Neils was a recent college graduate whom Negu Mah had hired as an
assistant supervisor in the refining mills on Callisto, where the
precious uranium 235 was separated from the ordinary metal. It was not
a desirable job, but the best Hugh Neils could get. His college record
of reckless scrapes and entanglements with women had been against him.
Indeed, this position had only come to him because his home was in the
same section as Nanlo's, and Negu Mah had thought that perhaps his
company on occasion would help alleviate Nanlo's restlessness.

It had--but to an extent Negu Mah had not foreseen.

"In less than a quarter of an hour, Nanlo my darling," Hugh Neils
whispered now, "we'll be gone from here, and you'll belong only to me.
We'll leave this infernal barren satellite to spin itself dizzy out
here in no place. We'll leave that humpty-dumpty husband of yours and
his hypocritical good-nature to whistle for his wife and his ship. We
won't care. We'll be together, always together from now on, and he'll
never see us again."

Nanlo leaned against his shoulder, the prospect that he painted seemed
very sweet to her.

"You're sure you can manage the ship alone?" she asked. "But of course,
I can help, a little anyway. You can teach me."

"Of course," Hugh Neils answered confidently, and bent to kiss her
again. "I've been studying her for a week, asking questions, making
friends with the crew. I can handle her one-handed. We'll take off and
circle Jupiter first. They may think we landed on the other side, in
the Outlaw Crevice. Or they may figure that we went on to Saturn, and
will hide somewhere in the system there.

"But we won't do either, and they won't know where to look for us.
Instead of turning back on the other side of Jupiter, we'll make a
tangential angle out into space. We'll hold it for a month, for
safety's sake. We could hold for fifty years, or a hundred, if we
needed to. There's fuel and provisions, meant for the mines, enough to
last that long.

"At the end of the month, we'll swing back, cut into the path of the
sun, and pick up Mars as she comes in from behind Sol.

"On Mars, we can sell the Vulcan. There's an outfit in the Equator
Zone, in the mountains west of the Great Canal, that will buy her and
no questions asked. I learned about them from a fraternity brother
while I was in college. He'd run into some hard luck, they gave him a
job, and he was making money hand over fist. They're asteroid miner