"I take it you took the female slave under your wing," I said.

He gave me a sharp look. He would have liked her left out of the conversation.

"She would have needed help to get home," I amplified.

"Ah, yes, I think I see now," he smiled a sad, sweet smile. "You were taken with her beauty. But alas . . ." his eyes held on mine, "she died."

"That"s very sad," I said. "How did it happen?"

"My friend, wouldn"t it be better to forget her? Who knows what terrible pressures might not have influenced her to the despicable course she chose? Poor waif; she suffered greatly. Her death gave her surcease." His expression became brisk. "And now, in what way can I serve you, sir? Tell me how I can make amends for the injustice done you."

He talked some more, offered me the hospitality of the estate, a meal, even, delicately, money. His relief when I turned them down was obvious. Now that he saw I wasn"t going to be nasty about the little misunderstanding, his confidence was coming back. I let him ramble on. When he ran down, I said: "How about an introduction to the lady in silver? The Lady Raire, I understand her name is?"

His face went hard. "That is impossible. The lady is not well. Strange faces upset her."

"Too bad," I said. "In that case, I guess there"s not much for me to stay around for."

"Must you go? But of course if you have business matters requiring your attention, I mustn"t keep you." He went across to an archway leading toward the front of the house; he was so eager to get rid of me the easy way that he almost fell down getting there. He didn"t realize I"d turned the opposite way and stepped back out onto the terrace, until I was already across it and heading across the lawn to where Milady Raire still stood alone, like a pale statue in the winking light of an illuminated fountain.

9.

She watched me come across the lawn to her. I could hear the hurrying footsteps of Sir Revenat behind me, not quite running, heard someone intercept him, the babble of self-important voices. I walked up to her and my eyes held on her face; it was as rigid as a death mask.

"Milady, what happened after you left Drath?" I asked her without preamble.

"I-" she started and her eyes showed shock. "Then-on Drath-it was you-"

"You"re scared, Milady. They"re all scared of Huvile, but you most of all. Tell me why."

"Billy Danger," she said, and for an instant the iron discipline of her face broke, but she caught herself. "Fly, Billy Danger," she whispered in English. "Fly hence in the instant, ere thou, too, art lost, for nothing can rescue me!"

I heard feet coming up fast behind me and turned to see Sir Revenat, his face white with fury, masked by a ghastly grin.

"You are elusive, my friend," he grated. His fingers were playing with the heavy ornament dangling on his chest, an ovoid with a half-familiar look. . . . "I fear you"ve lost your way. The gate lies at the opposite end of the gardens." His hand reached for me as if to guide me back to the path, but I leaned aside from it, turned to Milady Raire. I put out my hand as if to offer it to her, instead reached farther, ran my fingers down her silken side-and felt the slight, telltale lump there. She gasped and drew back. Huvile let out a roar and caught at my arm savagely. A concerted gasp had gone up from every mouth within gasping range.

"Barbarian wretch!" Huvile howled. "You"d lay hands on the person of a lady of the House of Ancinet Chanore . . ." the rest was just an inarticulate bellow backed up by a chorus of the same from the a.s.sembled spectators.

"Enough!" Huvile yelled. "This adventurer comes among us to mock the dignity and honor of this house, openly offers insult to a n.o.ble lady of the ancient line!" He whirled to face the crowd. "Then I"ll oblige him with a taste of the just fury of that line! Milords! Bring me my sword box!" He turned back to me, and there was red fury enough in his eyes for ten houses. He stepped close, put his face close to mine. His fingers played with the slave controller at his neck. I judged the distance for a jump, but he was ready with his finger on the control. And we both knew that a touch by anyone but himself would activate it.

"You saw," he hissed. "You know her life is in my hands. If you expose me, she dies!"

CHAPTER TWELVE.

The lords and ladies of the House of Ancinet-Chanore may have been out of touch with reality in some ways, but when it came to setting up the stage for a blood-duel on their fancy lawn under the gay lights, they were the soul of efficiency. While a ring of armed servants stood obtrusively around me, others hurried away and came back with a fancy inlaid box of darkly polished wood. Huvile lifted the lid with a flourish and took out a straight-bladed saber heavy enough to behead a peasant with. There was a lot of gold thread and jewel-work around the hilt, but it was a butcher"s weapon. Another one, just like it but without the jelly beans was trotted out for me.

