Sallah had just enough time to duck her head to avoid Avril’s projectile arrival against her. As it was, she went head over heels in a spin that Avril, laughing gleefully, assisted until the rotation made Sallah retch.

“You bitch woman!” Avril stopped Sallah before she could expel more vomit into the air. “Okay! If that’s the way of it, you know what I need to know. And you’re going to tell me, or I’ll kill you by inches.” A spaceman’s knife, with its many handlepacked implements, sliced across the top of Sallah’s nose.

Then she felt the blade none too gently cutting the bindings on her hands and feet. Blood rushed through starved arteries, and her strained muscles reacted painfully. If she had not been in free-fall, she would have collapsed. As it was, the agony of release made her sob and shake.

“Clean up your spew first,” Avril said, shoving a slop jar at her.

Sallah did as she was told, grateful for the lack of gravity, grateful for the release, and wondering what she could do to gain an upper hand. But she had little opportunity to enjoy her freedom, for Avril had other ways of securing her prisoner’s cooperation.

Before Sallah realized what was happening, Avril had secured a tether to the injured foot and tweaked the line. Pain, piercing like a shard of glass, shot through Sallah’s leg and up to her groin. There was too little left in her stomach to throw up. Avril jerked Sallah over to the console, pushed her into the pilot’s chair, and tied her down, twitching her improvised lead line to remind Sallah of her helplessness.

“Now, check the fuel on board, check the quantity in the Yoko’s tanks—I’ve done that, I know the answers, so don’t try anything clever.” A jerk against Sallah’s injured foot reinforced the threat. “Then enter a program that gets me out of this wretched asshole of a midden system.”

Sallah did as she was told, though her head ached and her eyes blurred repeatedly. She could not suppress her surprise at the amount of fuel in the Mariposa’s tanks.

“Yes, someone was holding back on it. You?” There was a jerk on the line.

“Kenjo, I suspect,” Sallah replied coolly, managing to suppress a cry. She was determined not to give Avril any satisfaction.

“Fussy Fusi? Yes, that computes. I thought he’d given up all too tamely! Where did he hide it?” The line tightened. Sallah had to bite hard on her lip against a sob.

“Probably at his stake. It’s back of beyond. No one goes there. He could hide anything there.”

Avril snorted and remained silent. Sallah made herself breathe deeply, forcing more adrenaline into her system to combat pain, fatigue, and fear.

“All right, compute me a course to …” Avril consulted a notebook. “Here.”