Twenty-Nine tried to smile hopefully into the face of the frightened, confused slave now seated next to him.

Then he felt the great ship rock and heard the accompanying creaking of her sides. He heard the scurrying noises of the topside bleeders as they went about their labors above. Slowly, the Defiant began to make way.

The Harlequin looked to the pacemaster. "Battle speed," he ordered. "We have time to make up for."

"Very good," the pacemaster replied. But an unusually worried look had crowded in upon the corners of his face. "But before we commence-are we safe?" he asked. "Are we through it?"

"Oh, indeed," the Harlequin answered casually.

"And the human offerings?" the pacemaster inquired, taking up his twin sledges. "Their numbers sufficed?"

"Oh, yes," the Harlequin answered, walking to a comfortable-looking chair placed before the slaves. He smiled. "I think it safe to say they all disagreed with something that ate them!"

The bleeders broke into raucous laughter. Reclining into the softness of his upholstered chair, the Harlequin threw a leg up over one of its arms.

As the slaves slid their oars into the restless sea, the pacemaster resumed the beat, and the Defiant truly began to make way. Reaching down, the Harlequin took the twin iron spheres into his hand and began clinking them together, exactly matching the pacemaster's beat.

O n the same ship, another slave lay shackled to the floor, one of hundreds packed cheek by jowl in the lower deck. His eyes were hazel. His straight, sandy hair was pulled back from his face into a tail that was secured with a bit of worn leather string and ran down almost to the center of his back. Before being chained down he had been branded with the word R'talis, as had many of the others imprisoned with him. He was strong and in the prime of his life, but in the darkness of this hold it didn't matter. Nothing did.