then they ruled that the laws of our Synod should
not govern them. And they lured our young people to imitate
them--frivolous, sinful, riotous folk that they were!"

Hoddan nodded again. There were elderly people on Zan who talked like
this. Not his grandfather! If you listened long enough they'd come to
some point o