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again, as though it were a curse.
    Come to think of it, it was. A curse Nebula would have to live with all her life.

Chapter Four
    Early that morning, Conan made his way to Pak Song’s sexbot emporium on Obsidion’s Street of Pleasure, surprised at the revelry going on there and the fact that the revelers appeared to be more locals than the usual tourists who flocked to the streets every night. He wondered what the occasion might be and whether it had something to do with the cyborg maker having moved his appointment forward by two days, but Conan said nothing while the wizened little man examined him.
    “You good as new, Captain—almost. Make sure you got plenty of these,” he said, patting the patch on Conan’s lower abdomen. “They not easy to get once you leave Obsidion.”
    “Can one of the patches do for a woman what it does for me?”
    “That one cannot. Females need different hormone.” Pak Song adjusted the lighted magnifier on his forehead and bent to the task of adjusting a tiny cybernetic control he had implanted beneath the skin of Conan’s thigh. “Different patch for women. Patch looks almost like yours. Must be replaced monthly, like yours. They are outlawed practically everywhere in the galaxy. Why? You have a sterilized female friend?”
    “Possibly. Do you recall my two friends who visited you the day I came to your shop and tried my new cock out on one of your deluxe bots?”
    “Guy Stone. My first successful attempt at creating a bionic human. A nd your mutual friend Shedir. They both now live on Luna Ten, yes?”
    “Yes. I have been invited to resettle there, and they have offered me a mate. A n Earthling female. She is the half-sister of Shedir and Guy’s mates.”
    “A mutant gene carrier?”
    Hearing the words applied to the female he’d been offered as his mate rankled, though if Nebula had not been a carrier, it would have been unthinkable for her sisters’ mates to offer her to one such as him. “Yes. She was sterilized because she carries the mutant gene.” The cyborg maker frowned. “You worry that she will not pleasure you?”
    “I worry that I will not be able to give her pleasure. That she will find no joy in serving my sexual needs.” Conan recalled crude jests made in barracks and barrooms throughout the galaxy, about sterilized females being of less use for sex than bots.
    The old man smiled. “I will get you what you need, patches and the injection that will be necessary to stimulate her libido and make her wet for you. Not fair that I made you a new cock if it cannot give your mate pleasure. You tell no one, though. Pak Song could lose head for dispensing female hormones, even here on Obsidion. Only the sex emporium owners have license to get it, but Romulus, the A urelion, owes me big favor.”
    “I will never say a word.” Conan owed Pak Song for having restored his reason for living. “If you are finished with me for now, I believe I will go and see why it seems that every citizen of this little planet is reveling in the streets today.”
    “I can tell you why, Captain. Our king has ordered celebration because succession to Diamond Throne is once again secure. A s you may know, Crown Prince Tabor was killed in battle six weeks ago. The king has located his second son, A rik, alive. A rik returns today from exile to take his rightful position.”
    “Why was A rik sent into exile?” Conan assumed the younger prince must have committed some vile offense to have been banished from the Diamond Palace.
    Pak Song shook his head. “Ten years ago, our king named Tabor his heir and ordered A rik made royal eunuch along with four sons of old king. A rik fled Obsidion rather than accept his fate. Word came a few years later that he was dead, killed by mercenaries off the tiny planet Eastphalia. It turns out, thanks to all the gods, that he survived and settled there.” It amazed Conan how much the cyborg maker seemed to know about the goings-on of the reclusive