She worked her way down until his new erection was cradled between her breasts. There she stayed, squeezing him firmly between the solid curves. She slid back and forth, and sometimes shifted to rub a nipple against Blade's rigid pulsing flesh.

At last Blade couldn't stand it anymore. He clutched Sparra by both shoulders and pulled her up onto him. He slid smoothly into her inner warmth, and she moaned. His hands clamped down on the solid buttocks, squeezing with more strength than tenderness as his own control faded.

It vanished entirely. So did Sparra's. They thrashed together in a tangle of arms and legs. Blade's groans mingled with Sparra's sobs of delight, as their sweat ran together and then flowed off them to soak the blankets.

After what seemed like an hour, the moment of release ended, and they lay still.

Sparra lay quiet on top of Blade so long that he was afraid she'd gone to sleep. He badly wanted to himself, but didn't want to be that rude to his partner. Besides, if someone came by and saw them together-well, Chyatho had been jealous enough over his simply patting Sparra's cheek!

At last Sparra's eyes flickered open. She raised her head and kissed Blade on the nose, then giggled. «Well, my friend. I thought your loins were sounder than your wits. I'm glad to know I'm still such a good judge of men. I wonder-were you a good judge of women, when you had your wits about you? Certainly you know your way around a bed.»

Blade frowned, pretending to make a great mental effort. «I think-I think I had a-woman, wife? Anyway, when you touched me-I knew what I should do.»

«You certainly did!» said Sparra unblushingly. «I hope you'll remember it, too, now that it's come back to you. I'm not going to use you up and throw you away after one night! No, by the Laws!» She wriggled up and bit his left ear hard enough to make Blade wince, then slid back down and rested her head on his stomach.

Blade let his fingers play with her tangled hair. He didn't mind Sparra being hungry for him-he'd seldom had a more satisfactory bed partner. But if the affair went on too long, Chyatho would notice. Before that happened, Blade knew he should be ready to escape from Monitor Bekror's estate.

Ideally he should find some place far enough from Kaldak to keep the Dimension X secret safe, but close enough to where he'd landed so that he could go on looking for Cheeky. He'd be damned if he was going to simply give up on the little fellow without a good fight!

It was easier to describe such a place than it would be to find it, though, but-wait a minute! What about the Tribes? They were close enough, certainly. They also had no science or technology worth mentioning, so they would be no danger to the Dimension X secret. If he told them that Cheeky was a magical animal, who would give them power against the Kaldakans. .?

Yes, but would the Tribes welcome strangers, or kill them on sight? Even if they let him in, how could he convince them that they should follow him anywhere, let alone in a war? And was Cheeky worth setting the whole border country aflame and getting hundreds or thousands of people killed?

Reluctantly, Blade decided he was not. The feather-monkey was a friend as well as a valuable scientific experiment. He could not convince himself that Cheeky was worth a war. He would go to the Tribes if he had to escape Chyatho or the lie detector, but not try to enlist them in a search for Cheeky.

Back to square one. If he only hadn't pretended to have lost his memory-! But if he hadn't, he still couldn't have asked too many questions about Cheeky. If the Kaldakans weren't suspicious already, the feather-monkey could easily make them so.

Damn! Blade nearly said the word out loud. He wanted to get up and slam his fist against the wall in sheer rage and frustration. Then he saw that Sparra really was asleep, her arms around him and her legs drawn up. He ran his hand down the smooth skin of her back to the cleft between her buttocks. She wriggled like a kitten and smiled in her sleep. He wouldn't wake her up yet.

He went back to trying to find a way out of this trap. It didn't make any difference that he'd walked into the trap himself, or in fact that he really hadn't had much choice. The Dimension X secret had to be protected, and that was that.

He did know one thing. This was the last time he was going to risk having to sacrifice someone else to keep the secret. This time it had been Cheeky, which was bad enough. Next time it might be the first human companion to make the trip safely.

This decision might surprise Lord Leighton. He might even put it down as a weakness. It wouldn't surprise J, however, and he wouldn't attribute it to a weakness on Blade's part. Better than most, J knew that a good agent couldn't be a wild animal, that he had to have some scruples.

Gently Blade began to caress Sparra back to wakefulness. They would make love again, then he would somehow try to make her understand he wanted to be alone. She would probably be ready for her own bed by then anyway.

One hand on her buttocks, the other creeping under her to stroke a breast. The nipple hardening, her eyes opening, a little gasp of pleasure, her solid flesh moving against his so that he felt his erection returning-

Someone screamed. It was faint and far off, but there could be no mistake about it. Then two more screams, and a shout.

«Tribesmen! Turn out, turn out! Tribes-!» and another scream ending in the gurgle of someone getting his throat cut. If you heard that sound once, you could never again mistake it for anything else-particularly when the first time, it was you doing the throat-cutting.

Blade sat up. Sparra rolled off the bed, nipples still erect and mouth still slack with desire. A sharp explosion sounded, then the crackle of a laser and several gunshots.

Now Blade heard a whole series of explosions and recognized them. Some were grenades, others mortar shells. Instead of his going to the Tribes, the Tribes had come to him. And they'd come much better armed than anyone around here seemed to expect.

While Blade was figuring out what was going on, Sparra knelt naked on the floor, waiting for her arousal to fade. When it did, she pulled on her body stocking and belted the pistol over it. Then she sat down and started tugging on her boots.

Blade swung his feet over the edge of the bed and reached for his own clothes. Sparra shook her head. «No, my strong one. No. Bad men out there. They will hurt you. Hurt-trouble.»

Being treated as a child just after he'd so thoroughly proved he was a man annoyed Blade, He let out an oath which made Sparra's eyes widen. Then he stood up and pulled on his pants.

«Trouble up there,» she repeated, trying to push him back down on to the bed. She might as well have tried to push down a stone wall. Blade put an arm around her.

«It is like-when we were in bed. I hear the noise the bad men are making. I think I heard noises like this before. Then I knew what do. Maybe I still do.»

«You'll be no more than a lamb in the claws of a great hawk!» Sparra shouted. She seemed ready to weep with anger and frustration. «Stay down here and you'll be out of danger.»

Blade knew that if a grenade or mortar shell came down the shaft, he would not only be out of danger, he would also be dead, and so would Sparra if she was still here arguing with him. By now he was fully dressed. The only weapon he had was his blunt-tipped pruning knife, but he'd armed himself from his enemies more often than he could remember.

Blade leaped high and swung himself up into the mouth of the shaft. Sparra muttered something about magnificent male animals too dumb to know danger when they should run away from it, but followed him.