“It’s a thought,” I muttered, risking a glance above the wall.

The Gorzuni were more cautious now, creeping through the trampled gardens toward the shattered outbuilding we defended. Behind them, the main estate, last knot of our unit’s resistance, lay smashed and burning. Gorzuni were swarming around us, dragging out such humans as survived and looting whatever treasure was left. I was tempted to shoot at those big furry bodies but I had to save ammunition for the detail closing, in on us.

“I don’t fancy life as the slave of a barbarian outworlder,” I said. “Though humans with technical training are much in demand and usually fairly well treated. But for a woman—” The words trailed off. I couldn’t say them.

“I might trade on my own mechanical knowledge,” she said. “And then again, I might not. Is it worth the risk, John, my dearest?”

We were both conditioned against suicide, of course. Everyone in the broken Commonwealth navy was, except bearers of secret information. The idea was to sell our lives or liberty as exorbitantly as possible, fighting to the last moment. It was a stupid policy, typical of the blundering leadership that had helped lose us our wars. A human slave with knowledge of science and machinery was worth more to the barbarians than the few extra soldiers he could kill out of their hordes by staying alive till captured.

But the implanted inhibition could be broken by a person of strong will. I looked at Kathryn for a moment, there in the tumbled ruins of the house, and her eyes sought mine and rested, deep-blue and grave with a tremble of tears behind the long silky lashes.

“Well—” I said helplessly, and then I kissed her.

That was our big mistake. The Gorzuni had moved closer than I realized and in Terra’s gravity—about half of their home planet’s—they could move like a sun-bound comet.

One of them came soaring over the wall behind me, landing on his clawed splay feet with a crash that shivered in the ground.