I do not know how I got out of there. I was simply in the tubes flashing away from her.

I halted before I turned a corner to my room corridor. I tried to calm myself. I was trying to throw up and trying not to throw up. My hands were shaking. I tried to get out a chank-pop but my fingers were fluttering so I couldn't get the top off and it fell to the floor.

Only one thought was dominating me. Somehow, someway I had to get Heller out of there. If I remained a day longer I was absolutely convinced I would be dead. If the Countess Krak had any inkling of what was planned for Heller, what she had just done to the giant would be mild for me.

I had to coax myself out of the thought that I was already dead. They say that in total fear of one's life one can get very brilliant. I had to and I did.

Tugging at my tunic to straighten myself up, breathing as naturally as I could, I walked by the room guards and entered.

Heller had bathed and he was now lounging in a chair, feet on another one, listening to music on the Homeview.

I threw my cap on the bed and then sat down at the table. I didn't dare open a canister or he would see my shaking hands. I can control my voice: one is thoroughly trained to do that in the Apparatus.

"Jettero," I said, "has it occurred to you that this is a very dirty place?" He looked at me, languidly, still listening to the music. Then he smiled. "You say that to a Fleet spacer?"

"It is not a good place to be in. You are used to the finer surroundings of life." He thought that over, I had his attention now: he was no longer just listening to the music.

Would this work? A desperate prayer was running off in the back of my head and I hoped it was going to the Gods.

"You factually have completed all your studies," I said, my voice carefully matter-of-fact and calm. "There is no real reason to remain." Heller looked around the room. It was as though he was seeing it for the first time. The black floor, the shabby fixtures, the scarred black walls.

He looked at me. "Soltan, you are right! This fortress is uncomfortable!"He suddenly leaped up out of his chair. He took three steps one way, turned and took three steps back, steadying himself on the bed ends the way spacers will even when groundside.

His quick action startled me. I could not quite grasp the thought processes of his decision about something. I foolishly thought I had magically gotten the mission going!

He didn't say another thing about it all that evening. He just smiled and hummed and grinned to himself and was charming.

He even coaxed the Countess out of a bit of a cross mood she was in when the guards brought her. She felt she had made a spectacle of herself, not saying how or why. And she confessed she had ruined the new boots he had given her.

Heller simply told her there were plenty of boots where those came from and told some funny stories about spaceboots. I took it that his mind had now turned to travel. A good portent.

There was even a brighter sign. He got out the "revolts and pretenders" list covering Manco history and they soon had their heads together, canisters of green sparklewater in hand, and, while the music played on, went over the material.

I was so happy at the possibility of seeing the last of Countess Krak that I almost enjoyed Manco's history!

"See?" said the Countess Krak, a beautiful finger on a line. "There wasa Nepogat! Right here:" And the handmaiden Nepogat who had forsooth suborned the princely morals was banished from the Fortress of Dar and forbidden ever to return.

"Oho!" said Heller. "It doesn't say what princeling but do you suppose it could have been Prince Caucalsia?"

"Oh, it must have been," said the Countess Krak. "A woman spurned can do some very nasty things." I didn't follow it. They were inventing their own history.

After a while, Heller said, "Here's a whole list of Princes condemned without giving a single name. Do you suppose one of them could have been Prince Caucalsia?"

"I'm sure it was!" said the Countess Krak. "Isn't that the right period?"

"Indeed it is," said Heller. "So that proves it!" And they both laughed with delight.

I snickered to myself. Some engineer. I hoped I didn't have to walk on any of his bridges if he couldn't think any better than that.

I left them to it. I went and lay down in the filthy, cluttered closet I used for sleep, idiotically hopeful that I would shortly be out of the reach of the Countess Krak!

A light shined in my face. "Officer Gris! Time to get going." I groaned and stirred in the stinking litter of the cubicle. I looked at my watch. A half hour before dawn?

"Time to get going," the guard insisted.

I dug around and found my cap under some old food scraps. I stumbled after him back to my room.

The place was a jumble of sound and motion! It was full of cartons and noise! The platoon usually split itself into two watches of twelve hours each, meaning seven guards on duty at a time: but there seemed to be more than that here.

Snelz was astraddle a backwards chair. He was holding a canister of hot jolt and using it to point directions to his men. They were packing the place up! They were all laughing and talking.

Heller was tying up a bundle. He was dressed in a race driver's suit, white with red slashes. He had a red visored cap on the back of his head, the kind they wear under their helmets. He looked fresh and clean and vital: how could he manage that this early?

He saw me and picked up a canister of hot jolt from the heat pad and came over and handed it to me. He was laughing. At my bedraggled appearance?

In thick, Virginia accented English he said, "Mah name is Rovah. Ah have a George named dawg." He had it wrong.

Patiently I corrected him. "It's 'My name is George.' It is the dogthat is named Rover."For some reason it sent him into a gale of laughter. Far too early to laugh that heartily.

Snelz said to me, "You keeping this room? If not, we'll pack up for you." Was I keeping this room? I always kept a few personal things here at Spiteos just in case. Hardly more than a ready bagful. But then it hit me. I wouldn't need this room for ages. In fact, I never wanted to see Spiteos again! "I'm moving, too!"

"Pack him up," said Snelz to his men.

It was amazing how much stuff had been accumulated in this short stay. The food lockers had been filled. Covers had been gotten for the beds, bath towels . . .

Heller was unhooking the Homeviewer. A guard took it toward a carton. "Pack 'em up, move 'em out!" said Heller. The guards all laughed and kept busy. I couldn't understand why they were laughing until I realized Heller's words were the first words of a song, "Spaceward Ho!" For the first time since awakening, the joyous possibility hit me. Were we really on our way? I finished the last drops of hot jolt and then paused. Wait. Why was he packing up a Homeviewer? It was no good on Earth. Had he just tamely told the Countess bye-bye kid? I didn't think so. Why should the guards laugh at the first words of that old song of the spacers? Did they know something I didn't know? Was there something secretively amusing in Heller's attitude? Long service in the Apparatus teaches one to note the signs in scenes carefully. There was something wrong here.

But they now had the place all packed up. They put the cartons on dollies and shortly we were boarding a tunnel zipbus, baggage and all.

The only attention anyone was paying to me came at the various barricades where the alert guards demanded satisfaction for all the commotion. Heller, each time, just jerked a thumb at me and I presented my orders and identoplate. And well the sentries might be curious: somebody in a racing suit was not an ordinary sight at Spiteos or Camp Endurance. Heller had nosecurity sense: if trained, he would have worn something old and shabby, more fitting to the scene. He wouldn't be standing out like an emergency beacon! And he made it even worse by handing the sentries puffsticks and shaking their hands and telling them good-bye. They were not very good sentries, either: they laughed and made jokes with him. In espionage you don't get yourself remembered! This guy wouldn't last two minutes on this mission – if he was really going, which I sourly doubted.