She held him — with her grenade-throwing arm — and kissed him fiercely. She kept her eyes open while she was doing this but only had to fire once.

“Jason!” a voice called and Ijale appeared, half-supporting the still dazed Mikah.

“Who is this?” Meta snapped, the chill back in her voice.

“Why — just someone I know,” Jason answered, smiling insincerely. “You should recognize the man, he’s the one who arrested me.”

“Here is a gun, you will want to kill him yourself.”

Jason took the gun, but used it to clear a nearby roof-top, the powerful kick of the Pyrran automatic was like a caress on the heel of his hand.

“I don’t think I want to kill him. He saved my life once, though he has tried to lose it for me a dozen times since. Let’s get upstairs to the ship and I’ll tell you about it. There are more healthy spots than this to have a conversation.”

XII

Washed, shaved, scrubbed, cleaned, filled with good food and slightly awash with alcoholic drink, Jason collapsed into the acceleration couch and firmly swore that life was worth living after all.

“You can’t appreciate the simple things of life until you have gone without them for a while. Or the better things either.” He reached out and took Meta’s hand. She pulled it away and fed more digits into the computer.

“How did you find me?” he asked, trying to discover a subject that she might warm to.

“That should be obvious. We saw the markings on the ship that took you away and charted a directional trace before it went into jump-space. We identified the markings and I went to Cassylia, but the ship had never arrived there. I back-tracked the straight-line course and found three possible planets near enough to have registered in the ship during jump-space flight. Two are highly organized with modern spaceports and would have known if the ship had landed. It hadn’t. Therefore you must have forced the ship down on the planet we just left. And once you were there you would find one of the radios to send a message. Which is what you did. It is obvious. Who is she?” The final words were in a distinctly chillier tone of voice, and there could be only one she, Ijale, who crouched across the room, obviously unhappy and wide-eyed with fear at this voyage in a spaceship, not understanding the language the others spoke.

“I’ve told you before — just a friend. She was with us, and helped us, too. I couldn’t let her go back to the life in the desert, it’s more brutal than you can possibly imagine. There is an entire planetful of slaves back there, and of course I can’t save them all. But I can do this much, take out the one person there who would rather see me live than die.”

“What do you intend to do with her?” The sub-zero temperature of Meta’s voice left no doubt as to what she wanted to do with her. Jason had already given this a good deal of thought, and if Ijale was going to live much longer she had to be separated as soon as possible from the deadly threat of female Pyrran jealousy.

“We stop at the next civilized planet and let her off. I have enough money to leave a deposit in a bank that will last her for years. Make arrangements for it to be paid out only a bit at a time, so no matter how she is cheated she will still have enough. I’m not going to worry about her, if she was able to survive in the krenoj legion she can get along well anywhere on a settled world.”

He could hear the complaints on when he broke the news to Ijale, but it was for her own survival.

“I shall care for and lead her in the paths of righteousness,” a remembered voice spoke from the doorway. Mikah stood there, clutching to the jamb, a turban of bandages on his head.

“That’s a wonderful idea,” Jason agreed enthusiastically. He turned to Ijale and spoke in her own language. “Did you hear that? Mikah is going to take you home with him and look after you. I’ll arrange for some money to be paid to you for all your needs, he’ll explain to you what money is. I want you to listen to him carefully, note exactly what he says, then do the exact opposite. You must promise me you will do that and never break your word. In that way you may make some mistakes and will be wrong sometimes, but all the rest of the time things will go very smoothly.”

“I cannot leave you! Take me with you — I’ll be your slave always!” she wailed.

“What did she say?” Meta snapped, catching some of the meaning.

“You are evil, Jason,” Mikah declaimed, getting the needle back into the familiar groove. “She will obey you, I know that, so no matter how I labor she will always do as you say.”

“I sincerely hope so,” Jason said fervently. “One has to be born into your particular brand of illogic to get any pleasure from it. The rest of us are happier bending a bit under the impact of existence, and exacting a mite more pleasure from the physical life around us.”

“Evil I say, and you shall not go unpunished.” His hand appeared from behind the door jamb and it held a pistol that he had found below. “I am taking command of this ship. You will secure the two women so that they can cause no trouble, then we will proceed to Cassylia for your trial.”

Meta had her back turned to Mikah and was sitting in the control chair a good five meters from him with her hands filled with navigational notes. She slowly raised her head and looked at Jason and a smile broke across her face.

“You said once you didn’t want him killed.”

“I still don’t want him killed, but I also have no intention of going to Cassylia.” He echoed her smile and turned away.

He sighed happily and there was a sudden rush of feet behind his back. No shots were fired but a hoarse scream, a thud and a sharp cracking noise told him that Mikah had lost his last argument.