four hundred pounds pressure. He smashed open the corridor door with it. He strolled through and bowled over a startled guard with the same stream. He took the guard’s stun-pistol. He washed open another door leading to the courtyard. He marched out, washed down two guards who sighted him, and took the trouble to flush them across the pavement until they wedged in a drain opening. Then he thoughtfully reset the hose to fill the courtyard with fog, climbed into the driver’s seat of a parked truck, started it, and smashed through the gateway to the street outside. Behind him, the courtyard filled with dense white mist.
He was free, but only temporarily. Around him lay the capital city of Walden—the highest civilization in this part of the galaxy. Trees lined its ways. Towers rose splendidly toward the skies, with thousands of less ambitious structures in between. There were open squares and parkways and malls, and it did not smell like a city at all. But he wasn’t loose three minutes before the communicator in the truck squawked the all-police alarm for him.
It was to be expected. All the city would shortly be one enormous man trap, set to catch Bron Hoddan. There was only one place on the planet, in fact, where he could be safe. And ironically, he wouldn’t have been safe there if he’d been officially charged with murder. But since the police had tactfully failed to mention murder, he could get at least breathing-time by taking refuge in the Interstellar Embassy.
He headed for it, bowling along splendidly. The police truck hummed on its way until the great open square before the embassy became visible. The embassy was not that of a single planet, of course. By pure necessity every human-inhabited world was independent of all others, but the Interstellar Diplomatic Service represented humanity at large upon each individual globe. Its ambassador was the only person who Hoddan could even imagine as listening to him, and that because he came from off-planet, as Hoddan did. But he mainly counted upon a breathing-space in the embassy, during which to make more plans as yet unformed and unformable. He began, though, to see some virtues in the simple, lawless, piratical world on which he had spent his childhood.
Another police truck rushed frantically toward him down a side street. Stun-pistols made little pinging noises against the body of his vehicle. He put on more speed, but the other truck overtook him. It ranged alongside, its occupants bellowing stem commands to halt. And then, just before they swerved to force him off the highway, he swung instead and they crashed thunderously. One of his own wheels collapsed. He drove on with the crumpled wheel producing an up-and-down motion that threatened to make him seasick. Then he heard yelling behind him. The cops had piled out of the truck and were in pursuit on foot.
The, tall, stone wall of the embassy was visible, now, beyond the monument to the first settlers of Walden. He leaped to the ground and ran. Stun-pistol bolts, a little beyond their effective range, stung like fire. They spurred him on.
The gate of the embassy was closed. He bolted around the corner and scrambled up the conveniently rugged stones of the wall. He was well aloft before the cops spotted him. Then they fired at him industriously and the charges crackled all around him.
But he’d reached the top and had both arms over the parapet before a charge hit his legs and paralyzed them. He hung fast, swearing at his bad luck.
Then hands grasped his wrists. A white-haired man appeared on the other side of the parapet. He took a good, solid grip, and heaved. He drew Hoddan over the top of the wall and helped him down to the walkway.
“A near thing, that!” said the white-haired man pleasantly. “I was taking a walk in the garden when I heard the excitement. I got to the wall just in time.” He paused, and added, “I do hope you’re not just a common murderer, we can’t offer asylum to such. But if you’re a political offender…”
Hoddan began to try to rub sensation and usefulness back into his legs. Feeling came back, and was not pleasant.
“I’m the Interstellar Ambassador,” said the white-haired man politely.
“My name,” said Hoddan bitterly,” is Bron Hoddan and I’m guilty of trying to save the Power Board millions of credits a year!” Then he said more bitterly, “If you want to know, I ran away from Zan to try to be a civilized man and live a civilized life. It was a mistake! Now I’m to be permanently jailed for using my brains!”
The ambassador cocked his head thoughtfully to one side.
“Zan?” he said. “The name Hoddan fits with that somehow… Oh, yes! Space-piracy! They say the people of Zan capture and loot a dozen or so ships a year, only there’s no way to prove it on them. And there’s a man named Hoddan who’s supposed to head a particularly ruffianly gang.”
“My grandfather,” said Hoddan defiantly. “What are you going to do about it? I’m outlawed! I’ve defied the planetary government! I’m disreputable by descent, and worst of all I’ve tried to use my brains!”
“Deplorable!” said the ambassador mildly. “I don’t mean outlawry is deplorable, you understand, or defiance of the government, or being disreputable. But trying to use one’s brains is bad business! A serious offense! Are your legs all right now? Then come on down with me and I’ll have you given some dinner and some fresh clothing. Offhand,” he added amiably, “it would seem that using one’s brains would be classed as a political offense rather than a criminal one on Walden. We’ll see.”
Hoddan gaped up at him.
“You mean there’s a possibility that—”
“Of course!” said the ambassador in surprise. “You haven’t phrased it that way, but you’re actually a rebel. A revolutionist. You defy authority and tradition and governments and such things. Naturally the Interstellar Diplomatic Service is inclined to be on your side! What do you think it’s for?”
CHAPTER II
In something under two hours Hoddan was ushered into the ambassador’s office. He’d been refreshed, his torn clothing replaced by more respectable garments, and the places where stun-pistols had stung him, soothed by ointments. But, more important, he’d worked out and firmly adopted a new point of view.
He’d been a misfit at home on Zan. He was not contented with the humdrum and monotonous life as a member of a space-pirate community. Piracy was a matter of dangerous take-offs in cranky rocket ships, to be followed by weeks or months of tedious and uncomfortable boredom in highly unhealthy re-breathed air. No voyage ever contained more than ten seconds of satisfactory action. All fighting took place just out of the atmosphere of the embattled planet. Regardless of the result of the fight, the pirates had to get away fast when it was over, lest overwhelming forces swarm up from the nearby world. It was intolerably devoid of anything an ambitious young man would want.
Even when one had made a good prize—with the lifeboats of the foreign ship darting frantically for ground—and even after one got back to Zan with the captured ship, even then there was little satisfaction to a pirate’s career. Zan had not a large population. Piracy couldn’t support a large number of people. Zan couldn’t attempt to defend itself against even single, heavily armed ships that sometimes came in passionate resolve to avenge the disappearance of a rich freighter or a fast, new liner. So the people of Zan, to avoid being hanged, had to play innocent. They had to be convincingly simple, harmless folk who cultivated their fields and lived quiet, blameless lives. They might loot, but they couldn’t use their loot where investigators could find it. They had to build their own houses and make their own furniture and grow their own food. So life on Zan was dull. Piracy was not profitable in the sense that one could live well by it. It simply wasn’t a trade for anybody like Hoddan.
So he’d abandoned all that. He’d studied electronics in books looted from passenger-ship
