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coming in?”
    “And any ship would be enough,” said the Terzia sadly. Her arms circled him, drawing her naked chest against the big man’s. His body quivered with a vibrancy she had not drunk from it in months. “You want to leave me so badly.”
    “Lady,” Slade said. He squeezed her tighter in unconscious reaction to the words he was framing. “I don’t want to leave you, but I want to go home. I’d. . . . You’re a princess here, a queen.” He arched back slightly so that he could look at the Terzia’s face. “It’d be crazy for you to leave all this to come to Tethys. Gravel and sea, that’s all it’d be to you. But it’s my home.”
    “No, I couldn’t leave my world, even with you,” the Terzia said. Her eyes were on Slade’s chest, on the black, springy delicacy of the hairs that doubled by their shadows on his skin. “I’ll arrange for you to leave, then, Don. I think you should know—” she looked up to meet his puzzled expression— “that matters on your homeworld are very unsettled. You might find yourself safer—and happier—if you chose some other destination in which to settle down. If not here, then—” the assumed humanity of the Terzia caused her voice to catch— “perhaps back on Friesland. Your friends there have not, have not forgotten you.”
    Disbelieving, as tense and as careful as when he disarmed booby-traps, Don Slade said, “Lady, I thank you, but . . . it’s been a long road to get here, and I don’t think I’ll turn back now. If there’s trouble on Tethys, then I guess there’s trouble anywhere, one way or the other. I’m as used to it as the next man. And I’d—” he bent forward again and nuzzled the Terzia’s hair— “really like to go home.”
    “You will,” said the almost woman. She shifted her body to free Slade’s trouser catches. “You will very soon, my darling.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    There was a bay concealed in the Citadel’s flank. Its doors slowed, then latched open. Slade stared at the vessel hangared within. Then he looked back at the Terzia. He was not sure whether she had made a mistake through ignorance or whether he was the butt of a joke grim even by the standards of mercenary soldiers. “Terzia,” Slade said in a voice that he worked to control, “this is only a lifeboat. It can’t carry me back home.”
    “Not directly,” agreed the Terzia off-handedly. For the first time since Slade had met her, she had not dressed before leaving her chamber. Intellectually, Slade knew that there was no more reason to dress for the autochthones than there was to dress before being seen by so many dogs . . . and there was no more reason to dress for one’s lover than for one’s mirror. Terzia’s nonchalance surprised Slade, however, and the fact that nudity was a change bothered him. “It has a range of forty-five Transit seconds, though,” she continued. “That will take you to Elysium.”
    Slade had stepped into the bay to touch the boat’s nose. The hull’s spongy coating was perfectly fresh. The only marks on the vessel’s white surface were consistent with jostling during loading and shipment. The boat had very clearly never been moved under its own power. “I don’t recall an Elysium in this sector,” the man said as he paced cautiously along the vessel’s seven-meter length. Like “Tethys,” Elysium was a name of some frequency among the scattered human settlements.
    “It’s not in your indices,”said the Terzia. Something she did caused a motor to whine. The lifeboat began to ease out of the bay on its docking cradle. The low sun stained the ablative coating a pinkish color as the nose inched into the light. “The inhabitants are human, though they have no open traffic with the rest of the galaxy. They’ll help you home for my sake; and perhaps for your sake as well.”
    Slade let the vessel slide past him. He stepped around its stern. He continued to examine the boat, even though his expertise would scarcely