"Yes," said the dark-haired girl. Then she looked at the blond. "Do you still think," she asked, "that we are merely some sort of prisoners?"

"No, no," wept the blond girl.

"This is a slave market," said the dark-haired girl, "and we are slaves."

The blond girl moaned and threw her head back. The third and fourth girl began to sob.

"Accept it, my dear," said the dark-haired girl, "our reality is now transformed."

They looked at her.

"We are now slave girls on a strange world."

"No," whispered the girl on the end.

"I am for sale," said the dark-haired girl, "and so, too, are you, and the rest of us."

"Yes," whispered the blond, suddenly shuddering, "I–I am for sale."

"As are the rest of us," said the dark-haired girl.

The girls then subsided, and were quiet.

After a time the dark-haired girl spoke. "I wonder," she said, "what it will be like, being a slave girl."

"I cannot even think of it," said the blond-haired girl.

"I wonder what it will be like, being owned by a man," mused the dark-haired girl.

"Perhaps a woman will buy us," said the girl on the end.

The blond girl, and the dark-haired girl, looked at her, apprehensively.

"We would have less to fear from a woman," said the girl on the end.

"Do you want to be owned by a woman?" asked the dark-haired girl.

"No," said the girl on the end.

"Nor would I," said the third girl.

"Nor would I," said the dark-haired girl.

"— Nor would I," said the blond.

"That is interesting, is it not?" asked the dark-haired girl, thoughtfully. She looked out at the crowd. "Have you ever seen such men?" she asked. "I had never dreamed such men could exist."

"No," whispered the blond girl.

"Do you not find them disturbing?" asked the dark-haired girl.

"Wicked girl!" cried the girl on the end.

"I will tell you something," said the dark-haired girl. "They make me feel warm inside, and hot and wet."

"Wicked girl! Wicked girl!" cried the girl on the end.

"I have never felt feelings like this before," said the dark-haired girl. "I do not know what I would do if one of them touched me."

"Feminine! Feminine!" scolded the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt.

The dark-haired girl in the brief platform tunic, who had worn the red pull-over, knelt back. "Yes," she said, "feminine."

"If they so much as touch me, I'll scream," said the blond.

But there seemed little chance of this for there appeared to be much more choice merchandise for sale upon those long, darkly varnished, slatted platforms. I had stood back in the crowd, interested to hear them speak. But now I would move on. It was nearly time to go to the pavillion. I did see in the crowd, some platforms away, the fellow from the polar basin. He was looking at women. The rawhide rope was looped about his shoulder.

"Look," I heard a fellow say, "it is Tabron of Ar."

I turned about. A tarnsman, in the scarlet leather of his war rights, tall, was moving through the crowd. He casually stopped before the four girls.

The blond shrank back as his eyes examined her in the collar, chains and platform tunic.

He looked upon the dark-haired girl. To my surprise and pleasure I saw her kneel very straight and lift her body before him. Then he looked past her to the other two, girls and continued on his way. She knelt back in her chains.

"I saw you!" said the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt.

"He was very handsome," said the dark-haired girl. "-And I am a slave."

"He didn't buy you," sneered the third girl, who had worn the plaid flannel shirt, "you rich tart!"

"He didn't buy you either," retorted the dark-haired girl, "you low-class idiot."

I smiled. They were both only slaves.

"I am more beautiful than you," said the third girl.

I was pleased to see that the third girl seemed now much more sensitive to her femaleness than earlier. Perhaps she would not take as long as I had thought to discover her womanhood. Gorean males, I conjectured, might teach it to her quickly. She would look lovely, I thought, crawling to her master, his sandals in her teeth.

"If we must discuss that sordid sort of thing," said the girl on the end, who had worn the beige flannel shirt, "I am the most beautiful of us four."

"I am," said the dark-haired girl, angrily, indignantly.

"No," said the blond. "I am surely the most beautiful!"

"You do not even want a man to touch you," said the dark-haired girl.

"No," said the blond. "But I am still the most beautiful."

The dark-haired girl looked out over the crowd. "They will decide who is most beautiful," she said.

"They?" asked the blond.

"The masters," said the dark-haired girl.

"Masters?" stammered the blond.

"Yes," said the dark-haired girl, "the masters, those men out there, those who will buy us, our masters, they will decide who is most beautiful."

The girls knelt back in their chains. They knelt back easily, on their heels.

"Oh!" cried the blond girL.

A stout fellow, in the garb of the tarn keepers, smelling of the tarn cots, stood looking at her. She pulled back, and shook her head, "No." Her eyes were frightened.

The stout fellow looked about, and caught the eye of one of the slaver's men who, seeing him, made his way through the crowds to his side.

"These are new slaves?" asked the tarn keeper.

"Fresh to the collar," said the slaver's man.

"I need a wench," said the man, "one who will cost me little, one to keep in the cots by day, to shovel the excrement of tarns, one to keep in my hut by night, as a pot-and-mat girl."

"These four wenches," said the slaver's man, expansively, indicating the small coffle, "are comely candidates for such a post." He stepped upon the platform, and crouched upon its surface. "Consider this one," he said, indicating the blond, who was first upon the chain.

He reached to her tunic.

"Don't touch me," she cried, drawing back.

"A barbarian," said the tam keeper.

"Yes," said the slaver's man.

"And the others?" asked the tarn keeper.

"They are all barbarian, Master," said the slaver's man.

The dark-haired girl, seeing the tam keeper's eyes upon her, shrank back.

The tarn keeper turned and walked away. The girls looked at one another, frightened, and knelt back. They seemed relieved. This relief, however, was surely premature. Another slaver's man joined his colleague at the platform. "We will never sell these," said the first. "They are raw girls, untrained, inept, clumsy, meaningless sluts. They do not even speak Gorean."

"Tenalion has no intention of putting them on the main block in the pavilion," said the second. He had a five-bladed slave whip at his belt.

"It would be a waste of block time," said the first. "Who would want girls this worthless and ignorant?" he asked. "We shall surely have to transport them back to Ar."

"Who of Ar would want them?" asked the second man grinning.

"We will have to take them back to Ar," said the first man.

"We could sell them for sleen feed here," said the second.

"That is true," granted the first.

"Attend to the forty through forty-five platforms," said the second man, who seemed to have greater authority than the first. "I shall stay in this vicinity for the time."

The other man nodded, and turned away.

The second slaver's man regarded the four girls, who did not meet his eyes. He wore blue and yellow, a tunic. He wore studded leather wristlets. At his belt hung the whip. The girls now seemed apprehensive. I did not blame them. One in whose charge they were now stood near them. I saw them look at his whip, but there was no real comprehension of it in their eyes. They did not yet understand the whip, or what it might do to them. I gathered they had never been whipped.