Finally he stood back, feeling the sweat running down him. He tilted his head and gulped air. "Now," he said very quietly, "now, you inhuman sonsofslate, start working...." The two of them watched from the gray mats where they were crouched. Brief resentment was in their eyes. Caffrey bunched his muscles and kicked. The android's head snapped backward against the bars. He grunted. Then both of them got up and walked over to the pulleys. They began to exercise, rapidly. Caffrey laughed and walked on through the gym, not watching them any more. He went through the next bulkhead and spun the lock wheel, then padded down the corridor under the ceiling lights that shone like foggy blue eyes. Dillman, his astrogator, a young kid with yellow hair and an aggressive jaw, was in the chart room. He was working with the course computer. Dillman had been a student at the University of Venus, Cloud City, when he killed an officer of the Control Police in a fight over a girl. Dillman was good in the slave game. Dillman was getting hard. Caffrey closed the door. It clanged loudly. Dillman looked around. "Hello, Captain," he said. "We're right on course. Mars in six hours, fourteen minutes." Caffrey nodded, slumping down into a thickly padded shock chair. Beyond the wide observation window, space made endless black, and stars hung there like pieces of a broken diamond. The swollen ball of the sun burned above the ship, and Mars lay scarlet, just ahead. Distant rumbling from the old corroded jet tubes filled the room. "How's everything?" Caffrey asked. "Engines?" "All right," Dillman said, leaning against the astrogation table. "Few pieces of stuff failed to fission awhile back, but everything's okay now." Caffrey waved his hand. "Get out the bottle." * * * * * Dillman grinned and pulled open a green metal wall cabinet. He filled two tumblers with the syrupy swamp wine and handed one of the glasses to Caffrey. The captain of the ship drank half, breathed loudly, and emptied the glass. He hunched deeper into the shock chair, resting. "I'll be glad when it's over, Dillman. Really glad." "Do you mean that, sir?" "Hell yes, I mean it. In this business you've got to be tough. But I'll be damned if a man can go on kicking people around all the time. Someplace, he's got to stop. Well, this trip'll make my pile and I can stop. Got a job waiting, shuttling passengers to the Temple Ruins west of Red Sands on Mars." "This isn't any party," Dillman admitted. "Slavery's a funny thing. I thought it went out a long time back, but everybody on Earth is making such mental advances ..." he pointed at his skull and grinned wryly "... that they just haven't got any time to do any real work. And of course, these poor wastrels we've got on board aren't really human beings. How do they make them, Cap?" Caffrey shrugged. "God knows. The Globulars on Centauri four turn them out by the hundreds. Almost as good as human beings.