"I'll have to have a few charges," said Tinoi. "After all, it's bad enough to walk to Minga without having to drag a hundred and sixteen pa.s.sed out repossessions."

"It's a waste of company money," said Big Lem, But he signalled Connoly as the big gunner came out of the Raider and Connoly went back for charges

These were small cylinders with "A.L" painted in red on them, and when they were exploded around the slaves, sent off a greenish spray which hung foggily about them Tinoi stepped clear and waited for the murk to dissipate and then, when the slaves had revived, turned to and lined them up without further delay

Big Lem watched the crowd move off He knew Tinoi would probably be carried most of the way in litters made by Connoly and he understood what would happen to a couple of those younger girls. And he knew a dozen would be sold and reported dead But Lem Tolliver could appre-

date that kind of loyalty and wouldn't ever have under- stood another kind of man He grinned as the last of them disappeared in the trees and without another look at the smoking s.p.a.ceship, boarded the Scoutcraft Raider and took off

An hour later Ole Doc came to himself lying in the gra.s.s where the girl had pulled him. For a little while he lay there and enjoyed the cool fragrance of the soft blad s around him. It was quite novel to be alive and to be so glad to be alive.

After a little he rose up on his elbows and looked at the Morgue. The alloy had stopped dripping and the smoke had cleared away but the poor old snip looked ready for a spars parts house The upper turret had been straight- armed back, a ten-foot hole lay under her keel and the keel was bent, and the near port had been melted entirely out of line. And then he took heart. For she wasn't hulled that he could see and her tubes at one end and her Texas on the other were untouched. He started to spring up but the second he put weight on his right hand it collapsed and he felt sick.

He looked down and saw that his palm was seared away and his wrist sprained or broken. He felt rapidly of his shoulders and chest but his cloak had protected him there. One boot was almost seared off but his ankle and foot were uninjured. Aside from singes, his wrist and hand, he had survived what must have been a considerable conflagration. He came up swiftly then and went through the hot door Small spirals of smoke were rising from the salon upholstery One huge gold panel had curled off its mountings from heat and a silver decanter was lying in a puddle on the charred rug, struck squarely by a ray translating itself through the hull.

But the young woman was gone and Ole Doc, looking back at the trampled meadow through the misshapen door understood suddenly how he must have got out there. No calloused s.p.a.ce ranger would have tried to rescue him.

Either the girl had tried or Hippocrates-

"Hippocrates!" "Hippocrates," "Hippocrates," echoed the empty cabins,

Ole Doc raced into the Texas and looked around. He went aft to the tube rooms and found them empty. And he had nearly concluded that they must have taken his little slave when he thought of the jammed turret,

The ladder was curled into glowing wreckage and the trap at the top had fused solidly shut from the impact of a direct hit. Ole Doc stood looking upward, a lump rising in his throat. He was afraid of what he would find behind that door.

He went casting about him for a burning torch and was startled by a whir and clang in the galley as he pa.s.sed it.

In a surge of hope he thrust open the door. But little Hippocrates was not there. Pans, spoons and spits were just as he had left them. A bowl of gooey gypsum and mustard, the slave's favourite concoction for himself, stood half eaten on the sink, spoon drifting minutely from an upright position to the edge of the bowl as the neglect- ed mixture hardened. A small, pink-bellied G.o.d grinned forlornly in a niche, gazing at the half-finished page of a letter to some outlandish world. The whir and clang had come from the opening oven door on the lip of which now stood the ejected cake, patiently waiting for icing, decora- tions and nine hundred and five candles.

Ole Doc closed the galley softly as though he had been intruding on a private life and stood outside, hand still on the latch. For a long, long time he had never thought about it. But life without Hippocrates would be a desper- ate hard thing to bear.

He swore a futile, ordinary oath and went to his oper- ating room. His hand was burning but he did not heed it.

There was an amputator in here some place which would saw through diamonds with cold fire. He spilled three drawers on the floor and in the blinding glitter of instru- ments finally located the tool.

It wasn't possible to reach the trap without raking away the twisted ladder and for some minutes he scorched himself on the heated metal until he could cut it all away Then it occurred to him that he would have no chance of getting Hippocrates down if there was anything left of him for that little fellow weighed five hundred kilos even if he was less than a meter tall

Ole Doc found rope and mattresses and then, standing on a chair, turned the cold fire on a corner of the trap He stopped abruptly for fear the excess jet would touch Hippocrates' body on the other side and for a while stood frowning upward Then he seized a thermometer from his pocket and began to apply it all over the steel above him,

In a minute or two he had found a slightly higher temper- ature over an area which should compare with the little slave's body and he chalked it off. Then, disregarding the former lines of the trap, jetted out five square feet of resistant metal as though it had been b.u.t.ter. The torch was entirely spent when he had but an inch to go but the lip had sagged from weight enough for him to pry down.

A moment later he was crawling into the turret.

Hippocrates lay curled into himself as though asleep.

He was seared and blackened by the heat of the melting girder which had buckled and pinned him down.

