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“Don’t want any night crawlers grabbing you.”
    â€œThanks, Chuck,” Kris said, only too grateful for both the offer and the sentiment. She was really dragging with weariness right now. Sitting down for a spell had not been as good an idea as it had seemed. It only emphasized her fatigue.
    â€œOver here,” and Chuck reached the flatbed and turned on its light to guide them.
    Kris was already climbing on the cargo before she realized that the boxes didn’t resemble anything she had purchased on Barevi.
    â€œWhat’s all this, sarge?” She couldn’t see the printed labels in the dim light.
    â€œIt’s the books we found,” Zainal astonished her by saying.
    â€œBooks?”
    â€œYes, books,” Zainal repeated calmly. “Ray saw them. As trading captain of the KDI, I thought such paper stuff would be good for packing material.” He grinned. “The Drassi did not argue, glad to be rid of the stuff.”
    â€œBut there must be fifty boxes here? They’re not
all
the same book, are they?”
    â€œNope,” Chuck said. “Catteni looted libraries, too. We’ve got some former librarians just drooling to catalog what we managed to ‘liberate.’ This is only part of what we unloaded. Our kids won’t grow up ignorant, though they might have some rather interesting gaps in their education.”
    â€œBooks,” Kris said and suddenly realized that she had missed books…certainly the availability of books. “Wow! That was a real coup.”
    â€œBooks?” Zainal asked. “Schoolbooks?” His tone was sly though Kris could not see his expression in the dim light. “Bi-ol-o-gy?”
    â€œDon’t know yet,” Chuck said, “though that’s a possibility. Why?”
    â€œZainal has just acquired a need to know,” Kris replied drolly. Oh, well, she’d had good grades in biology, though just how much human biology would expand Zainal’s understanding of how his body worked was a moot point. And she was too tired to inquire.
    All three were silent for the rest of the journey.
    Once Zainal closed the door behind them, Kris gave up the notion of a shower as being too much work and a ruseto keep her from getting horizontal, and asleep, as soon as she could make it to the bed. She did take her boots off, as Zainal was doing, but that was all she managed.
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    THE K-CLASS SHIP, WHICH ARRIVED AT BAY forty-five to collect a shipment of slaves for an ice planet’s mining operation, was furious to discover that someone else had taken them. The Drassi lodged a protest about that, and then another one that he had been forced to wait eight days before sufficient slaves could be assembled. So insignificant a report went unread.
    The costs submitted against a ship with a KDI identification code were duly registered although it was later noted that this ship had supposedly been listed as “lost.” The charges were paid and the anomaly forgotten.

Chapter Two
    IT SHOULDN’T HAVE SURPRISED KRIS THAT by the next afternoon many people were aware of the substance of their discussion with Dorothy Dwardie. Rumor circulated the settlement as fast as a Farmer orbiter. Fortunately, it worked more in favor of Zainal than against him. The Catteni were, however briefly, also seen as Victims of Eosian tactics, more to be pitied than feared.
    A quintet of anthropologists, while loudly deploring the forced evolution of the Catteni, requested most politely for Zainal to take some tests to evaluate his “stimulated” intelligence. Kris was furious and Zainal amused. In fact, Kris was so incensed that she was even mad at him for agreeing.
    â€œThey cannot do me any harm,” Zainal said in his attempt to placate her.
    â€œIt’s the whole idea of the thing…as if you were no better than a laboratory mouse or rat or monkey,” she said, pacing about