Katha lifted a scarlet jug and poured cool white liquid into two crystal hemispheres. One she handed to Tyr, the other she raised in her white, red-nailed hand. "To freedom," she laughed softly, and drank. The white wine was rich and heady, and it warmed his throat going down. Tyr sipped again, and again. He looked around the room with unveiled eyes. This was just one apartment of one girl. She ranked high in the councils of the _ardth_, but this was a planet far from home. And all the luxury before him! Why, one of those pillows with the red-and-white curves would make Fay's eyes bulge in jealousy. And he was pitting himself against a race that could give a woman this, for herself! He grimaced. What could one man--even such as Tyr--do against such a race? He should quit now and enjoy himself with this woman who looked at him with those steady black eyes. He told himself all that, hating the truth of it. A cool hand snuggled into his palm. "Tell me about you," Katha smiled. "There isn't anything to tell." "You have strength and incredible speed. But what are your other powers, Tyr? You are a mutant, a changeling. You know that. But why, Tyr? Why? Nature doesn't try changes unless she is fitting a being for something." Katha was very close to him. She was perfumed and she was womanly, and Tyr was used to neither. She was as subtle and complex as some rare drug, where Fay was as transparent, in her childish hungers, as plate glass. It may have been the white wine, he thought afterward, but all he saw now was her red mouth and the mocking amusement swimming in her black eyes. He kissed her, holding her close in his arms. "We're straying from the subject," she smiled up at him from his arms. It was then that the cough sounded, from the golden drapes of the door. Otho stood smirking in the opening, eyes leering. From head to toe he glistened in a rainbowed silk that bellied and sank about his form with a sensitiveness to air currents that made it seem alive. He had a gun in his hand and it was levelled at Tyr. "I am sorry to interrupt your--amusements--" Tyr did not think he moved fast, but he was in front of Otho even as the eyes of the other were commencing to widen in fright. Tyr hit the gun upward, slamming it against Otho's sneering mouth where it made a wide gash. The gun fell to the rug, and Tyr put out his hands and took hold of the sleazy silk and lifted. Otho dangled a foot off the floor. "I could break your spine," Tyr whispered. Otho was white. He dared not speak. "I could put the fingers of one hand around your fat neck and snap it." Otho closed his eyes and shuddered. Tyr dropped him and Otho fell loosely to the floor and rolled over and came to his hands and knees. The big brown god of the Trylla loomed vast and massive above his crouching form. "You do not show respect to your god, Otho," Tyr grinned dangerously. "Nor to a woman. At least, you might be courteous, if you are not religious."