on to the Saturnian system, returning finally with
full holds of uranium for Negu Mah's refineries on Callisto.

She was a beautiful craft, the Vulcan, and one man could manage her,
though her normal crew was seven. She had cost a great sum. But Negu
Mah was wealthy.

Nanlo's face, sylph-like in its beauty, hardened. Negu Mah was wealthy
indeed. Had he not bought her, and had she not cost him more, much
more, than the Vulcan?

But no, it was not quite accurate to say that Negu Mah had bought her.
However, since time immemorial beautiful daughters had been, if not
sold, yet urged into marriages to wealthy men for the benefit of their
impoverished families. And though science had made great strides,
conquering the realms of the telescope and invading those below the
level of the microscope, finding cures for almost every disease the
flesh of man was heir to, there was one ailment it had not yet
conquered--poverty.

Nanlo's father had been a rocket port attendant. Once he had been a
pilot, but a crash had crippled him for life. Thereafter, his wages had
been quite insufficient to sustain him, his brood of half a dozen
children, and their hard-working mother.

But Nanlo, growing up, had developed into a mature beauty that rivaled
the exotic loveliness of the wild orchids of Io. And in debarking at
the rocket port on a business trip to earth, because hurricanes had
forced him to land far south of New York, Negu Mah had seen her.

Thereafter--But that is a story as ancient as history too.

It was a truth Nanlo conveniently overlooked now that she had not been
unwilling to be Negu Mah's bride. It was true she had driven a sharp
bargain with him--her father's debts paid, and sufficient more to ease
her parents' life and educate her brothers and sisters. Plus a marriage
settlement for herself, and a sum in escrow in the Earth Union bank,
should she ever divorce him for cruelty or mistreatment. But that had
been only innate shrewdness. She would still have married him had he
refused her demands for her family. For his wealth fascinated her, and
the prospect of being a virtual queen, even of a distant outpost colony
such as that on Callisto, appealed to her.

And she had thought that she was taking little risk, for if she were
dissatisfied, the law these days was very lenient toward unhappy
marital relationships. It required only definite proof of misconduct,
mistreatment, or oppression of any kind to win freedom from an