It seemed to me that things hadn't changed so much, after all. I had some small reputation of my own in the outlands, and if I let a wizened little credit-shark like Shanig beat me I was done for. So I sat in front of the rickety old warehouse and munched my E-rations and thought about those things until finally, being the honest type, I had to admit that none of them mattered half as much as getting back to Areopolis and making another pitch at a streamlined redhead with scornful green eyes. There was still an outside chance that Cheryl Trayne might have phonovised me at the Argonaut Bar about that weekend on Phobos, and.... I was daydreaming about that when the shutter-speed sunset of Mars flicked away the day and left me sitting in darkness with the Syrtis Major wind sharp and cold on my face and the wild howling of desert jackals in my ears. III For three interminable days I sat around the old oxy-plant, eating and sleeping and thinking, and the monotony of it got deadlier and deadlier. I couldn't even switch on my communications equipment for the news since Captain Giles and his lads might be making spot patrols, and the localized radiation of my receiving unit would be enough to pinpoint me. I had a fair idea of what went on with Shanig, though. No homo can operate after his fashion without making enemies, and the bigger his business the more powerful his enemies. Vigilance becomes the price of existence, financially speaking, and it was on that point that I figured Shanig had over-reached himself. All that was pure guesswork, of course, until the afternoon of the third day. Then I had unexpected confirmation of it, brought by the last person on Mars I dreamed of seeing. I was in the _Annabelle's_ cabin with Cora when the helicar settled in front of my makeshift hangar. I came out on the double with my Quantrell ready, and saw Cheryl Trayne standing in the warehouse entrance. The sun, hanging low on the desert's rim, outlined her tantalizingly against a blaze of light and made her hair a shimmering halo of burnished copper. It was so wonderful to see her, but at the same time I was a little disappointed. It had been a pleasant possibility that she might change her mind about that Phobos trip, but to have her track me down like this. "How did you find me?" I demanded. "And who's with you?" She gave me a child's trusting smile, a reversal of her old haughty brush-off that gave me the devil of a jolt until I remembered Cora in the _Annabelle's_ cabin. Cheryl was as deep under Cora's spell now as she must have been under Joey's before-- "Never mind that," I said. "How did you get away from Shanig's smiley? Is Shanig out of his trance, too?" She looked puzzled, as if she were trying to remember something tremendously important.