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taught it to attack on command.
    “But it was all right when I saw it last,” said Jim. “How did this happen to it?”
    She drew back a little from him and stared at him, shakily and with surprise.
    “Didn’t you hear?” she asked. “Afuan left it up to Galyan to fine Mekon for what he’d done. And Galyan decided that the fine would be …” She choked and could not go on, pointing at the animal.
    “It’s a strange sort of fine,” he said slowly.
    “Strange?” She looked up at him puzzledly. “But it’s just the sort of fine that Galyan would exact. He’s a demon, Jim. Where somebody else, operating on the Princess’ orders, might have fined Mekon one of his favorite servants, or something else he valued, Galyan chose this poor animal instead—because along with losing it, of course, Mekon’s going to lose a point. Oh, not a Lifetime Point. Galyan’s too clever to be that hard on someone like Mekon. But it’ll be at least a One-Year Point. And Mekon has enough points against him already, Lifetime and otherwise, so that he can seriously worry from time to time about some kind of an accident that might bring him up to the level of banishment.”
    “Banishment?” asked Jim.
    “Why, of course. Banishment from the Throne World—” Ro caught herself suddenly, and wiped her eyes. She stood up straight and looked down at the body of the dead animal at her feet. Immediately it vanished.
    “I keep forgetting you don’t understand things,” she said, turning to Jim. “There’s so much I’m going to have to teach you. All the Highborn play points. It’s one game that even the Emperor can’t overrule; and too many points means you have to leave the Throne World forever. But I’ll explain it all to you a little later. Right now I’d better begin teaching you how to move from room to room—”
    But Ro’s words had woken a new train of thought in Jim’s mind.
    “Just a second,” he said. “Tell me something, Ro. If I wanted to step back into the city right now on an errand before the ship leaves, could I do it?”
    “Oh!” she shook her head sadly at him. “I thought you at least knew that. The ship left that outworld world we were on some time ago. We’ll be at the Throne World in three ship’s-days.”
    “I see,” said Jim grimly.
    Her face paled abruptly, and she caught his arms with her hands, as if to keep him from stepping backward from her.
    “Don’t look like that!” she said. “Whatever it is, you shouldn’t look like that!”
    Jim forced his face to smooth out. He put away the sudden fury that had exploded inside him. He forced himself to smile down at Ro.
    “All right,” he said. “I promise you I won’t look like that.”
    Ro still held him by the arms.
    “You’re so strange,” she said, looking up at him. “So strange, in every way. What made you look like that?”
    “Something Galyan said to me,” he answered. “Something to the effect that I could never go back home again.”
    “But—you aren’t going to want to go back home!” said Ro, a little wonderingly. “You’ve never seen the Throne World, so of course you don’t know. But no one ever wants to leave it. And the only ones who can stay are the Highborn who can keep their point levels down in the Game, and their servants and their possessions. Not even the Governors of the Colony Worlds can do more than visit the Throne World for short periods of time. When their time is up, they have to leave. But the Highborn and people like you and me—we can stay.”
    “I see,” he said.
    She frowned down at his arms, which she still held. Her fingers were feeling them through the sleeves of his jacket.
    “You’re as hard-muscled as a Starkien,” she said puzzledly. “And you’re so tall for someone who’s not Highborn. Was it natural for you to be this tall back on that wild world you came from?”
    Jim laughed a little shortly.
    “I was this tall when I was ten years old,” he said. The look of slight