to disappear
on Wolf, if you know how. And I knew, or had known once. Loyalty to
Terra? What had Terra given me except a taste of color and adventure,
out there in the Dry-towns, and then taken it away again?

If an Earthman is very lucky and very careful, he lasts about ten years
in Intelligence. I had had two years more than my share. I still knew
enough to leave my Terran identity behind like a worn-out jacket. I
could seek out Rakhal, settle our blood-feud, see Juli again....

How could I see Juli again? As her husband's murderer? No other way.
Blood-feud on Wolf is a terrible and elaborate ritual of the code
duello. And once I stepped outside the borders of Terran law, sooner or
later Rakhal and I would meet. And one of us would die.

I looked back, just once, at the dark rambling streets away from the
square. Then I turned toward the blue-white lights that hurt my eyes,
and the starship that loomed, huge and hateful, before me.

A steward in white took my fingerprint and led me to a coffin-sized
chamber. He brought me coffee and sandwiches--I hadn't, after all, eaten
in the spaceport cafe--then got me into the skyhook and strapped me,
deftly and firmly, into the acceleration cushions, tugging at the
Garensen belts until I ached all over. A long needle went into my
arm--the narcotic that would keep me safely drowsy all through the
terrible tug of interstellar acceleration.

Doors clanged, buzzers vibrated lower down in the ship, men tramped the
corridors calling to one another in the language of the spaceports. I
understood one word in four. I shut my eyes, not caring. At the end of
the trip there would be another star, another world, another language.
Another life.

I had spent all my adult life on Wolf. Juli had been a child under the
red star. But it was a pair of wide crimson eyes and black hair combed
into ringlets like spun black glass that went down with me into the
bottomless pit of sleep....

* * * * *

Someone was shaking me.

"Ah, come on, Cargill. Wake up, man. Shake your boots!"

My mouth, foul-tasting and stiff, fumbled at the shapes of words. "Wha'
happened? Wha' y' want?" My eyes throbbed. When I got them open I saw
two men in black leathers bending over me. We were still inside gravity.

"Get out of the skyhook. You're coming with us."

"Wha'--" Even through the layers of the sedative, that got to me. Only a
criminal, under interstellar law, can be remo