In another minute, the four of them and their modest baggage were aboard the Witch, hatches snugly closed. Since the local port authority had disappeared, there would be no formalities to delay their lifting off and departing from the Hong's World system.

His ship's data bank had no problem at all in coming up with a fairly direct route to Maracanda, which was indeed in the sector where Harry's passengers had placed it.

Then, with Lily Gunnlod and the two businessmen secure in chairs, just to be on the safe side, they were in readiness.

Harry was giving his full attention to the job, melding his mind with the thoughtware that controlled the ship. The artificial gravity eased itself on, almost imperceptibly taking over the business of determining up and down, light and heavy, the whole management of mass and inertia in the ship's interior. When Harry gave his Witch the mental command for liftoff, the peaceful-looking surface of Hong's World seemed to drop away from beneath them like a released bomb, but no one inside felt even a tug of acceleration.

Visible directly through cleared statglass ports, the Twinkler's pretty image, ceasing to twinkle now that the air was nearly all below them, still gave no hint of the blast of death it had spawned. A couple of hours of gentle, charming starlight still remained, no more than a fragile curtain over onrushing disaster.

Before Harry kicked his ship into flightspace, it was possible to look out directly one last time through his statglass ports. Still there was nothing to be seen but the swiftly diminishing bulk of the planet they had left, and the seemingly unchanged stars. Soon Hong's System would be gone from view.

Of course, if you were to retreat a few light-years and unlimber your telescope, you might watch a replay of its last few pleasant years, growing eternally more and more remote.

After making sure the autopilot was on the job, Harry had eased off his pilot's helmet. He continued to be curious, in a professional way, about his clients. "So, anybody know any good stories?"

Redpath and Dietrich remained glumly silent. Lily said: "The only story I can think of is my own and Alan's. And I've already bored you quite enough with that."

Harry thought she looked almost as grim as his two male passengers. He told her: "You can still hope for a happy ending. So, you've been traveling for a while. How'd you get this far?"

Lily told him that she had taken advantage of some kind of Templar shuttle service that ran through zones of the Galaxy where berserkers were perceived as being active. Not, of course, that Templars were likely to carry travelers where the threat was really dangerous - humans, even Templars, generally stayed out of those zones altogether, unless some governmental power amassed enough ships and weapons to send in a task force, hunting.

Redpath and Dietrich listened without comment. They gave no sign of becoming more talkative or of relaxing their grim outlook on the world. About all they let Harry know was that they had been prospecting for some kind of minerals on Maracanda, until some other urgent business, unspecified, had called them away.

"We had to go off world to make some arrangements for transportation." Redpath's face twitched again, as if uttering that many words in a string had made him nervous. Of course, space travel in itself made some people edgy.

Lily Gunnlod asked the businessman: "And was your trip successful?"

He looked at her as if suspicious of her motives. "Oh yeah. Yes, I think it was."

"Right now," added Dietrich, "it's looking pretty good." His hard face almost smiled.

Conversation showed no signs of picking up, the three passengers having little to say to Harry or to each other. Maybe they were all just tired. Harry's announcement that his little ship could afford them each a small private cabin was greeted with a kind of dull satisfaction, as if they had expected nothing less. The impression they gave was rather that of people resting between rounds of an exhausting contest.

Still curious about his destination, Harry slipped his pilot's helmet on again. He had no trouble calling up more details about Maracanda from his comprehensive data bank. But when he had studied the symbols and the images for a bit, he just sat there staring at the holostage.

Their destination had turned out to be an oddity indeed.

There ought to be no trouble about getting there, but some extraordinary maneuvers might be required on the approach to landing.

Presently Harry swiveled his chair to confront his passengers. "You people sure you've got the right name for where you want to go? The name is listed, all right, but the object's not even credited with planetary status."

Redpath frowned. "I tell you, we've lived there. It's shown as habitable, isn't it?"

"Well, yeah."

Lily gave him her chill, determined look. "Maracanda is the right name."

"It is not surprising," said Mr. Redpath with nervous dignity, "if your catalogue does not call it merely a planet. It is by no means an ordinary world."

"But a good place to do business, hey?"

Dietrich nodded gloomily and managed to get out a few words. "We understand that mediocre pilots sometimes have difficulty with the approach and landing. But we assumed that you, given your reputation, certainly would not."

Harry frowned. "Actually, I don't see any real problems looming in my part of the job. I've already set a course. According to this, there's a reasonable spaceport on Maracanda, which strongly implies regular travel to and from the place. Though I would say the approach instructions are unique." It seemed that if he wanted to get away from people giving him warnings, he was going to the wrong destination.

