In being herded, running, with some two hundred other naked girls, her herd, to the feeding troughs, under the whips and slave goads of the aliens, she noted a patrol vehicle, within the fence. Lifting her face from the feeding trough, itself a punishable offense, she notes its driver is engaged in conversation with one of the guards. She works her way down the feeding trough, beneath it, between the girls on either side, her herd and another herd, and manages, crawling, to slip beneath the vehicle; she then rests her body on the bars of its substructure. Girls so seldom escape; no one notices her. Even her fellow slave females do not notice her; they fear to lift their faces from the feeding trough; the whistle has not yet blown; they do not wish a whipping.1 That night the vehicle goes on its patrol and, when the alien leaves it, perhaps to chew mim weed, a mildly intoxicating plant, she slips free and runs.

1 If one of them did see her, she would doubtless have shrieked the alarm, to a guard. The slaves, utterly at the mercy of the guards, are eager to please them. Many of them are little more than bred properties, domesticated animals. Some of them have not even been taught to speak. They run panting to the mating stalls, eagerly placing their wrists and ankles in the shackles. Some of the stud slaves are similarly bred. Most girls, however, and men, are taught a slave version (limited vocabulary, simplified grammar, distinctive pronounciation) of Heisa, a language important on rocky Telnaris (Telos II) of the Telian system. In the preceding century, Telnaris was a significant power. Heisa, one of its major languages, followed its conquering ships. Today, following the decline of the Telnarian hegemony, their ships departed, Heisa remains behind, a suitable lingua franca, common on several systems, one of the subtle traces, like ruins and rusted armaments, of a vanished Telnarian glory. Slave Heisa, incidentally, is the butt of many jokes. These jokes are usually told in dialect. One of the advantages of Heisa, it should be noted, making it suitable as a lingua franca, is that most of its sounds are feasible to a large variety of vocal and near-vocal mechanisms. There are only a few sounds in Heisa, for example, which are anatomically impossible for a human to imitate.