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Captain’s Fancy wouldn’t increase thrust now: his hunger wasn’t something he could satisfy under hard acceleration.
    She held out her arms and waited. She couldn’t see her own face; but the way she felt must have been plain to him.
    He came nearer, balancing against the ship’s movement effortlessly. With one hand, he unsealed the blanket’s velcro and flipped it aside. In one of the compartments of her mind, she flinched and tried to cover herself again. But that compartment was closed, shut off. All of her body aspired to his caress. She arched her back, lifting her breasts for him.
    Still he didn’t touch her; he didn’t come into her embrace. Instead he reached for the id tag on its fine chain around her neck.
    He couldn’t read the codes, of course, not without plugging the tag into a computer. And he couldn’t access any of her confidential files without plugging her tag into a Security or UMCP computer. However, like virtually everyone in human space, he knew what the embossed insignia meant.
    “You’re a cop,” he said.
    He didn’t sound surprised.
    Didn’t sound surprised.
    Through the pressure mounting inside her, she thought, He should be surprised. Then she realized: No. He had an ally in Com-Mine Security. He could have known from the day he first saw her that she was a cop.
    That possibility might help protect her. It would encourage him to think about her in terms of covert operations and betrayal, not helplessness and zone implants.
    “You rescued me.” Her voice was husky, crowded with desires which transcended reason or fear. “I’ll be anything you want me to be.”
    For the moment that was true. The zone implant made it true. She took hold of his hand, drew it to her mouth, kissed his fingers. They left a trace of salt on her tongue—the sweat of his concentration when he ran Captain’s Fancy out from Station; the sweat of his hunger.
    And yet, despite the way her whole body urged him, he still held back. The demands of the zone implant mounted in her; synapses she couldn’t control fired out messages of need. She didn’t want him to talk; she wanted him to come to her, come into her, quench himself in the center of her.
    “Is this the approach you used on Captain Thermopile? Is that why he kept you alive?”
    “No,” she said automatically, “no,” without thinking. But she needed to think, had to think, because the next words she would say without thinking were, He didn’t use this combination.
    Her own hunger seemed like a roar in her ears. Swallowing hard to muffle it, to equalize the pressure, she offered the cheapest answer Nick might accept. “You’ve seen him. I left him for you. I couldn’t feel this way about him.”
    She knew nothing about him. Maybe he would be vain enough to accept that.
    He wasn’t. Or his vanity was too profound to be satisfied cheaply. He didn’t move; his smile was crooked and bloodthirsty. “Try again.”
    Try again. Try again. She couldn’t think. She wasn’t supposed to think, not while the zone implant did this to her. What could she tell Nick that would be true enough to be believed and false enough to protect her?
    “Please, Nick,” she said, almost whimpering with urgency, “can’t we talk about this later? I want you now.”
    He smiled and smiled, but he didn’t relent. Instead, he ran his hand down her chest and circled her breast with his fingertips. Involuntarily this time, she arched her back again. His smile and his eyes gave her no warning as he flicked her nipple hard with one of his fingernails.
    Just for an instant the balance of the zone implant shifted toward pain. She gasped; she nearly screamed.
    “Your name is Morn Hyland,” he said almost kindly. “You’re UMCP. And Angus Thermo-pile is the slimiest illegal between forbidden space and Earth. He’s sewage—and you’re one of the elite, you work for Min Donner. He should have obliterated you. He should have taken you apart atom by atom and never