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the low-born than any of my fellow Highborn. I have many things for them to do, and I keep them busy at it. Do you wonder why I do this, when I myself could do any of these things better, by and for myself?”
    “I’d assume,” said Jim, “for the simple reason that you can’t be in two places at once.”
    Galyan’s eyes glowed with a new intensity.
    “What a brilliant Wolfling it is!” he said. “Yes, other men are useful to me, even though they are inferior. And it strikes me, just now, that maybe you and the little tool of yours with which you damaged Mekon might one day be useful to me, too. Are you surprised to hear that?”
    “Not after you spent this much time on me,” said Jim.
    Galyan rocked himself softly on his cushion, holding to his knee.
    “Better and better,” he murmured. “This Wolfling has a brain—raw gray matter, of course. But a brain, nonetheless. I wasn’t wrong. Yes, I may have a use for you, Wolfling—and do you know why you’ll be useful to me when the time comes?”
    “You must plan to pay me, some way or another,” said Jim.
    “Exactly,” said Galyan. “We Highborn do not show our age, so I’ll tell you right now, Wolfling, that while I’m by no means into middle age, as we know lifetimes, still, I’m not a raw youngster anymore. And I’ve learned how to get members of the lesser human races to work for me. I give them whatever they most want by way of reward and payment.”
    He paused. Jim waited.
    “Well, Wolfling,” said Galyan after a minute, “what is it you want most? If you were not a wild man, I wouldn’t have to ask you. But I don’t know Wolflings well enough to know what they want. What do they want most?”
    “Freedom,” said Jim.
    Galyan smiled.
    “Of course,” he said. “What all wild beasts want—or think they want. Freedom. And in your case, freedom means the right to come and go, doesn’t it?”
    “That’s the base of it,” said Jim.
    “Particularly the right to go, I should think,” murmured Galyan. “No doubt you never stopped to think of it, Wolfling, but it is simple fact that once you have been taken in by us to the Throne World, you would have no way of ever going back to the place where we first found you. Did you realize that? That, once you joined us on this trip to the Throne World, you would never be able to go home again?”
    Jim stared down at him.
    “No,” he said, “I hadn’t planned never to go home again.”
    “Well, that’s your situation,” said Galyan. He lifted a slim forefinger. “Unless you turn out to be useful to me. I might see to it that you got home again.”
    He let go of his knee and rose suddenly to his feet, towering over Jim.
    “I’ll send you back to Ro now,” he said. “Carry that thought I’ve just given you away with you. Your only hope of ever seeing the world from which you came again is if in some way you please me.”
    The Highborn made no further movement, but abruptly Jim found himself back in the glass-walled room with the other pets. Ro was crouched at one end, weeping over the body of one of the feline creatures. It was not the one who had been among the pets, because this one now stood, whining anxiously, just out of reach of the tearful girl. It was another one that lay dead—and it looked rather as if it had been cut almost in half by a thunderbolt.

Chapter 4
    Jim went to the girl. She was not aware of his presence until he had reached down and put his arms around her. She looked up, startled and suddenly stiff; but then, when she saw who it was, she clung to him.
    “You’re all right. At least, you’re all right …” she managed to get out.
    “Where did this come from?” asked Jim, pointing down at the dead feline.
    The question triggered off a new burst of emotion. But gradually the story began to come out. She had raised this feline, as she had raised the other one that was one of the pets. This feline had been given to Mekon by Afuan some time back, and Mekon had