oman. The
Venusian wiped his forehead with a soiled handkerchief, drummed fat
fingers on the table for a moment, tried a different tack.

"Her name is Irene. She's lovely, isn't she, Mr. Ransome? Surely the
inner worlds showed you nothing like her. The eyes, the red mouth, the
breasts like--"

"Shut up," Ransome grated, and the glass shattered between his
clenched fingers.

"Very well, Mr. Ransome." Whiskey trickled from the edge of the table
in slow, thick drops, staining Mytor's white tarab. Ice was in the
Venusian's voice. "Get out of my place--now. Leave the whiskey, and
the woman. I have no traffic with fools."

Ransome sighed.

"I've told you, Mytor that you're wasting your time. But make your
pitch, if you must."

"Ah, Mr. Ransome, you do not care to go out into the starless night.
Perhaps there are those who wait for you, eh? With very long knives?"

Reflex brought Ransome's hand up in a lightning arc to the blaster
bolstered under his arm, but Mytor's damp hand was on his wrist, and
Mytor's purr was in his ear, the words coming quickly.

"You would die where you sit, you fool. You would not live even to
know the sharpness of the long knives, the sacred knives of Darion,
with the incantations inscribed upon their blades against blasphemers
of the Temple."

Ransome shuddered and was silent. He saw Mytor's guards, vigilant in
the shadows, and his hand fell away from the blaster.

When the dance was ended, and the blood was running hot and strong in
him, he turned to face Mytor. His voice was impatient now, but his
meaning was shrouded in irony.

"Are you trying to sell me a lucky charm, Mytor?"

The Venusian laughed.

"Would you call a space ship a lucky charm, Mr. Ransome?"

"No," Ransome said grimly. "If it were berthed across the street I'd
be dead before I got halfway to it."

"Not if I provided you with a guard of my men."

"Maybe not. But I wouldn't have picked you for a philanthropist,
Mytor."

"There are no philanthropists on Yaroto, Mr. Ransome. I offer you
escape, it is true; you will have guessed that I expect some service
in return."

"Get to the point." Ransome's eyes were weary now that the woman's
dancing no longer held them. And there was little hope in his voice.

A man can put off a date across ten years, and across a hundred
worlds, and there can be whiskey and women to dance for him. But there
was a ship with burned-out jets lying in the desert outside this
crumbling