Soon Harry had the Witch plowing through flightspace in the direction that his passengers wanted her to take. The Space Force and Templars would both be sore at him for setting such a course, assuming any of them bothered to detect his trail, but it wasn't the first time he'd rubbed them the wrong way.

"Is everybody ready for a little dinner? Room and board are included in the price of the tickets."

Making practical decisions regarding food and drink occupied everyone for a time. None of Harry's passengers had so far shown any gourmet sensibilities, but all of them admitted to being hungry. Orders were taken, and the serving machines went to work. Those that actually brought the food were basically moving boxes, with odd numbers of inhuman legs and arms. In keeping with general practice in this berserker-haunted Galaxy, none of Harry's servants was in the least anthropomorphic. Some berserkers were fashioned in the general form of their most stubborn enemy, because that made it more convenient for them to operate equipment designed to be operated by humans.

Eventually, Harry returned to the subject of what he had found in his data bank. "Interesting. It says your destination is an azlaroc-type system."

Redpath: "That is correct."

"What does that mean, exactly?" Lily asked. "I mean, every time Maracanda is mentioned, it's described as something really out of the ordinary. But so far I haven't been able to understand just what it is." She looked at her two fellow passengers. "You two say you've been there. What's it like?"

The pair continued to resist interrogation. At last Redpath shrugged and said: "It's a place, a lot like other places."

"Really?"

"From the business point of view, that is. I mean, some people get rich, others go broke."

Dietrich grudgingly put in: "And yeah, one thing that makes it special is that the shrine is there. What they call the Portal. That Malako thing, like you say. Some people are into shrines."

Harry said: "I had to look up Maracanda, to check if what I thought I hazily remembered was correct. Basically I had it right. Means it's like one in a hundred billion, for screwiness."

According to the data bank, maybe half a dozen bodies technically they were not planetsof the type were known to exist among the several hundred billion stellar systems in the great Galaxy. Besides the "habitable body" from which it took its name, the system's chief components were a neutron star and a black hole. These three principal bodies moved in a peculiar orbital dance, tracing the form of a figure eight, each passing at times between the other two. This strongly implied that Maracanda must be much more massive than any Earth-like planet, heavier than Jupiter, in a class with objects huge enough to count as suns.

How any object in space could weigh in with that kind of mass and still be classed as habitable was more than Harry could figure out on the spur of the moment, yet there it was, snugly occupying a niche in his data bank, being passed off with a few comments about zones of gravity inversion.

Whatever the peculiarities, Harry could discover no reason not to visit the place; the existence of a spaceport showed that a lot of other people made the journey and survived.

Recalling his orphaned cargo, he asked his passengers if they thought there would be much of a market on Maracanda for six large boxes, said to contain food-processing machinery. But none of them seemed to know or care.

Dietrich and Redpath had their heads together on the far side of the control room, deep into one of their private conversations. But this one seemed more intense than usual, as if they were discussing, then agreeing on, some matter of considerable urgency.

Lily spoke up, berating the men for not being more social. "We're going to be shipmates for - how long? A whole standard day?"

"Somewhat longer," Harry put in.

"And so we might as well be socially comfortable. What do you say?"

They didn't say much, only stood there side by side. Now and then one of them would shoot a speculative glance at Harry. It reminded him of the way some people acted when they were about to play some practical joke.

The business became more and more obvious, until Lily finally reacted openly.

"What are you two doing? Is there some problem?" Suddenly there was a hint in her voice that she might be accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed.

Dietrich was looking at the young woman coldly. "No problem that's any of your business, lady." The tone of his voice had also changed.

Redpath was giving Harry a look with something of triumph in it. He chimed in: "No need for the pilot to worry about anything either. Right? Mr. Silver, your time of worrying is just about over."

Harry looked up with interest. "Really?"

Dietrich had pulled out from somewhere an object that could only be described as a small pistol. "We like your little ship here, Mr. Silver. Or should I call you Captain Silver? Ex-captain. We like your ship so much that it now belongs to us. Got that?"

Harry didn't answer. He made no move to do anything. He just sat there, looking interested but not appearing to be much worried, waiting to see what was going to happen next.

Lily still protested. "The pair of you must be out of your minds!" She got up from her chair and took a nervous turn about the deck. There wasn't much room to pace in the small control room with its four big chairs. "What can I say to you? We have our passage all set, going to Maracanda! Isn't that what we all wanted? What do you think you want? Is this some kind of joke?"

