o kept pirate
fans from having their fingers caught in its closing.

Then the piratical space yacht rose swiftly toward the stars.

An hour later there was barely any diminution of the excitement inside
the ship. Darthian gentlemen all, Hoddan's followers still gazed and
floated over the plunder tucked everywhere. It crowded the living
quarters. It threatened to interfere with the astrogation of the ship.
Hoddan came out of the control room and was annoyed.

"Break it up!" he snapped. "Pack that stuff away somewhere! What do you
think this is?"

Thal gazed at him abstractedly, not quite able to tear his mind and
thoughts from this completely unimaginable mass of plunder. Then
intelligence came into his eyes--as much as could appear there. He
grinned suddenly. He slapped his thigh.

"Boys!" he gurgled. "He don't know what we got for him!"

One man looked up. Two. They beamed. They got to their feet, dripping
jewelry. Thal went ponderously to one of the two owners' staterooms the
yacht contained. At the door he turned, expansively.

"She came to the port," he said exuberantly, "and said we were wearin'
clothes like they wore on Darth. Did we come from there? I said we did.
Then she said did we know somebody named Bron Hoddan on Darth? And I
said we did and if she'd step inside the ship she'd meet you. And here
she is!"

He unfastened the stateroom door, which had been barred from without. He
opened it. He looked in, and grabbed, and pulled at something. Hoddan
went sick with apprehension. He groaned as the something inside the
stateroom sobbed and yielded.

Thal brought Nedda out into the saloon of the yacht. Her nose and eyes
were red from terrified weeping. She gazed about her in purest
despairing horror. She did not see Hoddan for a moment. Her eyes were
filled with the brawny, mustachioed piratical figures who were Darthian
gentlemen and who grinned at her in what she took for evil gloating.

She wailed.

Hoddan swallowed, with much difficulty, and said sickly:

"It's all right, Nedda. It was a mistake. Nothing will happen to you.
You're quite"--and he knew with desperate certainty that it was
true--"safe with me!"

And she was.

XII

Hoddan stopped off at Krim by landing grid, to consult his lawyers. He
felt a certain amount of hope of good results from his raid on Walden,
but he was desperate about Nedda. Once she was confident of her safety
under his protection, she took over the operati