didn't stop. Instead it grew stronger, squeezing the air out of his
lungs and the sight from his eyes. He screamed but couldn't hear his own
voice through the roaring in his ears. Mercifully he blacked out.

When consciousness returned the ship was at zero-G. Jason kept his eyes
closed and let the pain seep out of his body. Kerk spoke suddenly, he
was standing next to the couch.

"My fault, Meta, I should have told you we had a 1-G passenger aboard.
You might have eased up a bit on your usual bone-breaking take-off."

"It doesn't seem to have harmed him much--but what's he doing here?"

Jason felt mild surprise that the second voice was a girl's. But he
wasn't interested enough to go to the trouble of opening his sore eyes.

"Going to Pyrrus. I tried to talk him out of it, of course, but I
couldn't change his mind. It's a shame, too, I would like to have done
more for him. He's the one who got the money for us."

"Oh, that's awful," the girl said. Jason wondered why it was _awful_. It
didn't make sense to his groggy mind. "It would have been much better if
he stayed on Darkhan," the girl continued. "He's very nice-looking. I
think it's a shame he has to die."

That was too much for Jason. He pried one eye open, then the other. The
voice belonged to a girl about twenty-one who was standing next to the
bed, gazing down at Jason. She was beautiful.

Jason's eyes opened wider as he realized she was _very_ beautiful--with
the kind of beauty never found in the civilized galaxy. The women he had
known all ran to pale skin, hollow shoulders, gray faces covered with
tints and dyes. They were the product of centuries of breeding
weaknesses back into the race, as the advance of medicine kept alive
more and more non-survival types.

This girl was the direct opposite in every way. She was the product of
survival on Pyrrus. The heavy gravity that produced bulging muscles in
men, brought out firm strength in straplike female muscles. She had the
figure of a goddess, tanned skin and perfectly formed face. Her hair,
which was cut short, circled her head like a golden crown. The only
unfeminine thing about her was the gun she wore in a bulky forearm
holster. When she saw Jason's eyes open she smiled at him. Her teeth
were as even and as white as he had expected.

"I'm Meta, pilot of this ship. And you must be--"

"Jason dinAlt. That was a lousy take-off, Meta."

"I'm really very sorry," she laughed. "But being born on a two-G