n to shoot me with."

He snapped the fourth pistol shut and went after the man who'd dropped
down behind a desk. He came upon that man, hopelessly panicked, just as
his hands closed on a clumsy gun that was supposed to set off a chemical
explosive to propel a metal bullet.

"Don't!" said Hoddan severely. "If I have to shoot you at this range,
you'll have blisters!"

He took the weapon out of the other man's hands. He went back and
finished charging the rest of the pistols.

He returned most of them to his bag, though he stuck others in his belt
and pockets to the point where he looked like the fiction-tape pictures
of space pirates. But he knew what space pirates were actually like. He
moved to the door. As a last thought, he picked up the bullet-firing
weapon.

"There's only one spaceship here a month," he observed politely, "so
I'll be around. If you want to get in touch with me, ask Don Loris. I'm
going to visit him while I look over professional opportunities on
Darth."

He went out once more. Somehow he felt more cheerful than a half-hour
since, when he'd landed as the only passenger from the space liner. Then
he'd felt ignored and lonely and friendless on a strange and primitive
world. He still had no friends, but he had already acquired some enemies
and therefore material for more or less worthwhile achievement. He
surveyed the sunlit scene about him from the control-room door.

* * * * *

Thal, the purple-cloaked man, had brought two shaggy-haired animals
around to the door of the warehouse. Hoddan later learned that they were
horses. He was frenziedly in the act of mounting one of them. As he
climbed up, small bright metal disks cascaded from a pocket. He tried to
stop the flow of money as he got feverishly into the saddle.

From the gable-roofed small town a mob of some thirty mounted men
plunged toward the landing grid. They wore garments of yellow and blue
and magenta. They waved large-bladed knives and made bloodthirsty
noises. Thal saw them and bolted, riding one horse and towing the other
by a lead rope. It happened that his line of retreat passed by where
Hoddan stood.

Hoddan held up his hand. Thal reined in.

"Mount!" he cried hoarsely. "Mount and ride!"

Hoddan passed up the chemical--powder--gun. Thal seized it frantically.

"Hurry!" he panted. "Don Loris would have my throat cut if I deserted
you! Mount and ride!"

Hoddan painstakingly fastened his ba