"These are special," said Lallia. "And you know it."

She sat on the edge of the table, long bare legs swinging beneath the hem of an iridescent dress made of finely tanned fish skin. Three hours from Candara, bathed, her lustrous black hair piled in thick coils above her head, she had doubled her beauty.

And her boldness, thought Dumarest. He sat beside her, facing the dealer in precious stones, feeling the ache of fatigue gnaw at his bones. The fight had drained the last of his strength.

"They are special," admitted Yalung after a moment. "To you, no doubt, they are very special. To others, my dear, they are merely pearls. How did you get them from their owners?"

Lallia smiled. "I own them. They were given to me by love-sick fools. I hid them in a place only my lover shall find." Her hand reached out, the slim fingers running through Dumarest's hair.

"And the dress?" Yalung was curious.

"I wore it beneath that stinking woolen thing they made me put on. The men weren't allowed to touch me and the old biddies were satisfied as long as I didn't dazzle their men. Men!" She snorted her contempt. "Blind fools who lived in terror of imagined perils to come. The old ones were the worst, coming to me with the excuse they wanted to save me from eternal damnation. When that didn't work they tried to buy what they wanted. I took what they gave and laughed in their faces. The fools!"

"You were the fool," said Dumarest flatly. "Didn't you even think of the dangers you ran?"

"I thought a ship would come," she admitted. "I hoped every day that a trader would call. When it did I didn't even see it. They had me locked away in the dark. God, you'll never know how relieved I was to see some real men again!"

Again she reached out to caress Dumarest's hair.

"Real men," she murmured. "And one of them a very real man indeed. Tell me, lover, am I to your liking?"

"He fought for you," said Yalung. "He could have died for you. Would a man do that for someone he cared nothing about?"

"I want him to say it," she said and then, as Dumarest re shy;mained silent, "well, perhaps later. What will you give for the pearls, dealer? And don't think I'm some ignorant fool who doesn't know their real worth."

"I will give you the cost of a High passage," said Yalung. "More I cannot give."

"Then forget it." Reaching out she took the pearls from the yellow palm. "The captain will give me more than that. More than you think, perhaps." She smiled at Dumarest, her face radiant. "Can you guess, lover, at what I mean?"

Again Dumarest remained silent. Yalung said, "Tell me, girl, how did you come to be on Candara?"

"I wanted to travel the Web so I entered into a ship-marriage with an engineer. I didn't know that he rode a commune ship and he didn't tell me until we were well on our way. They share everything they own and I refused to be shared. So, when we hit Candara, they kicked me out." She laughed, remembering. "They didn't do any trade, though. I told the chief man that they practiced abominable rites and he believed me. So they went off empty-handed."

Dumarest looked at the long length of her naked thigh. "And before that?"

"You're interested, lover?" Her teeth were white against the red of her mouth. "Before that I worked in a carnival. Reading palms, that sort of thing. And before that I-"

"You read palms?" Yalung interrupted, his smile bland. "Surely not."

"I don't lie, dealer. Give me your paw and I'll tell you things." She reached out for the yellow hand as Yalung snatched it away. "No? Scared, maybe?"

"Cautious," he said, smiling. "Why don't you read the hand of our friend here?"

"Why not?" Lallia again ran her fingers through Duma-rest's hair. They were gentle, caressing. "Give me your hand, Earl." She studied it, brooding, the tips of her slender fingers tracing lines, hesitating from time to time, the touch as gentle as the impact of butterflies. "A strange hand," she murmured. "One not easy to read. There is a sense of power and a mystery hard to unravel. You have lived close to violence for a long time now, lover. You have traveled far and will travel further. You have loved and lost, and you will love again. And you have a great enemy." She sucked in her breath. "Earl! I see danger!"

"A carnival trick!" He jerked his hand away with sudden irritation. "Shall I read your palm?" He caught her hand and, without looking at the mesh of lines, said, "You have ambition. You have dreams and are never long content. You have known many men and many worlds and there are those who have reason to hate your name. You are greedy and selfish and will come to a bad end. Is that enough or do you want more?"

"You-"

He caught her wrist as she swung her hand at his cheek.

"Don't, you're hurting me!" Her eyes widened as she looked into his face. "Earl! Don't look at me like that! Don't make me feel so unclean!"

He dropped her hand, fighting his sudden, inexplicable anger. Who was he to judge? Like himself she was a trav shy;eler making out as best she could. And if she used her woman's wiles to get her way, was that any different to him using his natural speed and acquired skill? Was it worse to hurt a man's pride than to gash his body with blades?

"I'm sorry, Lallia," he said. "I'm tired and spoke without thinking. Please forget it."

"I'm sorry too, Earl. Sorry that we didn't meet years ago. Things could have been so different if we had." She dropped her right hand to his left, squeezed, her fingers tight against his ring. "Earl!"

"What is it?" He stared into her face. It was pale, beaded with perspiration, suddenly haggard with lines of strain. "Lallia!"

"Death," she muttered. "And pain. So much pain. And a hopeless longing. Oh, such a hopeless longing!"

And then, abruptly, she collapsed, falling to lie sprawled on the table, naked arms and legs white against the ir shy;idescence of her dress, the dingy plastic of the surface.

Nimino rubbed the side of his chin with one slender finger and looked thoughtfully down at the girl on the bunk. "A sensitive," he said wonderingly. "Who would have suspected it?"

"Are you sure?" Dumarest had carried the girl into his cabin and now stood beside the navigator.

"I'm sure. She has all the characteristic symptoms of one who has suffered a severe psychic shock. I have seen it many times before." Nimino leaned forward and lifted one eyelid exposing the white ball of the eye. "You see? And feel the skin, cold and clammy when it should be warm and dry. The pulse, too-there can be no mistake."

Dumarest stared curiously at the girl. She lay at full length, the mass of her hair, which had become unbound, a midnight halo around the paleness of her face. The long curves of arms and legs were filled with the clean lines of developed muscle covered with scanty fat. The breasts were full and proud, the stomach flat, the hips melting into rounded buttocks. A courtesan, he thought, the typical body of a woman of pleasure, all warmth and smoothness and femininity.

And yet-a sensitive?

He had met them before, the sports of mutated genes, the products of intense inbreeding. Always they had paid for their talent. Sometimes with physical weakness or ir shy;regular development of body or mind. But always they had paid. Lallia?

"You said that she claimed to be able to read palms," mused Nimino. "Not a clairvoyant then, not even a telepath as we understand the term, neither would have allowed themselves to fall into the position in which we found her. But she could have some barely suspected ability. Barely suspected by herself, I mean. How accurate was the read shy;ing?"

Dumarest looked up from the girl. "It was nothing," he said flatly. "A jumble of nonsense. I could do as well myself."