the lips. He was still holding the Vegan girl's slender
arm, though. She tried to run away but couldn't. Margot Dennison
returned the kiss for an instant, to show Ramsey that when she really
wanted to return it, if she ever really would, she would pack the same
kind of libidinal vitality in her responses as she did in her
appearance; then she stood coldly, no longer responsive, until Ramsey
stepped back.

"Maybe I was asking for it," she said. "I was prepared for that--and
more. But it isn't necessary now, is it? My gosh, Ramsey! Will you
please close that mind of yours? You make a girl blush."

"Then put on your cloak," Ramsey said, and, really blushing this time,
she did so.

She said: "I'm prepared to pay you one thousand credits; what do you
say?"

"I say it must be a pretty important appointment you have on Centauri."

"Earth, Captain Ramsey. I'm settling for Centauri. Well?"

"I'll take you," Ramsey said, "if this girl comes too."

Margot Dennison looked at the frightened Vegan girl and smiled. "So it's
like that," she said.

"It isn't like anything."

Ramsey packed a few things in an expanduffle and the three of them
hurried through the doorway and down stairs. The cold dark night
awaiting them with a fierce howling wind and the first flurries of snow
from the north.

"Where to?" Ramsey hollered above the wind.

"My place," Margot Dennison told him, and they ran.

* * * * *

Margot Dennison had a large apartment in Irwadi City's New Quarter. This
surprised Ramsey, for not many outworlders lived there. That night,
though, he was too tired to think about it. He vaguely remembered a
couch for himself, a separate room for the Vegan girl, another for
Margot Dennison. He slept like a log without dreaming.

He awoke with anxious hands fluttering at his shoulder. Opening one
sleepy eye, he saw the Vegan girl. He saw daylight through a window but
said, "Gmph! Middle of the night."

The Vegan girl said: "She's gone."

Ramsey came awake all at once, springing to his feet fully dressed and
flinging aside his cloak, which he'd used as a blanket. "Margot!" he
called.

"She's gone," the Vegan girl repeated. "When I awoke she wasn't here.
The door--"

* * * * *

Ramsey ran to the door. It was a heavy plastic irising door. It was
locked and naturally would not respond to the whorl patterns of Ramsey's
thumb.

"So now we're prisoners," Ramse