Thal gazed at him abstractedly, not quite able to tear his mind and thoughts from this completely unimaginable mass of plunder. Then intelligence came into his eyes—as much as could appear there. He grinned suddenly. He slapped his thigh.
"Boys!" he gurgled. "He don't know what we got for him!"
One man looked up. Two. They beamed. They got to their feet, dripping jewelry. Thal went ponderously to one of the two owners' staterooms the yacht contained. At the door he turned, expansively.
"She came to the port," he said exuberantly, "and said we were wearin' clothes like they wore on Darth. Did we come from there? I said we did. Then she said did we know somebody named Bron Hoddan on Darth? And I said we did and if she'd step inside the ship she'd meet you. And here she is!"
He unfastened the stateroom door, which had been barred from without. He opened it. He looked in, and grabbed, and pulled at something. Hoddan went sick with apprehension. He groaned as the something inside the stateroom sobbed and yielded.
Thal brought Nedda out into the saloon of the yacht. Her nose and eyes were red from terrified weeping. She gazed about her in purest despairing horror. She did not see Hoddan for a moment. Her eyes were filled with the brawny, mustachioed piratical figures who were Darthian gentlemen and who grinned at her in what she took for evil gloating.
She wailed.
Hoddan swallowed, with much difficulty, and said sickly:
"It's all right, Nedda. It was a mistake. Nothing will happen to you. You're quite"—and he knew with desperate certainty that it was true—"safe with me!"
And she was.