. You could be of value to us. Outline your plan."

"That's better, girls. Only take it just a little slower. We both know
what we are, but let's haggle for awhile about the price, shall we?"

V

Judith shivered, partly from an uncontrollable terror and partly from
the pre-dawn dampness creeping from the thick jungle surrounding the
small clearing which held one of the breeder planetoid's many secluded
colonies. The camp and the tangled growth which bounded it was her
prison; a place in which there was freedom, yet where none were free.
To walk or to run or to hide--but where? And so it was with the
rest--the hard-muscled, obviously drug-clouded males who had never
known any other world than this; who never questioned from whence came
the periodic groups of Thrayxite women for them to fertilize; who only
glared dully at her, dimly understanding that she was to be, although
captive here, left to herself and unmolested. Yet despite her status
as hostage and Earthwoman, she was afraid.

The brute of a camp leader, Bruhlla.... Not drugged like the rest.
There was more to his sidelong glances than curiosity and vague
resentment. Too often, she could sense his eyes upon her. And she
wondered at the increasing frequency of his visits to the camp's well
guarded mentacom installation.

She had lost count of night and days under the white sun of Thrayx and
its ringed host. There had been two, perhaps, or three. Three days in
which Roger Cain had been doing what? Was he with Kriijorl and Lance
posing as their friend, their fellow captive, listening to their plans
against their Thrayxite captors ... remembering? Or would they be
freed, if indeed they still lived, in order that Cain could, with
them, learn even more of Ihelian stratagems on a far greater scale?

And the Earth girls--she had heard the cries of some, the desperate
curses of others.

Bruhlla, entitled to use of the mentacom for daily contact reports
with Thrayx as he was, was the only other alien being on the planetoid
who could converse with her. He had lost little time in probing her to
learn her tongue. And he had already hinted at the fate of the women
from her planet. In other camps on the planetoid, held in small
isolated groups, unmolested, Bruhlla had said. But prisoners, as was
she.

Somehow, the Ihelians would have to know.

For there was no Earth to which to turn now.

The shiver again shook her slender body, and her tattered uniform did
littl