the windows might be rolled down!
'Stop the cab!' I cried, choking.
'I can't breathe,' cried the girl. 'I can't breathe!'
I struck down at the door handle on my side. It would not move. I tried not to breathe. My eyes smarted. I lunged to the other side of the cab, leaning across the girl. I tried to force down the handle on her side, but it, like that on my side, did not move. I then understood the meaning of the two metallic sounds I had heard earlier, one within each door. Two bolts, one on each side, had been thrust home, securing the doors.
I lunged back to my side of the cab, where I might exert more leverage on the handle of the door on my side.
The girl wept and coughed.
I am strong, but I could not begin to move the steel.
I then, again, this time with the side of my fist, began to strike at the heavy glass. It did not yield. '
'Please, stop, driver!' cried the girl.
My lungs felt as though they must burst. I tore off my coat, and my jacket, to thrust it against one of the circular apertures, some four inches in diameter, set flush with the back of the seat, now a barrier, in front of us. It was through these apertures that the gas entered our portion of the cab. Each aperture was protected by narrowly placed steel slats. Because of the slats I could not thrust the jacket into the opening. Gas continued to flow in, permeating the cloth, and seeping about and through it. Gas, too, hissing, continued to flow unremittingly into our portion of the cab through the other aperture.
'Please, stop, driver!' wept the girl, choking. 'I will pay you!'
I tried to tear loose then the steel slats from the aperture, to wad the jacket inside. I could not get my fingers behind them.
The girl crouched forward, pressing her hands and face against the heavy glass separating us from the driver. 'Please, please,' she wept, 'please, stop, driver! I will pay you!' She scratched at the window. 'I'm pretty!' she said. 'I will even let you kiss me, if you want. Let me go! Let me go!'
I began to pound at the glass on my side. It, too, as I instantly realized, with a sickening feeling, was unusually thick. It was not a standard safety glass. The door, though it had appeared a normal door, had been especially constructed to receive it.
Suddenly, spasmodically, miserably, my lungs bursting, I expelled air. Then, as new air rushed into my lungs, I felt sick and half strangled. Whatever the molecules of the gas might be I knew they would be soon, and in volume, within my blood stream. I shook my head. My eyes watered.
The girl shrank back, coughing. She drew her legs up on the seat. She looked at me, miserably. 'What do they want of me, Jason?' she asked. 'What are they going to do to me?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'I have no idea.' The only thing that occurred to me was so horrifying and fantastic that I could not even bring myself to consider it as a possibility, let alone mention it to the terrified girl. It was simply too horrifying even to think about. I looked at her, she so frightened, in the cape and sheath dress, her feet drawn up beneath her on the leather of the seat of the cab. She was a lusciously beautiful young woman, of the sort that might drive men mad for her. I drove the thought from my mind. No, it could not be! They could not want her for that! But what man would not? No, I told myself, no! It could not be! I dismissed it from my mind. The possibility was too horrifying to even consider as a reality.
'Jason,' she said. 'Help me!'
I turned from her and, with my fingers, tried to find some crack or crevice between glass and steel, to the side and in front of me, anything that I might be able to exploit. I could find nothing.
I turned back to look at her. 'Jason,' she said. 'Help me.' 'I can't,' I said.
She knelt now on the leather of the seat, facing to the side, toward the opposite window. She turned her upper body to face the driver's back. 'Please let me go,' she cried out, miserably. 'I will let you make love to me,' she said to the driver, 'if you will let me go.'
I do not know why I then said to her what I did. For some reason I was furious.
'Shut up,' I said to her, 'you stupid little slave!' She looked at me with horror.
'Do you, who are owned,' I asked, 'think to bargain with masters?'
Did she not know that she, if her captors wished, was theirs in her entirety?
Why had I been so angry with her? Why had such terrible words sprung up so wildly and spontaneously from hitherto unfathomed depths within me?
I looked at her beauty. I saw it then, suddenly, and deliciously and marvelously, as a slave's beauty. In every woman there is a slave, in every man a slaver.
She put down her head, not daring to meet my eyes in that moment.
Why was I so angry with her? Was it because it was others, and not I, who owned her?
She knelt, head down, on the leather of the seat. Gone then was the pretense of her politics. Gone then was the illusion of her freedom and independence, and her arrogance and pride. She was then-only a frightened girl and perhaps, I feared, a captured slave.
Then, suddenly, I was again the male of Earth, apologetic, miserable, self-castigating, overcome with anguish. How cruel I had been to her! How grievously I had demeaned her! Did I not know she was a person?
'Forgive me, Miss Henderson,' I wept. 'I did not know what I was saying.'
She sank down on the seat. I was kneeling then on the floor of the cab.
'I'm sorry,' I said. 'I'm sorry.' Indeed, I was truly sorry. I had no idea why I had said what I had. In the stress of our strait circumstances it had just welled up from within me, cruelly, insuppressibly, explosively.
Of course she was not a slave! Yet, as I looked upon her, now slumped down, unconscious, on the leather, naught but a pathetic captive, I could not help but remark how maddeningly luscious were her small curves. I could not help but wonder what they would look like, owned, in silk and steel. I could not help but wonder if girls such as Miss Henderson, so fantastically beautiful and feminine, might not, in actuality, be slave girls. If so, why, then, should they not be enslaved? Then I put such thoughts from my mind. The cab, moving swiftly, continued on its way. I could see why men might want Miss Henderson. She would be a prize for the collar. They would not, of course, presumably, want me. I realized now, from the driver's behavior earlier, that he had not counted on my being in the cab. The quarry had not been me, but the beautiful Miss Henderson. It had been an accident that I had been captured as well. Things began to go black. I fought to retain consciousness. I recall looking again at Miss Henderson. I recall, as things began to become dim, the last thing in my field of vision, her lovely ankle. It would look well, I thought, in a loop and ring. I wondered what would be done with me. Then I lost consciousness.
2 SYRINGES
I felt a bit of cold air, as the door of the cab was opened. Slowly, painfully, I began to come back to consciousness.
I was aware of Miss Henderson being lifted from the cab.
Then I, too, was removed from the cab, two men dragging me by the arms. We were inside a garagelike structure. The floor was cement. Miss Henderson was laid on her stomach on the cement. The light in the building was furnished by four bulbs overhead. They hung on cords from the ceiling. They had dark metal shades with white-enameled interiors, and were protected by wire frames.
I, too, was placed on my stomach on the cement. I felt my hands being drawn behind my back. They were then, to my consternation, locked in handcuffs.
I saw, from my position on the floor, five men. There was the driver of our cab, three burly fellows, two in jackets and one in a sweater, and one other man, dressed in a rumpled suit, his necktie loose about his throat. He was a large man, and heavy. He had, too, large, heavy hands. He seemed very strong. He was balding, virile.
'Awaken the slave,' he said.
One of the men then, from behind, put his hands in Miss Henderson's hair and, rudely, with two hands,
