It hadn’t done her much good here on Pegasus, but this was the Democracy, not the Frontier, and Black Orpheus wasn’t much better known here than the outcasts and misfits that he sang about. She and Cain had traded their information in Socrates’ apartment three weeks ago, each holding back a couple of tidbits—at least, she assumed Cain had withheld some information; she knew that she had—and it was decided that Cain was better equipped to track down a professional assassin like Altair of Altair, whereas Virtue knew her way around the Democracy better than he did and would begin her hunt among the Democracy’s older, more established worlds.

She had spent the better part of a week searching for Salvatore Acosta, one of the four black marketeers who had delivered Santiago’s goods to the Sargasso Rose, and had found out from her own sources that he had been murdered on Pegasus two months earlier.

Pegasus was a former mining world, rich in gold and fissionable materials, which was now a heavily populated member of the Democracy. It had been named for the planet’s dominant herbivore, a small horselike animal that possessed a pair of fleshy protuberances just behind its withers. (They had never been used for anything other than balance, but they looked remarkably like vestigial wings.)

The planet itself was one of those odd scattered worlds that seemed Earth-like, but wasn’t truly habitable in the normal sense. It possessed oxygen, nitrogen, and the various inert gases that Men needed, but they existed in the wrong quantities, and twenty minutes’ exposure to the atmosphere left one breathless and panting; an hour could be fatal to anyone with a respiratory problem; and even the healthiest settlers couldn’t breathe the air for two hours.

But for some reason—possibly it was the view, for Pegasus was a gorgeous world, with snow-capped mountains and literally thousands of winding rivers, and was possessed of gold-and-brown vegetation that made the landscape look perpetually crisp and autumnal; though more likely it was the location, for it was midway between the Spica mining worlds and the huge financial center on Daedalus II—the planet became a very desirable piece of real estate. The original miners had lived underground, artificially enriching their air while protecting themselves from the extremely cold nights; but once the world started drawing crowds of permanent residents, construction began on a domed city, then five more, and ultimately a seventh that was almost as large as the first six combined. All of the cities bore Greek names; the newest and largest of them was Hektor, named after the supposedly mythical warrior who local historians had erroneously decided was either the rider or trainer of the winged horse.