which can be fired by a simple contraction of the muscle. The stone can be removed and recharged so as to allow practice. Observe.' He slipped the ring on a finger, aimed it at a scrap of board, lowered the appendage at the second joint. Those watching heard a barely audible spat and, on the board, a thing shrilled with vicious life. Almost immediately, it created an area of disintegration around it; a pit which dribbled a fine dust and from which, finally, it fell.
'The harmonics are destructive to all organic matter,' said the dealer quietly. 'The area affected is half as deep as it is wide. In flesh there are toxic side effects. The shock-impact is vast, the pain is great and, aimed at the throat, death is certain.'
'Unless the dart is quickly removed?'
'Yes.' Shan Threnond glanced at the dancer. 'You know of these things, madam?'
She ignored the stilted courtesy. 'I've seen them before. And, on Heldha, I saw a man whipped to the edge of death for owning such a thing.'
'A backward world, my lady.'
'A logical one.' One of the engineers rasped a hand over his chin. 'They don't like assassins.'
'Does anyone?' Threnond lifted his shoulders in a shrug. 'But a man must protect himself. Surely you would not deny anyone that right? And a woman must take elementary precautions against those who would do her harm. You, my lady, must have had experience of such dangers. At least, felt at times the need to reduce the pressure of an unwanted passion, shall we say? This will do exactly that.' He lifted another item from his store. 'A ring again-but what better place to carry a weapon than on a finger? There it can remain, always in clear view, apparently harmless, yet ready for immediate action should the need arise. This contains a pressurized drug which can be blasted into a face. Within two seconds, the recipient will be stunned and helpless long enough for the user to escape, change the situation, or summon aid.'
'A whore's device.' Fele Roster shook his head in distaste. 'No decent woman would ever allow herself to become involved in the kind of situation you mention.'
'You talk like a fool,' snapped the dancer. 'Decency has nothing to do with it. How much?'
'For the ring? In gold, with a genuine ruby, three hundred urus. With a synthetic gem, a hundred less. For paste and gilt, a hundred-the cost of the inner mechanism and charge must, of course, remain the same.'
'I'll take a synthetic.' The dancer pointed with a hooked finger. 'That one. And another with the darts. How much for both?'
Later, lying beside him in the snug confines of his cabin, Dilys said, 'Why did she buy such things, Earl? An old woman like that.'
'She is afraid.'
'And so arms herself? Against what?'
Against the terrors of the mind, which were often more frightening than those of reality. Against age itself, and imagined hunger. Against potential illness and poverty and neglect. Against threats she had known and dangers she had passed and could meet again. Like the scum they had met on Vult, and others who haunted the dark corners of primitive worlds.
Dilys said, after he'd explained, 'Those rings won't give her much protection if she is attacked. She could miss, or the attacker could be armored, or there could be more than one. And the mere attempt to defend herself could anger them.'
'So?'
She flushed, grasping his meaning, sensing his lack of sympathy with any who thought that way, or who imagined trouble could be avoided by the closing of eyes.
'Do you think I'm a coward, Earl?'
'No.'
'But-?' She broke off as if waiting for an answer, and when none came, continued, 'It's my size. Just because you're big, people think you must be hard and tough and aggressive, but it isn't like that at all. At least, not as far as I'm concerned. I hate violence, and always have. When I see it, I want to run away from it, and when I get mixed up in it, like on Vult, I-well, I just can't handle it. If that isn't being a coward, what is?'
'I don't know.'
'Don't lie to me, Earl.'
'I'm not.' Dumarest turned to look at her in the soft, nacreous lighting. Moonglow touched her cheeks and shadowed her eyes, glimmered from the rich, full contours of her naked body, touched breasts and hips and the curve of thighs with creamy halations. 'Cowardice is determined by other people on the basis of what they think someone else should have done in a particular situation. It's also a cheap term of abuse. What we're really talking about is survival. Sometimes, in order to survive, you have to kill. At other times, you have to run. If you try to kill and fail, then you aren't brave, you're dead. If you run and escape, you aren't a coward, you're alive.'
'Black and white,' she said. 'You make it sound all so simple. Either a thing is or it isn't, but surely there are shades of gray? Possibilities in between?'
'A man is either alive or dead,' said Dumarest. 'How can there be degrees between? He can be crippled or ill or diseased, but those are degrees of efficiency, not of life. He is alive until he is dead.'
'And to stay alive, sometimes he has to run.' She turned her head to look at him, the helmet of hair catching and reflecting the light to make a golden haze framing the broad planes of her face. 'Have you ever had to run, my darling?'
'Yes.'
'From home?' She repeated the question wanting, womanlike, to know of his early days. 'Did you run away from home in order to seek adventure?'
'To avoid starvation,' he said bluntly. 'I was little more than a boy and I stowed away on a ship. I was more than lucky-the captain could have evicted me. Instead, he allowed me to earn my passage. A long time ago, now. A long time.'
Long enough to have moved deeper into the galaxy where suns glowed hot and close, and shipping was plentiful. Into a region where even the very name of Earth had become the subject of humor. A planet forgotten, but one which he had to find. Would find.
'Home,' she said gently. 'Earth is your home and you want to return. But why, Earl? If there was nothing for you there when you left, what can be waiting for you now?'
'Nothing.'
'But-'
'You said it, Dilys. Home. A man can have only one.'
A place to call his own. A world on which to settle and on which to make his mark. To build a house and raise a family, to find happiness and contentment. A dream, one born during the long, lonely journeys between the stars. An ideal nurtured to give a meaning to life, a reason for existing. A determination which drove him to find his world or die trying.
A waste! God, such a waste!
She felt his warmth close beside her, the comfort he gave, the sense of security she enjoyed when she was with him. A man of whom any woman could be proud. As she was proud when watching him at work in the salon, gambling with calm efficiency, apparently unaware of the stares thrown at him by women, the calculating appraisal of their eyes.
Could they sense the loneliness she had recognized? The bleak isolation in which he lived, the cold emptiness of life spent journeying from world to world, the frustration of an endless, hopeless search? And always a stranger among strangers, any liaison only temporary, any love doomed to wither, to fade, to die.
'Earl,' she whispered, 'don't you ever get tired? Don't you ever want to stop and settle down and live as most men do?' A question she waited in vain for him to answer. 'I've some property on Swenna. It isn't much, a farm and enough ground to keep a dozen alive, but there is a river and the mountains are close and, at night during summer, the air is so sweet with perfume it can make you drunk. If you ever get tired, Earl, if you ever want a place to stay and rest and maybe relax awhile, it's yours. I'd be there, if you wanted me. And you wouldn't regret it, I swear to that.' Her hand reached out to touch him, to glide in a possessive caress over his shoulder, his arm. 'Think about it, darling. At least think about it.'
In the shadows, something moved, a click and a portion of the chamber bloomed with variegated lights, the
