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corporate organizations had owned ships under the Empire; if these bodies were letting go of the items most indispensable to the continuance of galactic trade and communication, decay must have spread far and fast.
    There was one exception to the list of ship-owners he’d mentally made: pirates sometimes claimed to own their ships absolutely. But he preferred not to linger on that idea.
    He came close to the ship now. The access ladder was down; awkwardly he clambered to the top, his bags swinging. He rapped on the door of the lock, thinking:
twenty thousand years! It is incredible!
    When no one opened to him, he tested the manual lock release. It opened the door for him.
    He frowned. It was unlike Vix to risk leaving the ship thus. But if he’d done it, perhaps it was to comply with some regulations such as he’d mentioned—or else this girl of his felt safe on her own. He climbed inside and called aloud. “Ah—Vineta? Are you there?”
    But there was no one in any of the accessible compartments of the vessel: control cabin, living quarters, sleeping quarters, even the sanitary facilities were all empty.
    He was standing, puzzled, in the control room when Vix came stamping aboard, and forestalled the redhead’s questions with a curt sentence.
    “She wasn’t here when I arrived.”
    “What? Vineta!
Vineta!”
    The harsh sound reverberated in the hollow hull. No answer came. Vix set to searching, as Spartak had just done, and came back moments later with his face a mask of fury.
    “Gone!” he roared. “After all I’ve done for her, to walk out like this—take to her heels without even clearing out her gear! The little baggage! The little radiation-spawned sweet-tongued—”
    “Vix,” Spartak said very softly, “are you altogether surprised?”
    “What do you mean by that?” the redhead blasted.
    “I remember from—from back home. The way you used to treat your women sooner or later turned them against you. And the life you’ve been leading isn’t the sort which would make you any more gentle.”
    “So you think she just waited till my back was turned and ran for it?”
    “Not exactly. But Annanworld had quite a reputation. Isn’t it possible that she decided she was tired of a roving life? She’ll never have been to Asconel, probably never stopped on any single world with you for more than a short stay—”
    “What are you talking like this for? You never even saw the girl!” Vix wiped away sweat that has started on his forehead. “Ach! Go stow your gear in the lower cabin—that was hers, and some of her things are still there. I’m going to ask the port authorities what became of her, and fetch her back by her hair if I have to!”
    He gave his half-brother a final withering glare. “Well, move. Or would you rather I left her behind, because it might embarrass you to have my mistress here in such a confined space? Is that why you’re trying to talk me into thinking it’s my fault? If she was going to run off she could have done it on a dozen other worlds without waiting for this previous favorite of yours!”
    Spartak said nothing, but picked up his bags and made his way to the lower cabin as directed.

VI
    A FROWN of self-directed anger pulling his brows into deep furrows over his nose, Spartak glanced around the lower cabin, barely taking in the pathetic few belongings which bore witness to the occupancy of it by the girl Vineta. He had not meant to spark an argument with Vix; it was simply that ten years on Annanworld had accustomed him to going straight to the point in the interests of exposing the truth, and he had largely forgotten how to use tact. He had been shorn of most of his false conceptions of himself, and was glad to have lost them. But it made no odds that Vix had almost certainly treated his girl the same as he had always treated women—even beating her occasionally. To have told him that she had probably grown tired of him and run off was a stupid error.
    Sighing, he