main ballroom, behind glass walls
which separated residents from citizens and citizens from the elite.
There was a well-stocked drug bar containing anything the fashionable
addict could desire, as well as a few novelties he might wish to sample.
For the gregarious, there was an orgy every Wednesday and Saturday night
in the Satyr's Grotto. For the shy, the management arranged masked
trysts in the dim passageways beneath the hotel. But most important of
all, there were gently rolling hills and shadowy woods to walk in, free
from the tensions of the daily struggle for existence in Tetrahyde.

Barrent and Moera had adjoining rooms, and the door between them was
unlocked. But on the first night, Barrent did not go through the door.
Moera had given no sign of wanting him to do so; and on a planet where
women have easy and continual access to poisons, a man had to think
twice before inflicting his company where it was not wanted. Even the
owner of an antidote shop had to consider the possibility of not being
able to recognize his own symptoms in time.

On their second day, they climbed high into the hills. They ate a basket
lunch on a grassy incline which sloped away to the gray sea. After they
had eaten, Barrent asked Moera why she had saved his life.

"You won't like the answer," she told him.

"I'd still like to hear it."

"Well, you looked so ridiculously vulnerable that day in the Victim's
Society. I would have helped anyone who looked that way."

Barrent nodded uncomfortably. "What about the second time?"

"By then I suppose I had an interest in you. Not a romantic interest,
you understand. I'm not at all romantic."

"What kind of an interest?" Barrent asked.

"I thought you might be good recruitment material."

"I'd like to hear more about it," Barrent said.

Moera was silent for a while, watching him with unblinking green eyes.
She said, "There's not much I can tell you. I'm a member of an
organization. We're always on the lookout for good prospects. Usually we
screen directly from the prison ships. After that, recruiters like me go
out in search of people we can use."

"What type of people do you look for?"

"Not your type, Will. I'm sorry."

"Why not me?"

"At first I thought seriously about recruiting you," Moera said. "You
seemed like just the sort of person we needed. Then I checked into your
record."

"And?"

"We don't recruit murderers. Sometimes we employ them for specific jobs,
but we do