Sir Tanis made the formal speech; he cited all the hallowed customs that surrounded the curious custom that allowed an irate Lord of the House to take a cleaver to anyone who annoyed him sufficiently, and then in a less pompous tone explained the rules to me. They weren"t much: we"d hack at each other until Sir Revenat was satisfied or dead.

"Man to man," Sir Tanis finished his spiel. "The House of Ancinet-Chanore defends its honor with the ancient right of its strong arm! Let her detractors beware!"

Then the crowd backed off and the servants formed up a loose ring, fifty feet across. Huvile brandished his sword and his eyes ate me alive. Fsha-fsha took my jacket and leaned close to give me a last word of advice.

"Remember your Sorting training, Billy Danger! Key-in your response patterns to his attack modes! Play him until you read him like a glorm-bulb line! Then strike!"

"If I don"t make it," I said, "find a way to tell them."

"You"ll make it," he said. "But-yeah-I"ll do my best."

He withdrew at a curt command from Tanis, and Huvile moved out to meet me. He held the sword lightly, as if his wrist was used to handling it. I had an idea the upstart sir had spent a lot of hours practicing the elevating art of throwing his weight around. He moved in with the blade held low, pointed straight at me. I imitated his stance. He made a small feint and I slapped his blade with mine and moved back as he dropped his point and lunged and missed my thigh by an inch. I tried to blank my mind, key in his approach-feint-attack gambit to a side-jump-and-counter cut syndrome. It was hard to bring the pattern I wanted into clear focus without running through it, physically. I backed, made Huvile blink by doing the jump and cut in pantomime, two sword-lengths from contact distance. A nervous t.i.tter ran through the audience, but that was all right. I was pretty sure I"d set the response pattern I wanted to at least one of his approaches. But he had others.

He came after me, cautious now, checking me out. He tried a high thrust, a low cut, a one-two lunge past my guard. I backed shamelessly, for each attack tried to key-in an appropriate response- I felt myself whip to one side, slash in an automatic reaction to a repet.i.tion of his opening gambit. My point caught his sleeve and ripped through the wine-red cloth. So far so good. Huvile back-pedaled, then tried a furious frontal attack; I gave ground, my arm countering him with no conscious thought on my part. He realized the tactic was getting him nowhere and dropped his point, whipped it up suddenly as he dived forward. I caught it barely in time, deflected the blade over my right shoulder, and was chest to chest with him, our hilts locked together.

"It"s necessary for me to kill you," he whispered. "You understand that it"s impossible for me to let you live." His eyes looked mad; his free hand still gripped the controller. "If I die-she dies. And if I suspect you may be gaining-I plunge the lever home. Your only choice is to sacrifice yourself." He pushed me away and jabbed a vicious cut at me and then we were circling again. My brain seemed to be set in concrete. Huvile was nuts-no doubt about that. He had brazened his way into the midst of the House of Ancinet-Chanore on the strength of the invisible knife he held at Milady"s heart; and if he saw the game was up-the fragile game he"d nursed along for months now-he"d kill her with utter finality and in the most incredible agony, as the magnesium flare set in her heart burned its way through her ribs.

There was just one possibility. The Drathians had gone to a lot of trouble to link the life of the slave to the well-being of the master; but there was one inevitable weak spot. Even the most sophisticated circuitry couldn"t do its job after it was destroyed. I"d proven that; I had crushed Huvile"s controller under my foot-and he was still alive.

But on the other hand, maybe that had been a freak, a defective controller. Huvile had been two miles away at the time. And it was no special trick to rig an electronic device so that the cut-off of a carrier signal actuated a response in a receiver. . . .

There was sweat on my face, not all of it from the exercise. My only chance was to smash the controller and kill Huvile with the same stroke-and hope for the best. Because, win or lose, the Lady Raire was better dead than slave to this madman.

While these merry thoughts were racing through my mind, I was backing, feinting and parrying automatically. And suddenly Huvile"s blade dropped, flickered in at me and out again and I felt my right leg sag and go out from under me. I caught myself in time to counter an over-eager swing and strike back from one knee, but it was only a moment"s delay of the inevitable. I saw his arm swing back for the finishing stroke- There was swirl of silver, and the Lady Raire was at his side, clutching his sword arm-and then she crumpled, white-faced, as the controller"s automatic angina circuit clamped iron fingers on her heart. But it was enough. While Huvile staggered, off-balance, his free hand groping, I came up in a one-legged lunge. He saw me, brought his sword up and back, at the same time s.n.a.t.c.hed for the controller. He was a fraction of a second late. My point struck it, burst it into chips, slammed on through bone and muscle and lodged in his spine. He fell slowly, with an amazed look on his face. I saw him hit; then I went over sideways and grabbed for the gaping wound in my thigh and felt darkness close in.

