"Can you help more if you're dead?" the Jovian badgered. "Will things be better if you fall over?" He gripped Jarl's arm. "Come on! I'm putting you to bed, whether you want to go or not!" Numbly, Jarl let himself be led into the commissioner's own tiny private cabin. Wordless, he sagged onto the bunk. Ungo backed out again and closed the door. Flat on his back in the pulsing stillness, Jarl closed his eyes. But sleep would not come. His brain was a screen, alive with a vivid, ever-shifting kaleidoscope of form and color. Again and again, his mind flicked back to Sais and Wassreck ... to the raider fleet, the wild rovers and fighting men he knew so well ... to Ceresta's teeming streets, and the cold, bleak beauty of the hills and plains of Pallas. And to Ylana. Shifting, he opened his eyes and stared up at the dully gleaming ceiling. Where had the girl gone? Why had she not been in her room? Above all, what strange lust had led her to flay him as she had, before the highest officers of her father's fleet? Jarl frowned and rubbed his aching forehead. The girl's willingness to bring down upon herself the shame of beating a shackled prisoner was a hard thing to explain. Could it be that she indeed had alien blood--a strain from some sadistic barbarian breed? Narrow-eyed, he tried to recall her face more clearly ... the shadow that hung over her slim blonde loveliness. Or--he frowned again--perhaps that shadow truly hid a secret--the secret of a twisted mind set in beauty's body, irrevocably warping over into madness. He moved to a more comfortable position, still staring up at the blank inscrutability of the metal ceiling. A play of light and shadow caught his eye. Idly, he followed its shiftings--first slow, then suddenly abrupt, then slow again. Little by little, an uneasiness crept over him. New tension began to crawl in his midriff. He loosened his belt and pulled the wrinkles from his tunic; moved from side to side. But the uneasiness grew. He could not make it go away. Biting his lip, he lay back, still searching for the cause. Overhead, the shadows on the ceiling slowly began to shift again. It came to him, then: He was lying motionless, allegedly alone in this cramped room--_yet the shadows were moving_! There could be only one answer: Someone else shared these quarters with him. * * * * * The hair on the back of his neck crawled. Grimly, he wondered what the odds on his life would be if it turned out that some _Pervod_ guard had been trapped here when the carrier took off. Twisting in the bed, he let his hand fall across the haft of his knife. The shadows overhead flexed a fraction. Ever so slowly, ever so carefully, he turned his head, looking sidewise down at the floor. A heel was drawing out of sight beneath the bunk. Jarl gripped the knife. Silently, he twisted still further, till he was in position to strike.