SinBad the Sand Sailor

Pleasure Palace

SinBad limped along, knowing the Aymads would now be charging him double time for every xat he delayed. This hobbling forced march was not just life or death, he would be paying for each painful step. Thanks to Tiffany. And the Massingales. He expected trouble from the Massingales. Why did pretty women cost so much? If he had half the money he had spent on blondes, he would not have to smuggle. Which would horrify the Aymads, and their many customers. Cut-rate offworld meds were immensely popular.

He could use some miracle meds right now. His foot hurt, and Tiffany was not here to tend it. He missed her already. Tiffany had been a fresh breeze, blowing through his dull life, upsetting everything. Without her, work became a dead bore that left him poorer than before—forced to do yet another run for the

“Number Ones.”

He never made it to his sand sail. By mid-afternoon, black wings circled overhead. Massingales, again. He stopped and waited, having nothing to hide—one beauty of being broke. Joe made a low pass, asking, “Why you walking?”

“You got a bum leg,” Jeramie reminded him.

“We can give you a lift,” Joe suggested. “For a price.” He shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t have a pill.”

They both laughed, turning slow circles around him. Joe shook his head. “You could not have used up all the meds you were carrying. You’re not hurt that bad.”

“We still owe you for that,” Jeramie added. “The bolt in your boot was aimed at us.” Joe agreed. “Sorry you were slow at getting away.”

“We’ll give you a ride back to your sail.”

SinBad ceased limping, and waited. So long as he knew where a fortune in pharmaceuticals lay buried, the Massingales were his best friends. Whether he wanted or not.

Presently, his ride appeared, the Massingale airship, poking over the dunes to the west. Cobbled together from stolen parts, the airship was a semi-rigid gas bag, married to an old silverskinned lander with a lifting body hull. Heat shield, gravity drive, and life-support system had been sold off long ago. The former spaceship was crammed with loot, crawling with cats, and patrolled by pit bulls. Both Massingales had beautiful dark-haired girlfriends, Alyssa and Randi Lynn, who ran the ship when their men were away. Despite their high-flying lifestyle, the hard-charging brothers attracted smart, scarily efficient young women.

Another reason neither Massingale was especially tempted by easy-going blonde Tiffany, whose helpless offworld ways made her barely worth kidnapping, unless you were in the business. On Barsoom, Red girls did you right, but blondes got you busted. Like Tiffany did to him. Neither girl was even into her teens, Barsoom years, but they knew how to handle SinBad, smiling, tending to his foot, and plying him with wine, working on all his weaknesses at once. Which he thoroughly enjoyed, though they were just softening him up for their boyfriends. Shedding their wings, the brothers sympathized with SinBad’s difficulties. “You look like shit. And your offworld girlfriend is in big trouble.”

“Real big trouble,” Alyssa agreed.

SinBad already guessed that. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Yer slippin’, SinBad.” Joe shook his head sadly.

“Gotta change your name,” Jeramie suggested. Both girlfriends smiled, not the least afraid of tending to a notorious sex criminal. Who’d just struck out with an air hostess.

“What’s happening to her?” SinBad asked warily.

“She’s being shipped back to her owners.” Jeramie patted his favorite pitbull. “Folks you stole her from.” Terrible news, but probably true. Joe and Jeramie had friends everywhere, mostly ne’er-do-wells and pretty young women, who were half the population aboard a pleasure palace. Getting Tiffany back offworld was going to be SinBad’s one good deed, to balance against all the bad ones.

“You didn’t tell us she was so valuable,” Joe observed.

Wonder why. “You were set on robbing that wind jammer.”

“We still owe you for that,” Joe reminded him. “And we’ll make it up.”

“How?” Beware of Massingales doing favors.

“We can save your girlfriend.”

“For a fee.”

“Like the meds I was delivering to the Aymads?” SinBad suggested.

“Exactly.”

Damn. He kept forgetting that. Tiffany was going to cost him everything. His cargo, his employers, his criminal reputation. Hopefully not his life, though that too could go, when the Aymads found out how badly he’d cheated them.

