Judith held her lips tight against the thing that surged hotly inside her. There would have to be a way to stop this man. And if there weren't--How the pampered friends whom she'd left so proudly to choose this calling would laugh at her, would say "_that was what the hot-headed little rebel deserved ... she had it coming if she couldn't act like a lady_." And they _were_ wrong! But this man was hideously twisting all the things she had thought were good and right, worth hoping and striving for. All the priceless things that had stood for more than the soft, idle and pointlessly shallow existence to which she'd been born. "But I guess you wouldn't get it," Cain was saying. "Born with a silver shovel in your mouth, you don't have to worry about sweating out your pile! Quit any time and there it all is after your little adventure, still waiting for you to come home to! Maybe they'll even want you to write a book! But me--my father wasn't a lucky g-prospector." A proximity alarm clanged, and Cain quickly turned his attention to the control banks. He jacked out the auto control and took over manually. And within seconds the pursuit was hovering over the great whale-like back of the Thrayxite craft, and then was drawn slowly to it as its powerful magnetics reached out, ensnared it. Then Cain cut the pursuit's drive, and they both waited. The airlock opened, and the two women stepped through. There were weapons in their hands. "I want to see your commander," Cain barked. "I am the commander of this complement," the taller of the two said in an almost unaccented English. "You will consider yourselves my captives. Daleb...." "What? Not all _women_." There was a curious look on Cain's face; thoughts were racing behind the thin blades of his eyes. "You are prisoners of the matriarchy of Thrayx," the officer called Daleb said. "If you do not resist, you shall be unharmed." "All right, come off that alien-meets-alien stuff," Cain said as though the two briefly-uniformed women before him held toys rather than weapons in their hands. "I didn't just tag after you at a billion times the speed of light to get thrown into one of your dungeons! I've got some information I think you can use. And--" and the curious look was again on his face, "--there are some--shall we say--services, I think I can profitably perform for you." "Profitably, Earthman? Profitable to whom?" "To both of us. To me--that's why I'm here--and to you." Judith's face was white. Perhaps this was some clever trick of Cain's. She could have been wrong. "Tell me this information you have, Earthman." "Let's dicker about price, first, Goldylocks!" He stood there, confident, defiant, great muscles bunched beneath the fabric of his tunic. "You, Earthman, are hardly in bargaining position!" Only the woman's mouth moved; her eyes bored straight into Cain's like fine diamond drills.