The jailer stood aside from the girl, but she did not show any more awareness of him nor of Farree then she had before. Her wings were fastened together and over them was a near transparent film packaging them so. They were the same color as those Farree wore—shades of green—but the sheen of the furlike covering was masked by that which imprisoned them. The guard stepped closer to Farree now and tapped one finger against the wings tangled in the cord which kept him prisoner.

"Prime!" The man licked his lips. "Prime stock. Vass will like this. You've brought him luck, flying boy. At auction these will fetch a good round of credits and Vass, he don't forget them as has done a good job. Yessss—a prime pair."

Now he ran his fingers along the edge of the near wing and Farree shivered. There was something in that touch which promised worse than he had expected. There came a clacking noise and the guard hurriedly unhooked a disc from his belt, listening to staccato speech Farree could not identify.

The off-worlder barked an assent into the disc and stowed it away again. For a moment he stood looking at the two of them, a leering grin on his face. Then he spoke to the girl.

"You, little lady, don't you think as how you can get out of here with him." He stabbed a thumb in Farree's direction. "You want th' silencer?"

Something in that question pierced through the daze which held her. She gave a little moan and shook her head. The guard laughed.

"No, I thought as how you wouldn't want that! As for you"—now he looked to Farree—"don't you go threshing about. Because there ain't anyway you can get yourself out of that tie up!" With that as a parting shot he left the shelter and dropped the outside curtain behind him.

Farree already knew that there was no way he was going to get out of a tangler. Only fire might shrivel those bonds away—unless the proper signal was thumbed on the stock which had spun it. He looked to the girl. She crouched as if she wanted to bury herself in the earth under their feet, her head bent and her attention all on her balled hands.

Then she spoke and there was a sharpness in the quality of her voice—as if she were thoroughly aware and unmarked by any ill handling, but knew exactly what she would do. Only the words she voiced in a thin croon, hardly above a whisper, meant nothing to Farree. It was not the universal trade tongue with which he was the most familiar—rather it sounded almost like a song.

"I do not understand." He curbed his own voice until it was hardly louder than hers. Perhaps there was no hope that she would understand him in return. He guessed that to use mind touch here might be the worst of all.

She did not raise her head but glanced up at him through the sweat-wet tangle of hair which fell across her forehead. The dazed stare was gone out of her eyes, replaced by inquiry which was as wary as if he were about to add to the wounds and scars which patterned her body.

Now her fingers stretched apart from the tight fists into which she had curled them. She pointed a forefinger at him and her lips shaped a word which again had no meaning for him, but he took a guess at the question.

"Farree," he answered with his name.

The girl looked impatient, started to shake her head, and then winced as if at the bite from one of her hurts. Again she pointed, stabbing the air as if to emphasize the seriousness of what that question was.

He could shake his head only a fraction in the bindings of the web which held him fast. If she did not want his name, but rather his reason for being there, he was unable to satisfy her.

She had settled back a little and was eyeing him intently. Then she held out both hands. Her fingers slowly moved as if they wrote on the air.

Farree sucked in his breath. Just so had he seen Maelen gesture once or twice in the past; yet the prisoner was plainly no Thassa. He could not lift his own arms, which were bound tightly by the tangler. If he could what might he do—only copy her own gesture?

Maelen! He built up a mind picture of her without thinking.

The girl threw herself forward, her one hand out to his head, one emphatic shake warning him.

But that came too late. Skittering in and out of his thought bands was the touch he knew well—Togger! In spite of the continued emphatic warning the girl pantomimed, Farree deliberately pictured the smux, down to the last curve of the poison-feeding claws. Once done he held to that—not trying to reach any other of their company. It might be that his call for the smux was on so different a band of mind sense that it would not be detected by any of the sensors, mental or mechanical, which these killers used.

He put into his own call all the force of his frustration.

"Friend—friend!" Togger had made contact! Where was the smux—how far away? Farree forced all such speculation from his mind and continued to hold only on the picture of Togger, and to keep in touch with the smux. From the clearness of the touch, and the fact it grew continually sharper, he believed that by some freak of chance fortune was with him—Togger!

The girl was on her knees before him, staring straight into his eyes as if she could see through those into what stood in his mind—the squat body of his first and closest ally.

She brushed aside the locks of hair dangling about her face and then she held out both hands, touching his body between the loops of the cord which held him so motionless. Into him streamed a flow of strength. There was amazement in her expression, a recoil that almost caused an involuntary withdrawal from contact with him. Manifestly she had not expected what her touch was accomplishing.

"Togger—" He strained his mind touch as far out on the scale as he could. And touched now another—!

That these two had managed to reach him, and yet he had not felt any call from the Zacanthan, Maelen, or Vorlund, was surprising to him. Perhaps some device activated by his captors prevented this. But the party from his own ship must not be allowed to come within range of these who had established camp here. They in turn could be swept into captivity.

The near witless look that the girl had worn while the guard was with them was swept away by her continued attitude and expression of wariness. Her touch on Farree changed. Now she gripped each of his hands, even pinned as they were against his sides by the tangler, in one of hers and a stronger force flowed between them.

"Bad—bad in the air—" Togger broadcast. And repeated even more firmly, "In air, bad."

Still keeping touch with the smux Farree listened. There were more shouts and he could hear the crackle of lasers. Did that mean invaders were still trying to shoot down Selrena and her black-winged escort? Or were the three of his own comrades riding the flitter of their own ship and now taking a part in the battle?

His back was to the door of the shelter but he saw the girl's eyes widen, felt a small added pressure in her hands. Someone was there. Then Farree caught a whiff of the acrid odor given forth by Togger when he was aroused and his claws were ready to deliver poison to an enemy. There was another smell, too.

"Yazz!"

A furred body pressed against his back for an instant and then rounded into his sight. Mounted on the back of the slender hunter rode Togger, holding on to a strip which had been fastened around Yazz's body just behind her forelegs.

"Togger, Yazz!" Farree would have liked to have shouted aloud, but he remembered to keep his voice down. Yazz raised her slender nose, sniffed in direction of the girl, who stared wide-eyed at the pair of newcomers.

"Friends!" Farree, unable to even point because of his bound hands, nodded to the two newcomers.

She dropped her hold on his hands, edging back into the position in which he had first seen her. Still she looked from one to another of the three of them with wonder in her face. Yazz moved in closer and opened a mouth well equipped with teeth, ready to snap at Farree's bonds.