"Fine aside from a slight ache. Usual watches?"

"Yes, but watch that head. If it gets worse report to Earl."

Dumarest, not Ava who had acted the nurse. And Urich was a passenger not a spare engineer as Talion could have feared. On any ship the crew remained a group apart; if help was wanted from others it was on a temporary basis only.

Bartun took more snuff and looked again at the screens. Empty now but for the stars and the familiar pattern of the universe. Worlds and suns past which they hurtled with a wanton disregard for the economic use of fuel. To get where they were going and to get there fast-a necessity imposed by their freight and by Dumarest who wanted no stops.

He moved through the ship on a routine inspection, pausing to open doors, to scan the interiors of cabins. All not reserved for the crew were filled with Ypsheim. More were in the salon and part of the hold. All riding High; drugged with quick-time, their metabolism slowed so as to turn normal hours into fleeting minutes. To Dumarest they looked like frozen statues.

As did Urich and Eunice.

He sat beside the bunk on which she lay, one of her hands in his own, his head lowered over her face. The prelude to a kiss, perhaps, or the aftermath of one. A position adopted for intimate conversation, but if they talked Dumarest heard nothing. Any sounds they made were too deep and slow to register as his movements and those of the door were too fast for them to see.

As he turned from the cabin Belkner came toward him, Ava Vasudiva at his side. Both were on normal time so as to help the others. Both had the look of lovers-and something else.

"Earl!" Belkner was smiling. "I want to ask something of you. A favor. Will you grant it?"

"If I can." Dumarest looked from one to the other. "What is it?"

"We want to get married." Ava hugged Belkner's arm. "As quickly as we can. Could you arrange it? Please!"

Happiness had made her radiant, flushing her cheeks and heightening her color so as to make livid the cruciform scar, enhanced now by the blue paint which filled the quadrants to create a disc quartered by a cross. Belkner's scar had been treated the same way.

"Married?" Dumarest's smile matched her own. "Of course you can be married. The captain will be happy to conduct the ceremony."

"And you'll stand at my side?" Belkner added, "It's our custom-someone strong who will give protection." A leftover from the days when such protection was needed. "Will you?"

"And witnesses?" said Ava as Dumarest nodded. "Can we have witnesses?"

"Two only." Dumarest's tone brooked no argument. "You can take their place after the wedding." With a smile he added, "For you this should be a short journey."

The ceremony was a quick affair. Afterward, lying on the wide bed in their cabin, Ysanne, who had stood beside Ava, said, with a touch of regret, "I envy them, Earl. Did you see their faces? Like children on a picnic. As if they had been shown a treasure-house and told to help themselves."

He nodded, not answering. Beside him he could feel the warmth of her body as she came closer toward him but he remained supine, staring at the ceiling.

"Earl?" Her hand touched his naked torso, her fingers tracing the pattern of his scars. "Why can't people always feel like that? Alive and happy and full of concern for each other? Why must life always become so damned complicated?" Her fingers paused in their questing. "Earl?"

"I'm not asleep."

"Thinking of the wedding? Well she has her certificate and had her witnesses even though she wanted more. Two were enough but you could have let a score attend with no danger of losing the ship." She had guessed why he'd limited the number. "No guts," she said. "That's why they get pushed around."

"Like cattle." Ysanne moved closer. The watch-schedule left them little private time together and the ceremony had stimulated her emotions. "Why take them with us? I could find a world where they would make us a profit." She found his hand and moved it so he could feel the febrile heat of her flesh. "Dump and run, Earl. Why not?"

"No."

"Then-" She chuckled at the obvious explanation. "Workers," she said. "You want them to haul and carry once we reach Earth. To load the hold with all the treasure that's waiting. They'd be good at that. You could even dress and arm them so as to look like guards. A threat if anyone wanted to stop us. They wouldn't be any good but the opposition wouldn't know that." She moved his hand to another place. "We could even trade-Ava has a certain appeal. I know places where she'd fetch a high price." Her voice changed a little, took on an edge. "If she was for sale, Earl, would you buy her?"

"No."

"You think she's plain?"

"I think she has pride. The man who bought her would get a corpse for his money."

"Pride? The bitch would kill herself rather than survive- and you call it pride?" Ysanne reared up beside him. "Are you thinking of her, Earl? Lying there wishing you were her husband. That she was beside you instead of me? Is that it?" Her voice rose even higher. "Damn you, Earl-look at me!"

He said, "Not when you're jealous."

"What?"

"You look ugly when you're jealous. As if you could kill someone."

"Killing that bitch would be easy. You too if I caught you together. You think I couldn't?"

She would try, of that he was certain; then as he watched, her face changed, anger vanishing, replaced by a soft yearning.

"You don't want her, do you, Earl? Tell me you don't want her."

"I don't want her," he said then added, as his arms closed around her, "You're woman enough for me."

"For always, Earl?"

"For always."

That was the answer she wanted to hear and she pressed close against him, yielding to the demands of her body, the need. One matched by his own and the jealousy she had felt vanished in the practice of an ancient rite. But later, when she lay asleep at his side, face lax in satiation, Dumarest looked again at the ceiling.

Seeing the face of Ava Vasudiva, her mouth, her eyes, the proud tilt of her head. The face became a blur dominated by the pattern on her forehead. A circle quartered by a cross- the symbol of Earth.

Chapter Nine

Ulls Farnham was small, dark, a man with restless eyes. He sat facing Urich, a chessboard between them, his hand hovering over a piece. Before touching it he said, "A wager, my friend. Fifty hours of labor given by the loser to the one who wins."

A gamble and not the first he had made. This one dealt with a new currency and betrayed a shrewd anticipation of what might lie ahead. A man, commanding the labor of others, would have a head start in founding a fortune.

"Well?" Farnham was impatient. "Is it a deal?"

Urich Sheiner said nothing, studying the board. The position of his opponent was strong but not as strong as the man obviously thought. The fruit of his own careless attitude toward the game which he played more to kill time than for the joy of stylized warfare.

"Fifty hours?"

"More if you like."

Urich watched the hovering hand and said, easily, "Make it a hundred. And if I lose I'll teach you how to make knives."

"From metal?"

"From stone." Urich saw the tension of the knuckles and smiled. "From flint-there is a certain knack in forming an edge but, once done, you have something sharper than steel."

He added, casually, "And far cheaper. Your move, I think."

He would win in a dozen but before half had been played he felt the sudden giddiness of altering metabolism and watched the movement of Farnham's hand freeze into sudden immobility.

Rising he looked at Dumarest, at the hypogun in his hand which had blasted neutralizing drugs through skin and fat into his bloodstream. Around them, in the salon, others of the Ypsheim sat or stood like statues.