"Never believe a chunk-hopper," I told her. "They lie for fun or on principle, depending on the circumstances. But I'm not interested in Perry Acree. If he hadn't tipped Shanig to my smiley none of this would have happened. The _Annabelle_ would be clear of debt and I'd be in the Argonaut instead of Perry. Why should I risk my neck for that simpering sycophant?" She had trouble telling me why. Having to ask my help burned her plenty, and its being Perry's fault made it worse. She turned pink and talked in circles, not meeting my eye, and when I finally guessed how she had meant to persuade me you could have clubbed me down with a sand thistle. "You really _are_ sold on that puling parasite," I said. "Look, are you sure he's worth a weekend on Phobos?" "Beast!" she cried, and slapped my face. "Good enough," I said when my ears stopped ringing. "Faint heart never haggled with fair hell-cat. Let's go rescue your skohl-swilling light of love." I moved Cora's little tungsten cage into the helicar and Cheryl took us up. We didn't have to wait for darkness. The split-second Martian twilight took care of that in the wink of an eye. The two-hour flight was almost pleasant. The stars over our speeding helicar glittered down like far, frosty eyes and the gritty red ocean of desert under us lost its harshness and took on a magic pattern of soft, shifting shadows. Phobos paced us across the black night sky like a swift silver morning-star, and the little gray jackals crept out of their dens and howled at her with all the pent-up loneliness of a million, million years. Cheryl shivered at their keening, and the thought that she could be as skittish as other women gave me a little jolt of surprise. "Mournful little beggars, aren't they?" I said. "I wonder what they'd think of Earth, with its big yellow moon all night in the sky?" Cheryl didn't answer, but it seemed to me that she thawed out a little. It was almost cozy in the helicar after that until the dusty neon haze of Areopolis ballooned up out of the desert. IV We came in low to avoid any radar net the port patrol might have up, and entered the sleeping city above the shadowy warrens of the native district. "You'll have to be careful," Cheryl warned. "And quick. Shanig's men will be watching the Argonaut, and the police won't have forgotten you so soon." "I'll be careful," I said, knowing better than she the sort of odds Shanig would favor. "The next question is where do I find you after I drag that case of arrested development out of there?" She gave me an address. "I took a room there as soon as I realized that Shanig was after me. I doubt that he's been able to trace me so soon." We dipped into an apartment house section and Cheryl set the helicar down in a night-quiet street. "Apartment Six-A," she said. And then, unexpectedly: "Take care of yourself, Bill, please. Don't do anything rash!"