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Malik laughed and said, "I love you, Rolf; 111 be sorry to say goodbye to you." Then, laughing and shaking his head, he went up front to tell Rose the funny thing I had said.

I had now lived two days longer than I had expected, and in these two days I had come to know Malik and Rose well enough to be bored by them. They were no more than large children, great hearty boys with blunt hearty senses of humor and easy hearty camaraderie, even in the company of someone they had once tried to murder. Even in the company of someone they would soon be trying to murder once again.

My lethargy and boredom was perhaps at least partially the result of terror, of not knowing when my last breath would come, of not knowing what lay in store for me before that last breath was drawn. I found myself somnolent, always half asleep, never able to really care about what was happening to me.

It wasn't that I was drugged, though I might have been, since I did eat whatever they fed me. But this lethargy struck me earlier than that, came over me the instant Malik and Rose put their hands on me and dragged me out to the waiting helicopter. My resistance, useless anyway, ceased entirely once they had me inside the copter. I sat between them, my eyes closed as the copter lifted from the roof, and waited for the bullet.

It didn't come. Instead, I was flown a short distance to another tower, taken down inside it to a plain but comfortable room, and kept there for two days. I was fed, but not talked to, not threatened, not dealt with at all. It seemed almost as though they had forgotten what they meant to do with me.

Until today. Malik and Rose abruptly entered my room, joked together as I dressed, and then took me up to the top of the tower and back into the helicopter. The helicopter then flew us to an airfield I took to be south-west of Prudence, and we transferred to the plane in which we now were riding. On the plane, on the hangars, on the backs of the ground crew's coveralls, everywhere was that same yellow and green symbol, the hammer with the dog's head.

I roused myself sufficiently as we entered the plane to ask Malik, "What is this syndicate called?"

"Sledge," he said.

"What corporation has it?"

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He laughed in a jolly manner. "That would be telling,** he said. Then we took our seats, the plane lifted, and we traveled south and west under the red sun.

On the trip, Malik and Rose joked together and with me, their voices and manner turning the interior of the plane into a locker room after a strenuous game of some sort. I didn't even pretend to be interested.

After we flew over Moro-Geth, their heartiness seemed to diminish. They glanced at one another and at me like men entering a situation they themselves didn't fully understand. The plane seemed to veer away into a more determinedly western direction, Hell receded down the sky behind us, and out ahead grew the darkness and cold of the rim.

In a way, I welcomed that onrushing black. It was like going home, like leaving an evil place and going to a place that was safe. But of course that was foolish; I was traveling with Malik and Rose, and no place that they were would be safe for me.

Rose was the wanderer of the two. While Malik spent most of his time sitting near me, watching me, Rose drifted back and forth, sometimes up front with the pilot, sometimes back with us, sometimes in the compartment behind us, sometimes merely pacing the aisle like an usher waiting for the show to begin.

One time, Rose came back from the pilot's compartment and said, "We'll land soon."

"Good," said Malik. "Fine." They had both lost much of their heartiness by now.

Rose went on back to the rear compartment and returned with heavy coats, boots, gloves and hats for all three of us. "Better put this stuff on," he told me. "It's going to be cold out there."

I didn't care. There was no reason to obey, but there was also no reason to disobey. I put on the extra clothing, and a short while later we landed. Malik and Rose took my arms and we marched together off the plane.

It was very late afternoon here, Hell an orange disc across the maroon plain. The airfield where we had landed looked primitive, makeshift, with small prefabricated huts near the runway. Snow was piled up all around, where it had been cleared away by motorized plows. Malik and Rose and I

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climbed into a small motorized auto and, as behind us the plane taxied about and took off again, climbing abruptly into the sky as though it had been startled, we rode past the prefabricated huts and through a guarded gate in a high metal fence and along a snowy, silent, empty, anonymous road, straight down a channel between two high mounds of snow.

Although it was cold here, the temperature wasn't low enough to warrant the heavy clothing we'd put on. Our driver was dressed more lightly than we. I didn't understand this— even realize there was anything to understand—until our auto made a sharp right turn, drove down a bumpy white incline, and came to a stop beside the ocean.

It was like pictures I'd seen on Earth of Antarctica. The white snow leading down and down, and stopping, and then the black water stretching out away from us into the deeper blackness of the rim. The farther horizon couldn't be seen out there; it was too far away and too remote from the light of Hell.

There was a dock, a rickety-looking affair, all metal covered with a sheen of ice. Two shaky-seeming prefabricated shacks stood on shore next to where the dock began. Out at the farther end a small boat bobbed at the end of a black rope. A man stood out there, at the edge of the dock, looking this way. Waiting for us.

I said, ''What is this?"

It was the driver who answered me: "Sea of Morning." It was said matter-of-fact, all the implications of beauty bleached out of it. The Sea of Morning, just a place, with black water, very cold. Out from shore there were whitecaps and a feeling of wind.

I shivered, and hunched farther within my heavy clothing.

Malik and Rose stepped down from the auto and brought me along with them, each holding one of my arms. They walked me out to the end of the dock, and the man there said, 'Well, it took you long enough." He looked the same as them, only a few years older.

Rose said, "We weren't flying the plane."

"It doesn't matter. Get him aboard."

I yanked my arms free and went running. The footing was bad and I slipped and skidded with every step, my arms wheeling around as I ran.

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Malik and Rose caught up with me just as I reached shore, but I fought them as much as I could. Once I was taken out across that water, I knew, there would be no way to come back.

But they were two to my one, and finally got me under control. They carried me back along the dock, Malik holding my arms and Rose my legs. I kicked and thrashed, but nothing I could do would make them lose their balance or their grip on me.

Panting, Rose said, "Why don't you give it up? It's all over, ride along with it, give it up."

The other man was still waiting for us near his little boat, showing a heavy impatience. "He should have been tranquil-ized," he said, as I was carried close.

"Phail wants him ready to talk," said Malik.

"If possible," said the other man. '

Malik released my arms and stepped back, and they all three watched me, Malik and Rose warily, the other man wearily. So in the end I stepped down into the little boat with no more trouble.

The other three followed me, the new man taking a position by the engine in the back. Malik released the line holding us to the dock, the engine sputtered and started, and we curved out and away, toward the darkness.