d the
sensitivity-point toward infra red, and details came out that would have
been invisible to the naked eye.

"With the boatport closed," said Hoddan, "like this--" The port clanged
shut and grumbled for half a second as the locking-dogs went home.
"We're all set for take-off. I need only get into the pilot's seat"--he
did so, "and throw on the fuel pump--" A tiny humming sounded. "And we
move when I advance this throttle!"

He pressed the firing-stud. There was a soul-shaking roar. There was a
terrific pressure. The seven men from Don Loris' stronghold were pressed
back in their seats with an overwhelming, irresistible pressure which
held them absolutely helpless. Their mouths dropped open. Appalled
protests tried to come out, but were pushed back by the seemingly
ever-increasing acceleration.

The screens, showing the outside, displayed a great and confused tumult
of smoke and fumes and dust to rearward. They showed only stars ahead.
Those stars grew brighter and brighter, as the roar of the rockets
diminished to a merely deafening sound. Suddenly the disk of the local
sun appeared, rising above the horizon to the west. The spaceboat,
naturally, overtook it as it rose into an orbit headed east to west
instead of the other way about.

Presently Hoddan turned off the fuel pump. He turned to look
thoughtfully at the seven men. They were very pale. They sat unanimously
very still, because they could see in the vision plates that a strange,
mottled, again-sunlit surface flowed past them with an appalling
velocity. They were very much afraid that they knew what it was. They
did. It was the surface of the planet Darth, well below them.

"I'm glad you boys came along," said Hoddan. "We'll catch up with the
fleet in a moment or two. The pirate fleet, you know! I'm very pleased
with you. Not many groundlings would volunteer for space-piracy, not
even with the loot there is in it!"

Thal choked slightly, but no one else made a sound. No one even
protested. Protests would have been no use. There were looks of anguish,
but nothing else, because Hoddan was the only one in the spaceboat who
had the least idea of how to get it down again. His passengers had to go
along for the ride he'd taken them for, no matter where it led.

Numbly, they waited for what would befall.

VIII

Hoddan did not worry about his followers--captives--noting the
obsolescence of the space fleet into which they presently drifted.
Ancient