her, for that is to injure her
and myself too. But there is another course. I have chosen that."

He gestured with one plump hand toward the silhouetted ship.

"I believe they have entered the Vulcan," he announced. "I saw light as
the entrance port opened then."

The amphibian's great, frog head nodded agreement.

"So," Negu Mah continued, "I have decided to exercise what indulgence I
can in the face of the injury they would do me. They shall have their
chance."

He fell silent again. Sliss leaned forward in his tub. Both of them
watched intently. A flare of greenish light had sprung up beneath the
black pillar that was the Vulcan. For just an instant the freighter
stood there, green radiance expanding around her. Then she leaped into
the sky.

With her leap, she seemed to suck the radiance along. It became a great
cone of glowing light that, arrow-like, raced away upward. For a long
instant the black length of the ship, and the greenish fan of flame,
were outlined against the scarlet background of Jupiter. Then the
freighter rocket, flinging herself upward at three gravities or better,
passed the edge of the planet and vanished.

Negu Mah sat very quiet for some moments. But at last he stirred again.
Sliss' eyes turned toward him, immobile.

"Sometimes love transforms the weak," the uranium merchant said slowly.
"Like fire giving temper to soft metal. Sometimes a mutual love will
endure for all eternity, and the two who share it will gain from it a
soul they did not have before. Nanlo and Hugh Neils have this chance.
Both said they wanted only the other, and their love, for all eternity.
To gain this, both were willing to cheat, to steal, to dishonor me and
themselves.

"So, Sliss, my understanding friend, they have paid the price, they
shall have what they ask for.

"As the man, Hugh Neils, said, there is fuel and food in the holds of
the Vulcan to run the motors and last the lifetime of a man--or a man
and a woman. Indeed, two lifetimes, or three, for I was aware of their
plans, and secretly I placed aboard the craft many additional supplies.
Fuel, and food, and books, and tools. And one additional thing the two
who flee now there in space have not counted upon.

"Into the controls of the Vulcan one of my engineers has placed a small
device. After two hundred hours, or when they are well beyond Jupiter,
this device will swing the Vulcan straight toward Proxima Centauri, the
nearest star. In that positi