The girl on the platform, naked, kneeling, a metal collar hammered about her neck, the metal pole between her leg., grasping it with both arms, threw back her head and screamed piteously.

The two guards then withdrew. Samos, hooded, walked out on the floating walkway, steadied by its chains. I, similarly hooded, followed him. He lifted the torch.

The platform's front edge was about a yard from the tiny, wooden, metal-sheathed, circular platform, mounted on the wooden, metal-sheathed pole, that tiny platform on which the girl knelt, that narrow, tiny platform which held her but inches from the tharlarion-filled water.

She looked up at us, piteously, blinking against the light of the torch.

She clutched the pole helplessly. She could not have been bound to it more closely if she had been fastened in close chains.

The small eyes of numerous tharlarion, perhaps some two or three hundred of them, ranging from four to ten inches in length, watching her, nostrils and eyes at the water level, reflected the light of the torch.

She clutched the pole even more closely.

She looked up at us, tears in her eyes. "Please, please, please, please, please," she said.

She had spoken in English.

She, like Samos Earth girl, Linda, had blue eyes and blond hair. She was slightly more slender than Linda, She had good ankles. They would take an ankle ring nicely. I noted that she had not yet been branded.

"Please," she whimpered.

Samos indicated that we should leave. I turned about, and preceded him from the walkway. The guards, behind us, raised the walkway, secured it in place, and swung shut the door. They slid shut the observation panel. They locked the door.

Samos, outside, returned his torch to its ring. We removed the hoods. I followed Samos from the lower level, and then from the: pens, back to his hall.

"I do not understand what the meaning of all this is, Samos," I told him.

"There are deep matters here," said Samos, "matters in which I am troubled as well as you."

"Why did you show me the girl in the cell?" I asked.

"What do you make of her?" asked Samos.

"I would say about five copper tarsks, in a fourth-class market, perhaps even an item in a group sale. She is beautiful, but not particularly beautiful, as female slaves go. She is obviously ignorant and untrained. She does have good ankles."

"She speaks the Earth language English, does she not?" asked Samos.

"Apparently," I said. "Do you wish me to question her?"

"No," said Samos.

"Does she speak Gorean?" I asked.

"No more than a few words," said Samos.

There are ways of determining, of course, if one speaks a given language. One utters phrases significant in the language. There are, when cognition takes place, physiological responses which are difficult or impossible to conceal, such things as an increase in the pulse rate, and the dilation of the pupils.

"The matter then seems reasonably clear," I said.

"Give me your thoughts," said Samos.

"She is a simple wench brought to Gor by Kur slavers, collar meat."

"You would think so?" he asked.

"It seems likely," I said."Women trained as Kur agents are usually well versed in Gorean."

"But she is not as beautiful as the average imported slave from Earth, is she?" asked Samos.

"That matter is rather subjective, I would say" I smiled. "I think she is quite lovely. Whether she is up to the normal standards of their merchandise is another question."

"Perhaps she was with a girl who was abducted for enslavement," said Samos, "and was simply, as it was convenient, put in a double tie with her and brought along."

"Perhaps," I shrugged. "I would not know. It would be my speculation, however, that she had deep potential for slavery."

"Does not any woman?" asked Samos.

"Yes," I said, "but some are slaves among slaves." I smiled at Samos. "I have great respect for the taste and discrimination of Kur slavers," I said. "I think they can recognize the slave in a woman at a glance. I have never known them to make a mistake."

"Even their Kur agents who are female," said Samos, "seem to have been selected for their potential for ultimate slavery in mind, such as the slaves Pepita, Elicia and Arlene."

"They were doubtless intended to be ultimately awarded as gifts and prizes to Kur agents who were human males," I said.

"They are ours now," said Samos, "or theirs to whom we would give or sell them."

"Yes," I said.

"What of the slave, Vella?" he asked.

"She was never, in my mind," I said, "strictly an agent of Kurii."

"She betrayed Priest-Kings," he said, "and served Kurii agents in the Tahari."

"That is true," I admitted.

"Give her to me," said Samos. "I want to bind her band and foot and hurl her naked to the urts in the canals."

"She is mine," I said. "If she is to be bound hand and foot and hurled naked to the urts in the canals, it is I who will do so."

"As you wish," said Samos.

"It is my speculation," I said. "that the girl below in the pens, in the tharlarion cell, in spite of the fact that she is, though beautiful, less stunning than many slaves, is simple collar meat, that she was brought to Gor for straightforward disposition to a slaver, perhaps in a contract lot."

"Your speculation, given her failures in Gorean, is intelligent," said Samos, "but it is, as it happens, incorrect."

"Speak to me," I said.

"You would suppose, would you not," asked Samos, "that such a girl would have been discovered on some chain, after having passed through the hands of one or more masters, and simply bought off the chain, or purchased at auction,"

"Of course," I said. "Yet she is not yet branded," I mused. Kur slavers do not, usually, brand their girls. Usually it is their first Gorean master who puts the brand on them.

"That is a perceptive observation," said Samos.

"How did you come by her?" I asked.

"Quite by accident," said Samos. "Have you heard of the captain, Bejar?"

"Of course," I said. "He is a member of the council. He was with us on the 25th of Se'Kara." This was the date of a naval battle which took place in the first year of the sovereignty of the Council of Captains in Port Kar. It had been, also, the year 10,12 °C.A., Contasta Ar, from the founding of Ar. It was, currently, Year 7 in the Sovereignty of the Council of Captains, that year. in the chronology of Ar, which was 10,126 C.A. On the 25th of Se'Kara, in the first year of the Sovereignty of the Council of Captains, in the naval battle which had taken place on that date, the joint fleets of Cos and Tyros had been turned back from Port Kar. Bejar, and Samos, and I, and many others, as well, had been there. It was in that same year, incidentally, that Port Kar had first had a Home Stone.

"Bejar," said Samos, "in an action at sea, overtook a ship of Cos."

I listened. Cos and Tyros, uneasy allies, one island ubarate under large-eyed Chendar, the Sea Sleen, and the other under gross Lurius, of Jad, were nominally at war with Port Kar. There had been, however, no major engagements in several years. Cos, for some years, had been preoccupied with. struggles on the Vosk. These had to do with competitive spheres of influence on the Vosk itself and in its basin and adjacent tributary-containing valleys. The products and markets of these areas are quite important commercially. Whereas most towns on the river are, in effect, free states, few are strong enough to ignore powers such as Cos and its. major rival in these territories, the city of Ar. Cos and Ar compete with one another to gain treaties with these river towns, control the traffic, and dominate the commerce of the river to their respective advantages. Ar has no navy, being an inland power, but it has developed a fleet of river ships and these, often, skirmish with the river ships of Cos, usually built in Cos, transported to the continent and carried overland to the river. The delta of the Vosk, for most practical purposes, a vast marsh, an area of thousands of square pasangs, where the Vosk washes down to the sea, is closed to shipping. It is trackless and treacherous, and the habitat of marsh tharlarion and the predatory Ul, a winged lizard with wing-spans of several feet. It is also inhabited by the rencers, who live upon rence islands, woven of the rence reed, masters of the long bow, usually obtained in trade with peasants to the east of the delta. They are banded together under the nominal governance of the marsh Ubar, Ho-Hak. They are suspicious of strangers, as are Goreans generally. In Gorean the same expression is used for 'stranger' and 'enemy'. The situation on the Vosk is further complicated by the presence of Vosk pirates and the rivalries of the river towns themselves.