For Texas and Zed

smiling toward Lex, who was standing with his hands thrust into his back pockets.

Murichon roared. 'Well!' Anguls sputtered. 'Hell, you got diplomatic immunity, I guess,' Murichon said. 'Just don't drink anything you wouldn't feed

to a beagle and remember that civilized folks can be breakable.' He turned, walked three paces, paused. 'And put on some decent clothes. You want civilized folks to think you're working a meacr dip?' Left alone, the two Empire citizens felt awkward. They were unaccustomed to being kept waiting.

'Arrogant barbarians,' Jum Anguls growled. 'I find them charming,' Gwyn said. 'You'd find anything over two inches charming,' Anguls said. 'Quality, darling,' she said, blinking her long lashes. 'Not quantity.' 'At least you're thinking,' Anguls said. 'If anyone can get information out of that big oaf you can.' 'Thank you.' 'I want the coordinates,' Anguls said. 'Exact and complete. If they have as many of those animals as

they say—'

'Remember our research team's report, my dear First Leader. By historical fact, all Texicans are pathological liars when it comes to facts about their country, their possessions, their natural resources.' 'Divide it by half and it's worth sending a fleet,' Anguls said. Lex came out buttoning multiple pearl-like studs on a dark wine jacket-shirt which hung past his waist,

loose. His jeans were of shiny silken material, tight at the thighs, flared at the ankles. The Lady Gwyn, measuring the heroic scale of his body, put her soft hand on his arm, guided him out the doorway onto a marble balcony with a magnificent overlook. Lex wasn't interested in scenery. His eyes were traveling the graceful curve of her neck, down to the soft, dark valley between two red-tipped peaks.

Guards sprang to stiff attention, presented arms. An atmospace convertible clanged entry ramp down, lights glowed from within. Anguls, with a look at the Lady Gwyn, trod regally upward the slight slope and disappeared within. Guards followed. Escort fighters orbited the larger vessel as it lifted.

'First,' Gwyn said, still hanging onto Lex's arm, 'I must go to my villa.'

'We gonna do the town, we oughta get started,' Lex said.

'Dressed like this?'

'I like it.'

'That's sweet.' She stood on tiptoe and planted a warm kiss on his cheek. 'But you'll like my town costume, too.'

'You don't mind driving, I hope,' Lex said as they entered the vehicle provided by the Empire for VIP guests of the diplomatic villa atop the mountain. 'I'm not used to so many people.'

Lady Gwyn's villa was also in diplomatic country, a five-minute flight from the guesthouse which housed theTexasdelegation headed by Murichon Burns. Once there, she surreptitiously punched a signal button which warned her domestics to stay in their quarters until further notice, escorted Lex into a luxurious room overlooking the city, filled his big hand with a deceptively mild-tasting concoction.

'Do you really like my costume?' she asked, posing before him, much of Lady Gwyn on display.

'I love it,' he said. 'Wish I could get one to take home to my girl.'

'Is she as heroically formed as you?' Gwyn said.

'If you mean is she bigger than you she is.' Hell, all Texas women were bigger. That was a part of her fascination. She stood no taller, he estimated, than five and a half feet. Her waist was startlingly small.

'If she isn't much larger she could wear this,' Gwyn said, pushing the costume down off her shoulders, doing it slowly, tantalizingly. Lex's eyes got larger as the red-tipped mounds were revealed; then ever larger as she let the filmy garment drift downward, freeing it from her flaring hips with a seductive wiggle. She was clean-shaven. From hairline to toe she was of a uniform creamy brown.

She bent her knees, retrieved the garment, put it into his hand. It held her warmth. 'Would you give her this as a gift from me?'

'Sure,' Lex said, swallowing. Actually he didn't have a girl, wasn't old enough to claim one of the cozen or so nubile women in his county. He'd been thinking of buying one of the revealing garments just to prove to the boys that Empire women wore such things.

The costume had the light, fragile feel of a Texas girl's undergarment. Once, in Dallas City, he'd held such a garment In his hands with great and breathless anticipation. Once and only once he'd seen a woman in the gloriously nude state in which the Lady Gwyn stood so casually before him. He felt his chest constricting. All of the mucous membranes of his body were constricting, all erectile tissue engorging itself with his hot blood.

The Lady was not oblivious to his interest. With a pulse-pounding grace she moved toward him. 'Darling, do you really want to go into the city?'

Lex swallowed.

'It's just a city, you know.'

He tried to give orders to his hands.Be Still. Down . His hands had minds of their own and then were full of softness, heat, smoothness.

'Ah,' she said, 'you don't want to leave our nice villa, do you?'

'Nope,' Lex said.

And that was the last of conversation.

Even when, in a twisting, relaxing heap of moist limbs and sweetness she breathed into his ear and asked him about his home. Even when, after a few more of those fine-tasting but deceptive drinks, he felt the world tilt and knew great and revived strength and she played coy. Even when his superior strength forced her and brought a sigh of inevitable resignation to her soft lips.

'It must be a wonderful place, your planet,' she said, as dawn came through the open windows and showed the dark circles of lovely dissipation under her eyes.

'Yeah,' he said, just before he put pressure on her carotid arteries. She struggled, fear in her eyes, and then went quietly to sleep as her brain was deprived of oxygen.

When he carried the large, limp bundle past the guards at the spaceport he could feel her breathing as she lay inertly across his shoulder. The crudeness of his first method of immobilization had been followed by the administration of a harmless tablet used by spacemen to enforce sleep quickly during the endless shifts of blink travel. The diplomatic badge he wore warded off any search, even in such a sensitive area as a deep spaceport. At the ship, his fellow Texicans, if they had curiosity, showed none. As acting First Officer, he enjoyed the relative luxury of a six-by-eight private cabin. There, he looked at his prize, nude, lithe, breathing deeply and evenly. He smoothed her jet-black hair on the polydown pillow. It would be close quarters on the trip home, but it would be worth it. His supply of dozers would hold out until the Queen was well past the Cassiopeian lines, and then it would be too late to turn back to the Empire. He would present his father with an accomplished deed.

He felt the efforts of the night all at once, and he yawned mightily. Locking the cabin door behind him, he went to crew's quarters and showered, heedless of the waste of water since the ship was in port. Then, with a glad feeling for his companion, he bent his body around the frailness, the creamy brown richness, the heat, the softness and slept the sleep of the tired conqueror.

He woke to the sound of the ship's power, an all-pervading hum, an awareness, a prickling of the skin. Next to him, the Lady Gwyn slept peacefully, her lips parted sweetly. He kissed them, then held her in his arms as he gave her water and a dozer. Dressed in ship's wear, he went to the bridge.

'Big night?' Murichon Burns asked absently, as his eyes followed an intricate pattern of meters and instruments. The ship was almost to lift power.

'Big enough,' Lex said. 'We leaving?'

'How did you ever figure that out?'

'You heard from the great leader, then?'

'We'll hear from him via blinkstat from a few parsecs out,' Murichon said. 'I'll feet better about it that way.'

A soft bell sounded the readiness of the ship's power. As Murichon's hands played over the console the hum of the plant changed, became a bee's song.

'Texas Queen,' a voice said on the sound system, 'you do not have clearance to charge.'

'I'm taking clearance,' Murichon said, without activating the broadcast unit. 'Read me clearance one-one- hundredth unit vertical vector,' he told Lex.