Or he could let Tiffany die. That would be the easy way out. He would feel horrible. Both Massingales would be disappointed. So would their pretty, attentive girlfriends. Only the Aymads would be pleased -though not a lot. They expected him to put them first.

“Okay, I’ll do it.” Screw the Aymads. They would hate him either way, but he would feel far worse if Tiffany was dead.

Jeramie arched an eyebrow. “That so?”

“Sure. Get me Tiffany, and I’ll give you the meds.”

“Sounds like a deal,” Joe declared.

It sounded like disaster, yet every other choice was worse.

It took days for the Massingales’ makeshift airship to catch up with Erotopia, drifting with the prevailing easterlies, between Exhume and Kobol, a thousand haads behind Lesser Helium, currently propelled by the same wind system.

Coming up from the southeast, the Massingales timed their arrival for dusk, so they would hang in the gloaming, nearly invisible, with the pleasure palace silhouetted in the last of the light. Erotopia was a huge inflated raft of hydrogen, divided into cylindrical cells, capped by a gleaming glass superstructure, with shaggy hanging gardens, and long dangling strings of pavilions that stabilized the floating structure. SinBad studied their target. “Where is Tiffany?”

“Where is your cargo?” Jeramie replied.

“I will tell you when I have her.” He meant to pay the Massingales at the last possible moment. Joe nodded. “Fair enough.”

First SinBad got his wings, a borrowed pair, that had belonged to Joe. “Before I outgrew them.” Joe’s girlfriend adjusted the straps, checking the trim, and making sure SinBad’s feet were in the tail stirrups. She was beautiful, but all business, saying without a hint of flirtation, “How firm is it in the crotch?

I can tighten it for you.”

“Feels just fine,” he deadpanned back.

“Good. Otherwise you can get tail flutter.”

Not the good kind, either. In no time he was perched on the airship’s fantail, alongside Joe and Jeramie, surveying the pleasure palace. They had their rapiers, while SinBad was unarmed, afraid he would stab himself in a fast landing. Flying and fighting was not his forte. He asked, “How do you even know she is still there?” Or where Tiffany was being kept.

Both brothers grinned. “We GPS tagged the two of you, on that bluff above the wagon track. Just in case.”

Leave skulking to the pros. They had no trouble finding him, alone and afoot.

“So, let’s go.” Joe gave him a shove, and he was airborne. Instinctively, he spread his borrowed wings, flapping furiously. Automatic trim tabs and power flaps kept him from stalling. Primaries bit into the dark air, pulling him forward with each power stroke.

“Stop flailing,” Jeramie advised.

“Soar.” Joe showed how, diving to gain speed, then climbing with sure steady strokes. SinBad did his best, sculling with his wrists to keep up airspeed, riding the air instead of batting at it. Luckily, Joe’s old wings practically flew themselves.

Thuria was down, so Erotopia had just a small airship on watch, which the Massingales easily avoided, winging their way toward one of the trailing pavilions—which had a flier on guard, perched on a swing above it.

He too was no match for the Massingales. Joe spilled air, perfectly imitating the drunken swoop of a hard partying flier. A part he knew by heart. Brushing the pavilion eves, Joe went into a tumbling spin. That brought the flier off his perch, spiraling after the fallen “patron.” This clueless watch bird had no hope of catching Joe, letting SinBad concentrate on landing. Not easy for a beginner.

But he did it, flaps wide, feathers spread, spoilers out, feet down. With a sudden thud, Sinbad stood teetering on the broad pavilion balcony.

“Come on,” Jeramie called from inside the pleasure pavilion. “This is not a social call.” Too true. SinBad entered, and there was Tiffany, asleep again, in a gilded cage, wearing a crisp new low-cut uniform. At least her owners did not mean to toss her overboard. Yet. Jeramie’s bolt cutters made quick work of the lock. “So, what are your cargo’s coordinates?”

“When we get her outside.” As soon as he gave up those coordinates, the Massingales would be off at near light speed, leaving him with Joe’s old wings. And a stolen air hostess. Or so he hoped. Folding his wings, SinBad eased into the cage, picking Tiffany up off the floor. Her eyes shot open. “SinBad?”

