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turies before. The ecological system had worked itself out strictly by hit-or-miss, but the result was not unfamiliar. Save for the star-pattern overhead, Hoddan could have believed himself on some parts of Zan, or some parts of Walden, or very probably somewhere or other on Lohala or Kent or Famagusta or any other occupied world between the Rims.
There was, though, the star-pattern. Hoddan tried to organize it in his mind. He knew where the sun had set, which would be west. He asked the latitude of the Darthian spaceport. Thal did not know it. He asked about major geographical features--seas and continents and so on. Thal had no ideas on the subject.
Hoddan fumed. He hadn't worried about such things on Walden. Of course, on Walden he'd had one friend, Derec, and believed he had a sweetheart, Nedda. There he was lonely and schemed to acquire the admiration of others. He ignored the sky. Here on Darth he had no friends, but there were a number of local citizens now doubtless recovered from stun-pistol bolts and yearning to carve him up with large knives. He did not feel lonely, but the instinct to know where he was, was again in operation.
The ground was rocky and far from level. After two hours of riding on a small and wiry horse with no built-in springs, Hoddan hurt in a great many places he'd never known he owned. He and Thal rode in an indeterminate direction with an irregular scarp of low mountains silhouetted against the unfamiliar stars. A vagrant night-wind blew. Thal had said it was a three-hour ride to Don Loris' castle. After something over two of them, he said meditatively:
"I think that if you wish to give me a present I will take it and not make a gift in return. You could give me," he added helpfully, "your share of the plunder from our victims."
"Why?" demanded Hoddan. "Why should I give you a present?"
"If I accepted it," explained Thal, "and made no gift in return, I would become your retainer. Then it would be my obligation as a Darthian gentleman to rid