He tried anyway. I caught him one below the ribs, and his head jerked up in surprise. I wasn’t hurting him much…but he’d been expecting love pats. Four years in Earth’s one point oh gee had put muscle on me, muscle that didn’t show along my long bones. He tried crowding me, and I caught him twice in the right eye. He tried keeping his guard intact, and that was suicide because he couldn’t reach me at all.

I caught that eye a third time. He bellowed, lowered his head, and charged.

I ran like a thief.

I’d led him in a half circle. He never had a chance to catch me. He reached the car just as I slammed the door in his face and locked it.

By the time he reached the left-hand door, I had that locked, too, and all the windows up. He was banging a rock on a window when I turned on the lift units and departed the field of battle.

He’d have to get used to my methods of fighting, too.

As I took the car up, I saw him running back toward the hunting camp.

No radio. No com laser. The base was a third of the way around the planet, and I’d have to go myself.

I set the autopilot to take me a thousand miles north of the base, flying low. Bellamy was bound to come after me with a car, and I didn’t want to be found.

Come to that, did he have a car? I hadn’t seen one.

Maybe he’d use—But that didn’t bear thinking about, so I didn’t.

A glove compartment held a small bar. Emil and I hadn’t depleted it much on the way out. I ordered something simple and sat sipping it.

The forest disappeared behind me. I watched the endless plain of fern grass whipping underneath. Mach four is drifting with the breeze if you’re a spaceman, but try it in a car with the altitude set for fifty yards. It wasn’t frightening; it was hypnotic.

The sun had been setting. Now it stayed just where it was, on the horizon, a little to my left. The ground was a blur; the sky was a frozen sphere. It was as if time had stopped.

I thought of Margo.

What an actress she would have made! The confusion she’d shown after the kidnapping. She hadn’t remembered the cargo mass meter; oh, no! She hadn’t even known Lloobee was one of her passengers! Sure she hadn’t.

She’d taken me for a fool.

I had no wish to harm her. When I told the MPs about Bellamy, she would not be mentioned. But she’d know that I knew.

I wondered what had brought her into this.