"You ask too many questions, lady." That came from Red-path; Dietrich had retreated into silence. All three passengers were now out of their chairs.

When Harry spoke, he still sounded almost calm. "The lady had a point, asking what you think you want. I've got a better question for you, though: What do you think you're going to get?"

Dietrich casually waved his weapon, as if just making sure that everyone had seen it. "I'm a qualified pilot, Silver, so you should remember that we don't really need you at all. All we need is your ship. And, of course, as the new owners, we should get a rebate on our fares." His grin showed slightly crooked teeth. "Just try to fight us, just give us a little bit of an argument, and your personal troubles will quickly be all over."

Lily was still on her feet, standing with fists clenched. She shot a fierce look at Harry, as if she expected him to jump out of his chair and put these mutineers in their place. But mostly she was staring at her fellow passengers. With every passing moment she looked more outraged, as if only now had she grasped the full import of what was happening. She could not believe her eyes. At last she almost screamed: "You imbecile! Put that gun away!"

Mr. Dietrich ignored her. Still keeping a very close watch on Harry, he motioned slightly with the muzzle of the little gun. "All right, ex-captain, time to get down to business. Just stand up and step away from your chair. Hands away from all the manual controls - I'm a pretty good pilot, and I know where they are. Then you're going to walk over here, just a little closer to me, and put your hands up on the wall."

Harry still had not moved a muscle, except that his eyebrows had gone up. His hands, fingers laced, were clasped over his trim midsection. His voice was dangerously quiet. "No refund on your fare. I ought to tack on an extra charge."

Lily let out a wordless noise. She sounded more angry, outraged, than terrified.

The man with the gun kept it pointed right at Harry, while he turned his eyes toward Lily. "I told you before, sit down and shut up."

Instead of shutting up, she got even louder, turning to Red-path in a kind of desperate appeal. But he was watching the gunman with approval; it was plain that the two were in full agreement.

Harry's eyes were flaring dangerously. He was sitting up straight now, but otherwise had made no move.

Dietrich barked: "Silver, out of the chair! You've got ten seconds!"

Lily said: "Mr. Silver, you'd better move." She was looking from one of her fellow passengers to the other. "You unutterable fools!"

The gunman's expression as he looked at her had morphed from anger to something like contempt. He only shook his head, and once more treated Harry to his steely glare. "Five seconds, Silver."

Harry stayed where he was. "Any other orders you'd like to give? Might as well spout 'em all at once, while you've still got my attention."

Dietrich seemed about to add something else, but before he could get out the words, the expression on his face had changed. He swallowed, blinked, and then glanced down at his own right hand, looking surprised to discover it empty. His weapon had just fallen to the deck, sliding free from fingers that could no longer hold it.

He tried to clutch with both hands at the bulkhead beside him, and with his palms got just enough pressure on the smooth surface to keep himself from falling hard, but by the time his slithering body had reached the floor, he had begun to snore.

On the other side of the control room, Dietrich's colleague was no longer offering him encouragement. Mr. Redpath was now sitting on the deck with his back propped against a console, eyes half closed, drooling a little. Nearby, Lily's slender body had lost its grace, along with the ability to stand upright. She was flat on her back, her dark eyes rolling, lips moving slightly, as if she might still be trying to protest.

For perhaps half a minute, the interior of the ship was very quiet.

The interval of silence ended when the Witch, somewhere in her randomizing circuits, chose that moment to project a little soft background music.

When it had finished, it let a few more moments of silence pass before inquiring, in a calm and gentle voice: "Any further instructions?"

"No," said Harry, still in his chair. He was shaking his head, expressing thoughtful disapproval, like the director of a play whose cast had failed him miserably. "No, no, no. Nothing more just now, thank you." He understood perfectly well that it was crazy to be thanking a machine, but sometimes, usually when he was upset, the words slipped out.

After treating himself to a couple of deep breaths, Harry eased himself out of his chair. Going unhurriedly to a small locker nearby, he extracted from it a roll of strong tape. Moving first to Dietrich, then to Redpath, he taped each man's hands securely behind his back. They were no more than half conscious, and could only watch helplessly as Harry picked up Dietrich's fallen pistol, then in the course of a quick, efficient body search, gathered a similar weapon from inside Redpath's coveralls. He also relieved each man of a receipt showing how much cash he had paid Harry Silver for transportation.

Next Harry dragged the men one at a time to a capacious locker opening at deck level. When he had shoved them both inside the storage space, he slammed the door and locked it.

Then he turned back toward the fallen woman.