Ole Doc hurriedly put a heart counter against the slave's side and then sagged with relief when he saw the needle beat-beat-beat in fault but regularly s.p.a.ced rhythm. He stood up, feeling his own life surging back through him, and wrenched away the confining girder.

Carefully, because he had never made any study of the slave's anatomy-which anatomy had been the reason Ole Doc had bought him at that auction G.o.d knew how many, many scores of years ago, two centuries? three?- Ole Doc trussed the little fellow in a rope cradle and by steadying the standing part over a split jet barrel, began the weary task of lowering the enormous weight down to the mattresses below.

It took a full twenty minutes to get Hippocrates on an operating table, but when that was done, Ole Doc could examine him in perplexity. Other than diet, which was gypsum, Ole Doc knew nothing about the slave.

The antennae were not injured. The arms were bruised but whole. The legs appeared sound. But there was a chipped look about the chest which argued grave injury.

Hippocrates was physician to himself and knowing this Ole Doc went back to the tiny cabin off the galley.

He found some amulets which looked like witchcraft and a bottle which his keen nose identified as diluted ink with a medical dosage on the label. He found some chalky looking compresses and some white paint.

Completely beaten he went back and sat down beside the table. Hippocrates' heart was beating more faintly.

His anxiety becoming real now, like a hand around his throat, Ole Doc hurried to the galley. He had seen Hippoc- rates tipsy a few times and that meant a stimulant. But it wasn't a stimulant which Ole Doc found.

The letter was addressed in plain lingua s.p.a.cia.

Bestin Karjoy,

Malbright, Diggs Import Co.

Minga, Arphon.

By Transcript Corporation of the Universe charge

U.M.S. O.D.M.

Dear Human Beings:

Forty-six years ago you had one Bestin Karjoy of my people doing your accounts. Please to give same Bestin this message. h.e.l.lo Bestin. How are you? I am fine. I have not been feeling too good lately because of the old complaint and if your father still employ with you you tell him Hippocrates needs to come see him and get some advice. My master got birthday today so I give him happy birthday with nine hundred and five candles which sur- prise you for human but you know how big and famous he is and anyway I can come in gig tonight and see you about dawn-dark halfway on park front because I don't know where you really live and your father...

The cake must have demanded something there for it stopped in a blot,

"At five dollars a word outer s.p.a.ce rates!" exclaimed Ole Doc. But when he read it through he was willing to have it at five hundred a word.

He hastened back to the operating table and put the gypsum and mustard close to hand, stacking with it water, the diluted ink and a call phone turned on to the band of his own, propping up a note:

"Hold on, old fellow. I'm returning with your friend Bestin or his father. I'll stay tuned on this phone."

His hand annoyed him as he tried to write with it and when the note had been placed he plunged his arm to the elbow into a catalyst vat and felt the painful p.r.i.c.kling which meant a too fast heal. It would scar at this speed but what was a scar?

He saw that the gig, which had been on the side away from the blast, was uninjured, and he had almost launched it when he saw it would never do to go demanding things in his present charred state.

Impatiently he threw on a new shirt, boots and cloak and thrusting a kit and a blaster into his belt, lost no further tune.

The gig was a small vacuum-atmosphere boat, jet pow- ered and armed. It was capable of several light-years speed and was naturally very difficult to handle at finites like ten thousand miles an hour. Ole Doc went straight

past Minga twice before he properly found it, glimpsed it just long enough to see the landing strip in the middle of town and put the gig down to paving at three hundred and eighty.

Ordinarily Ole Doc disliked middle-sized towns. They didn't have the chummy, "h.e.l.lo-stranger" att.i.tude of the pioneer villages of s.p.a.ce and yet lacked any of the true comforts of the city. Built by money-hungry citizenry around a s.p.a.ce repair yard such towns were intent upon draining off the profit of the mines and farms incoming and outgoing. They were, in short, provincial. A rover port had some color and danger, a metropolis had com- fort and art. Such as Minga had law and order and a Rotarian club and were usually most confoundedly proud of being dull.

And so Ole Doc didn't give Minga much of a glance, either pa.s.sing over or walking in. Brick fronts and badly painted signs-houses all alike-people all- But even Ole Doc in his rush had to slow and stare.

Minga was a city, according to the s.p.a.ce Pilot, of ninety thousand people where "a limited number of fuel piles, ice, fresh water, provisions and some ship chandlery can be obtained" and "repairs can be made to small craft in cradles with capacity under one hundred tons" and "the s.p.a.ce hospital is government staffed by the Sun12 System Navy with limited medical stores available" and "two small hotels and three restaurants provide indifferent ac- commodations due to the infrequency of stopovers." Not exactly the sort of town where you would expect to see a well-dressed man of fifty carefully but unmistakably stalk- ing a cat.

It was not even a fat cat, but a gaunt-ribbed, matt- furred, rheumy-eyed sort of feline which wouldn't go a pound of stringy meat. But from the look on the well- dressed gentleman's face, there was no other reason than that.