2.

The House of Ancinet-Chanore was very manly about acknowledging its mistake. I sat across from old Lord Pastaine under the canopy on his favorite sun terrace, telling him for the sixth or seventh time how it had happened that I had bought freedom for two slaves and then sent them off together in my boat while I went to the rafts. He wagged his Mosaic head and looked grave.

"A serious misjudgment of character on your part," he said. "Yet were we not all guilty of misjudgment? When the Lady Raire returned, so unexpectedly, I wished to open my heart to her-supposed-savior. I granted the interloper-Huvile, you say his name was?" He shook his head. "An upstart, of no family-I granted him, I say, every freedom, every honor in the gift of Ancinet-Chanore. As for Milady-if she chose to closet herself in solitary withdrawal from the comfort of her family-could I say nay? And then I saw the beginnings of the wretched maneuverings that would make this stranger Head after my death. I called for Milady Raire to attend me-and she refused! Me! It was unheard of! Can you blame me for striking her from my memory, as one dead? And as for the others-venal, grasping, foolish-to what depths has the House not fallen since the days of my youth, a thousand years agone. . . ."

I listened to him ramble on. I had been hearing the same story from a variety of directions during the past three days, while my leg healed under the miracle-medicines of old Zeridajh. If any one of the Lady Raire"s doting relations had cared enough about her to take just one, good, searching look into her eyes, they"d have seen that something was seriously amiss. But all they saw was a p.a.w.n on the board of House politics, and her silent appeals had gone unanswered. As for why she hadn"t defied Huvile, faced death before submitting to enslavement to his ambitions-I could guess that half an hour of sub-fatal angina might be a persuasion that would convince a victim who could laugh at the threat of mere death.

"If you"d arrange for me to see the Lady Raire for a few minutes," I b.u.t.ted in Milord"s rumbling a.s.sessment of the former Sir Revenat"s character, "I"d be most appreciative."

He looked grave. "I believe we all agree that it would be best not to reawaken the unhappy emotions of these past months by any references thereto," he said. "We are grateful to you, Captain Danger-the House will be forever in your debt. I"m sure Milady will understand if you slip quietly away, leaving her to the ministrations of her family, those who know where her interests lie."

I got the idea. It had been explained to me in slightly varying terms by no less than twelve solemn pillars of the House of Ancinet-Chanore. The Lady Raire, having had one close brush with an interloper, would not be exposed to the questionable influences of another. They were glad I"d happened along in time to break the spell-but now the lady would return to her own kind, her own life.

And they were right, of course. I didn"t know just what it was that Jongo would have to say to Milady Raire of the ancient House of Ancinet-Chanore; I"d had my share of wild fancies, but none of them were wild enough to include offering her boudoir s.p.a.ce aboard my boat as an alternative to the estates of Ancinet-Chanore.

On the way out, Sir Tanis offered me a crack at a lot of fancy trade opportunities, letters of recommendation to any house I might name, and a.s.sorted other vague rewards, and ended with a hint, none too closely veiled, that any further attempt to see the lady would end unhappily for me. I told him I got the idea and walked out into the twilight through the high gates of the house with no more than a slight limp to remind me of my visit.

3.

Fsha-fsha was waiting for me at the boat. I told him about my parting interviews with the House of Ancinet-Chanore. He listened.

"You never learn, do you, Billy?" he wagged his head sadly.

"I"ve learned that there"s no place for me in fancy company," I said. "Give me the honest solitude of s.p.a.ce, and a trail of new worlds waiting ahead. That"s my style."

"You saved the lady"s life on Gar 28, you know," Fsha-fsha said, talking to himself. "If you hadn"t done what you did-when you did-she"d never have lived out the first week. It was too bad you didn"t look and listen a bit before you handed her over to the H"eeaq-but then, who would have known, eh?"

"Let"s forget all that," I suggested. "The ship"s trimmed to lift-"

"Then at Drath, you picked her out from under the Triarch"s nose in as smooth a counter-swindle as I"ve ever heard of. He had no idea of letting them go, you know. They"d have been arrested at the port-except that the Rule-keepers were caught short when the tub lifted without you. Your only mistake was in trusting Huvile-"

"Trusting Huvile!"

