She has not gone far. She is perhaps only to these hills, from which we now look down at the breeding facility, when the lights of the camp go on, and the sirens whine. A breeder is missing. (It is girl 187 of herd 40, series 117, camp 9, i.e., Girl 9-117-40-187. This number appears on a small metal plate, dangling, punched into her left ear lobe.) She, naked in the hills, barefoot, sees the patrol cars leaving the farm. She notes small air cars, with search-lights, lifting from the farm. She sees a pack of six-legged, howling creatures released from a van, dragging on chain leashes held by attendants.

She runs helplessly, a vulnerable female. Never before had she been so conscious of her slightness, her breasts, the width of her hips. She knows she cannot escape her hunters. She hides in brush as an air car glides swiftly overhead, its light a rapid disk scuttling across the ground. She emerges and runs again. The howling grows closer. She is exhausted. Her feet and legs are bleeding. She can run no more. She falls. Will the jaws of the beasts tear her to pieces? She struggles to her feet, stumbles on, and then falls again.

Suddenly, about her neck, a rope draws tight. The slave has been caught. She cannot cry out. She turns and looks up. It is not an alien. It is a human male. He is rough. He is an outlaw. Long ago he himself escaped from aliens. He has been living in the brush, usually far from the camp.

She looks at him, her eyes wild.

“Greetings, Slave,” he says. He speaks in English.

She cannot speak.

He loosens the rope, slightly.

Mindful of her Earth training, though overjoyed that he speaks English, she knows that she must be outspoken, that she must take the initiative. He is, after all, only a man.

“I am not a slave,” she says, as irritably as she can.

His hand lashes out, snapping her head viciously to one side. There is a hot, sticky smear of blood at the side of her mouth, at the side of her face and over her chin. Her lip has been split. She is bleeding. She tastes blood in her mouth. She feels it on her left breast. She looks at him with horror. She can scarcely comprehend. No man of Earth would have done that.

“Be silent, Slave,” says the man.

The rope tightens, choking her, then loosens.

“Yes,” she says.

“Yes, what?” he demands.

“Yes—Master,” she whispers.

He holds her to the ground as another air car passes overhead.