Hoddan waited for the huge door to open. It did. He headed into the opening, noticing as he did so that an object two or three times the size of the spaceboat was already there. It cut down the room for maneuvering, but a thing once done is easier thereafter. Hoddan got the boat inside, and there was a very small scraping and the great door closed before the boat could drift out again.
Hoddan turned to his companions—followers—victims, once the spaceboat was still.
"This," he said in a manner which could only be described as one of smiling ferocity, "is a pirate ship, belonging to the pirate fleet we passed through on the way here. It's manned by characters so murderous that their leaders don't dare land anywhere away from their home star-cluster, or all the galaxy would combine against them, to exterminate them or be exterminated. You've joined that fleet. You're going to get out of this boat and march over that ship yonder. Then you're going to be space pirates under me."
They quivered, but did not protest.
"I'll try you for one voyage," he told them. "There will be plunder. There will be pirate revels. If you serve faithfully and fight well, I'll return you to Don Loris' stronghold with your loot after the one voyage. If you don't—" He grinned mirthlessly at them—"out the air lock with you, to float forever between the stars. Understand?"
The last was pure savagery. They cringed. The outside-pressure meter went up to normal. Hoddan turned off the visionscreens, so ending any view of the interior of the hold. He opened the port and went out. Sitting in something like continued paralysis in their seats, the seven spearmen of Darth heard his voice in conversation outside the boat. They could catch no words, but Hoddan's tone was strictly businesslike. He came back.
"All right," he said shortly. "Thal, march 'em over."
Thal gulped. He loosened his seat belt. The enlistment of the seven in the pirate fleet was tacitly acknowledged. They were unarmed save for the conventional large knives at their belts.
"Frrrd, harch!" rasped Thal with a lump in his throat. "Two, three, four. Hup two, three, four. Hup—"
Seven men marched dismally out of the spaceboat and down to the floor of the huge hold. Eyes front, chests out, throats dry, they marched to the larger but still small vessel that shared this hold compartment. They marched into that ship. Thal barked, "Halt!" and they stopped. They waited.