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you speak so fast and use words I don’t know. It isn’t because I’m stupid . . . or insane.”
    His withdrawal made me frantic that I might lose the precious companionship I had so recently won. He must understand me so he would take me with him. I could see he had every intention of escaping as soon as he could. I had no doubts he would succeed or die in the attempt. Death to me was preferable to the alternative of remaining in this ghastly place.
    “I can’t remember how I got here,” I wailed softly. “I just don’t know. I was walking in a park at night on my own planet and something big and black hovered over me. The rest is all mixed up in the most horrible, horrible nightmares.”
    “Describe them,” he demanded in a cold, tight voice that scared me.
    The words rolled out. The weight of the grotesque scenes and experiences, walled up in my subconscious, poured out, as if voicing them would erase the remembered horror and terror. I don’t recall what I did say and what I couldn’t bring myself to say until I realized that I was trembling violently and he was holding me close against him. At first, I thought he was trying to muffle my voice, but then I heard his voice soft with low reassurances and his hands were very gentle.
    “Be quiet now. I do believe you. I do. There’s only one way you could have got here. No, no. I don’t doubt now a thing you’ve said. But that you are sane and . . . well, it’s a miracle.”
    There was incredulous wonder in his tone. He looked at me again, excitedly. The only thing I cared about was that he was no longer withdrawn and cold, and that he did believe me.
    “You know how I got here?”
    “Let’s say,” he demurred candidly, “I know how you must have got to this solar system. But how you reached Lothar and this place, I can’t even hazard a guess. The only possible explanation . . .”
    “You mean your people have interstellar travel and brought me here as a slave,” I interrupted, thinking with a sudden rush of hope that I would be able to get back to Earth. Though what Earth held for me was too mundane after this experience.
    He hesitated, considering his next words. Then, settling me into a comfortable position against his shoulder, his lips above my ear, he explained.
    “My people didn’t bring you here. I’m reasonably sure of that. We do have interstellar travel, but I cannot believe my race has penetrated to your section of space. Before I took so conveniently ill,” and his voice was sardonic, “no new exploration was contemplated.” He snorted with remembered exasperation. “I am reasonably sure, however, that your planet has been invaded by the curse, and paradoxically, the salvation of our Lothar. We call them the Mil. They’re a race of cellular giants which have had interstellar flight since the beginning of our recorded history, some two thousand years ago. To be precise, they
are
the beginning of our recorded history. We are, bluntly, their cattle, their fodder. That’s all right, take it easy,” he said reassuringly.
    His similes forced me to admit to myself what I had desperately tried to hide; that the disassembled pieces of anatomy that twisted and turned through my nightmares were horrifyingly like the joints on hooks in a meat market.
    “They have periodically raided this system for centuries. When we finally penetrated one of their depots here on Lothar, [I realized he was using the historic ‘we’] we began the long struggle to free ourselves and our planet of this terrible scourge. We turned their own weapons on them and then had to learn how to use them properly and repair them. Kind of progress in reverse. Now, we have not only been able to keep them off Lothar, but also out of this immediate sector of space. Our losses are still heavy in every encounter, as it is difficult to best an enemy with armaments similar to your own. Our big advantage is our own physical structure. However, rarely do any of our ships