"You trusted him. You sent him along to an unguarded ship. If you"d worked just one angle a little more subtly-gone out yourself to see the lady aboard and then lifted, leaving Huvile behind-but this is neither here nor there. For the second time, you saved her-and handed her over to her enemy."

"I know that," I snapped. "I"ve kicked myself for it-"

"And now-here you are, repeating the pattern," he bored on. "Three times and out."

"What?"

"You saved the lady again, Billy. Plucked her out of the wicked hands of her tormentor-"

"And . . .?"

"And handed her over to her enemies."

"Her family has her-"

"That"s what I said."

"Then. . . ." wheels were beginning to whirl in front of my eyes.

"Maybe," I said, "you"d better tell me exactly what you"re talking about. . . ."

4.

. . . She opened her eyes, startled, when I leaned over her sleeping couch.

"Billy Danger," she breathed. "Is it thee? Why came you not to me ere now?"

"An acute attack of stupidity, Milady," I whispered.

She smiled a dazzling smile. "My name is Raire, Billy. I am no one"s lady."

"You"re mine," I said.

"Always, my Billy." She reached and drew my face down to hers. Her lips were softer even than I had dreamed.

"Come," I said.

She rose silently and Eureka rubbed himself across her knees. They followed me across the wide room, along a still corridor. In the great hall below, I asked her to show me the shortest route to the grounds. She led the way along a cloistered arcade, through a walled garden, onto a wide terrace above the dark sweep of sky-lit lawn.

"Billy-when I pa.s.s this door, the house alarms will be set off. . . ."

"I know. That"s why I dropped in on the roof in a one-man heli. Too bad we couldn"t leave the same way. There"s no help for it. Let"s go. . . ."

We started out at a run toward the trees. We had gone fifty feet when lights sprang up across the back of the house. I turned and took aim with my filament gun and knocked out the two biggest polyarcs, and we sprinted for cover, Eureka loping in the lead. A new light sprang up, just too late, swept the stretch of gra.s.s we had just crossed. We reached the trees, went flat. Men were coming through the rear doors of the house. There was a lot of yelling. I looked up. Against the swirls and clots of stars, nothing was visible. I checked my watch again; Fsha-fsha was two minutes late. The line of men was moving down across the lawn. In half a minute, they"d reach the trees.

There was a wink of light from above, followed by a dull baroom! as of distant thunder. A high, whistling screech became audible, descended to a full-throated roar; something flashed overhead-a long shape ablaze with lights. A second gunboat slammed across in the wake of the first.

"That cuts it," I said. "Fsha-fsha"s been picked off-"

A terrific detonation boomed, drawling itself out into a bellow of power. I saw a dark shape flash past against the clotted stars. The men on the lawn saw it, too. They halted their advance, looking up at the dark boat that had shot past on an opposite course to the security cutters.

"Look!" The Lady Raire pointed. Something big and dark was drifting toward our position across the lake. It was Jongo III, barely a yard above the surface of the water, concealed from the house by the trees. We jumped up and ran for it. Her bow lights came on, dazzling as suns, traversed over us, lanced out to blind the men beyond the trees. I could see the soft glow from her open entry-port. We splashed out into knee-deep water; I tossed Eureka in, then jumped, caught the rail, pulled myself in, reached back for the Lady Raire as men burst through the screen of trees. Then we were inside, pressed flat against the floor by the surge of acceleration as the old racer lifted and screamed away at treetop level at a velocity that would have boiled the surface off any lesser hull.

5.

From a distance of half a million miles, Zeridajh was a misty emerald crescent, dwindling on our screens.

"It was a pretty world, Milady," I said. "You"re going to miss it."

"Dost know what place I truly dreamed of, my Billy, when the gray years of Drath lengthened before me?"

"The gardens," I suggested. "They"re very beautiful, with the sun on them."

"I dreamt of the caves, and the green shade of the giant peas, and the simple loyalty of our good Eureka. . . ." She stroked the grizzled head resting on her knee.

"Never," Fsha-fsha said from the depths of the big command chair, "will I understand the motivations of you Propagators. Still, life in your company promises to be diverting, I"ll say that for it." He showed us that ghastly expression he used for a smile. "But tell me, Milady-if the question isn"t impertinent: what were you doing out there, at the far end of the Eastern Arm, where Billy first saw you?"

"Haven"t you guessed?" she smiled at him. "Until Lord Desroy caught me, I was running away."

"I knew it!" Fsha-fsha boomed. "And now that the great quest is finished-where to?"