"And you--?" he clipped. "Where were you going? Why did you try to run away?" Ylana lifted a tear-smudged face. All at once her chin was firm, and her lips no longer trembled. She said: "Once I would have betrayed him for you alone, Jarl Corvett. This time, I came to do it for the Federation--and for freedom." "You mean--?" Her laugh held bitterness and pain. "The fleet commanders do not know my father's orders. I thought to reach Bor Legat's ship and warn them." "Then Legat--" "He came here only to bring me to my father, in hopes that he could save Ceresta. He'd channel a message through his viziscreen." Jarl's breath came faster. There was a pricking and tingling along his spine. He let go of Ylana; surged to his feet. The girl rose, slim and straight beside him. "Yes, Jarl--?" Jarl laughed, deep in his throat. Suddenly hunger and fatigue and pain were nothing. He saw only his dreams, his goal. "I'll get to Legat, Ylana! By all the gods of the void, I swear it!" Her words came, swift and eager: "And I'll go with you--" "No, Ylana--" "Yes!" Fists clenched, face tight with strain again, she stepped back from him. "I've earned the right, Jarl! You can't leave me!" For a long, long moment, he looked deep into her eyes. There were so many things to see there--courage, and anguish; fierce loyalty, determination, pain. She hurled words at him--commanding and entreating: "You'll need me, Jarl! You can't find Legat's ship without me. It's close--it and the _Knife_. We can reach them by the time it dawns, if we go together--" Still Jarl stared into her eyes, unspeaking. She broke off. Her hand came up, swept back the rippling golden hair. Her throat was a smooth-carved ivory column, her face a lovely mirror of the things that shone deep in her eyes. * * * * * Slowly, Jarl smiled. He knew there was no need for other answer. And words could be such futile, empty things. Her hand in his, together they crept on through the debris; up through a broken port set high in the side of the ancient hull. Then they were out at last, into the windswept wastes of Womar's deserts ... stumbling on through the sand and rocks, mile after mile. They had no breath for talk, no time for resting. A pause might bring the primitives down upon them. Jarl gripped his brace-bar club and prayed. Then light came dimly, herald to another blazing desert day. But with it, too, rose the lance-sharp outlines of the prows of two great raider ships, ramped amid a wilderness of jutting crags. Jarl's heart leaped. Quick jubilation surged within him. "Ylana--!" The girl screamed. Jarl whirled--club up, fists clenching. "What--?" But again, there was no need for words, for the girl was pointing back across the endless, dust-deep waste through which they'd come to an ominous moving figure. The figure of a mighty warrior robot, a metal giant that loomed like a monstrous, man-made nightmare against the clear blue of the morning sky.