“Good guess.” Nice she remembered him.

“What are you doing?”

“Rescuing you.”

“Just me?” Tiffany seemed underwhelmed.

“Afraid so.” He already had his arms full. “Ready for a night flight?”

“I suppose.”

Taking that as a yes, he slid her bare legs into his harness straps and looped his flight belt around her waist, bringing their centers of gravity snugly together. Delightful sensation. Then he dived off the pavilion balcony, disappearing into the warm dark Barsoomian night.

As SinBad gained airspeed, Jeramie appeared alongside, flying wing-tip to wing-tip with him. “What are the coordinates?”

He rattled off the numbers, and Jeramie dived after Joe, saying, “You owe us a pair of wings.” So much for the Massingales. SinBad pulled up, borrowed wings beating on battery power, now that the sun had set. That too would slow his escape.

Tiffany asked, “What about Jem?”

Jem? “Jem who?”

“Jem from Amour.”

Right. Jem who’d got him thrown off the Jeddara.

“She needs saving too.”

Who did not? “They will not kill her.”

“How do you know?” Tiffany shot back.

He did not. Rather than continue the aerial argument, he asked, “Do you even know where she is?”

“I’ll show you.” Tiffany directed him to another hanging pavilion, below the one she had been in. Live music from a Greenie band drifted out of an open veranda.

“There’s a party going on in there.” From the sounds of it a big one.

“So?” Tiffany did not see the problem.

Setting her down on a corner of the veranda, he asked, “How am I supposed to get Jem out?”

“Use this.” Tiffany handed him a mini sleep grenade.

“Where did this come from?” Raised offworld letters ran around the pin. PEACE CORPS.

“Kept it hidden behind my hostess badge.”

No wonder he’d missed it. “Hi! I’m Tiffany,” and I have a bomb. Triggering the grenade, he tossed it through an open window. Music ceased, as SinBad waited for the anesthetic cloud to dissipate. Then he hyperventilated, held his breath, and stepped inside.

Strewn around him were the remains of a bacchanal, halted in mid-orgy, the blindfolded band, a trio of naked clients, a rainbow of sleeping air hostesses, red, white, black, and green, in various states of undress—all completely comatose. As if the frenzy of enjoyment was just too exhausting. He retrieved the grenade, tossing that tiny evidence bomb out the window. Escapades like this -drugging everyone in a flying cathouse to make off with an enslaved teenage air hostess—were what got him called SinBad.

Next he scooped up Jem, who had lost the top of her air hostess uniform, along with the hip boots, making the young Red girl weigh even less. All this activity hurt his leg horribly. SinBad felt the pavilion tilt, followed by an exchange of greetings outside. Tiffany was saying “Kaor” to someone.

Shit. Some flier had landed on the veranda, and Tiffany was chatting him up. Still holding his breath, SinBad edged over to the window to see.

Out on the starlit veranda, the flier who went after Joe had returned, and somehow tracked them here. He was standing with wings folded, talking to Tiffany, and cradling a repeating crossbow. Which beat the sleeping air hostess SinBad was cradling. He ducked his head back inside. What to do?

First breathe. Setting Jem down beside the window, SinBad slid over to the back of the pavilion, where he stuck his head out a rear window.

Dark, terraformed air never tasted so sweet. Now think. He could wiggle out the window onto the veranda, then come around behind the flier. Assuming Tiffany could keep him talking. Arming himself with a champagne bottle, SinBad climbed out the window and crept along the veranda. At the corner, he hefted the bottle, then stepped around, hoping the flier was still facing the other way. He found the flier stretched out at Tiffany’s feet, as peaceful as the party in the pavilion. He lowered his bottle. “What did you hit him with?”

Tiffany replied coyly, “A kiss.”

Sedative lipstick. Usually associated with more sleazy pleasure palaces, where customers ended up robbed, then rolled over the side.

“Where’s Jem?” she asked. “What’s the champagne for?”

“Premature celebration.” He set down the bottle, held his breath again, and limped back into the pavilion, returning with Jem slung over his shoulder. “That better?” Tiffany smiled. “I’d kiss you, but I want you awake.”

