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ut 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