Relieved he’d never taken liberties with Tiffany, SinBad strapped the two women to him as best he could. Feeling like far too small a flight to rate two air hostesses, SinBad spread his wings and stepped off the veranda. Bye-bye Erotopia.

Tiffany asked, “Where are we headed?”

“The ground.” This overloaded, every direction was down.

“Is that wise?” Tiffany wondered.

“Probably not.” He tilted his primaries, turning into a long slow spin, spiraling down through the hot Barsoomian night. Band music and the bright lights of Erotopia dwindled overhead. Blackness lay below. “What’s down there?” Tiffany asked.

“You’re the air hostess.”

Tiffany hugged him tighter. “So you don’t know?”

“Don’t count on sand dunes.” Like the ones that broke her last fall from Erotopia. “Not at this latitude.” No open bodies of water either. Which meant no trees. No major canal lines, no cities. Another of the big blank spots that abounded on Barsoom. Luckily, it was probably flat. His wings gave a terrain warning—“LOW ALTITUDE. PREPARE TO LAND.” SinBad spread his flaps, dropped his feet, then Barsoom slammed into him.

Hitting with his good leg, he rolled across mossy sward, folding his wings to shield the women. Much of the planet still had its original terraforming vegetation, springy reddish moss that scavenged water and broke up rocks. Perfect for soft landings. Unless a sleeping air hostess lands on your lame leg. SinBad howled aloud.

“Shush,” Tiffany whispered, lifting Jem off his leg. “They could hear...”

“Not unless they turn down the music.” Aerial bands played as Erotopia drifted off downwind. Pre-atomic blues, mixed with centuries-old 3V jingles. Culture crawled to Barsoom at light speed. Unscrewing a ring setting, Tiffany exposed a hypo-needle and gave Jem an injection.

“What’s that?” Drugging pretty teenagers always aroused his professional interest.

“Antidote.” Tiffany resealed the ring.

“You’re a cop?”

“Peace Corps.” Just like on the grenade.

“I had no notion.” No wonder they threw her over the side. In the pleasure business, the Peace Corps was as popular as a drug resistant STD.

Tiffany smiled, showing straight even teeth. “A lot of guys are surprised.” That explained the sleep-bombs and good-night kiss. Peace Corps did not kill people, they just went after those who did. “What are you doing here?”

“Investigating exploitation of underage natives by offworld corporations,” Tiffany explained. “You can do what you want on your own worlds, but it is a crime to murder, abuse, or torture inhabitants of another planet for profit. And against Navy antislaving regs. Greenies won’t police the pleasure palaces, so someone must.”

“If you say so.” Greenies did not care what humans did offplanet, even half a haad offplanet. Policing humans on Barsoom was bad enough, thanks to humans like him.

“We need a witness,” Tiffany explained. “Who can be truthtested, and brain scanned. Otherwise it is he-said, she-said.”

Human witness. SinBad arched an eyebrow. “Greenies do not count?”

“Absolutely.” Testimony by bio-engineered beings counted far less than fingerprints off a toaster. Jem’s eyes fluttered, and she asked in Apache, “Where are we?” Good question. When Jem had fallen asleep, she was starring in a high-flying orgy. Now she lay half-naked on the mossy ochre sward, with Cluros shining overhead, and Thuria due up soon. “We are a hundred haads south of Exhume.”

Flat, featureless sward faded into darkness in every direction. “We have to hide,” he added. “Thuria rise is in half a zode.”

Jem immediately understood. Apache girls played hide-and-seek with Thuria all their lives. “We should head downwind.”

More Apache thinking. SinBad agreed. It meant heading west, instead of straight north to Exhume, but that threw off pursuit, and put possible predators up ahead, while forcing fliers from Erotopia to work their way upwind.

He set off downwind, limping behind Jem and Tiffany, trusting in Apache senses and blonde ambition. At first it worked. After twenty or thirty xats, Jem held out her hands, then slowly lowered them, palms down. SinBad threw himself face down in the sward. Closing his eyes, he listened. Hearing nothing. SinBad listened harder, finally hearing the whump of propellers, slowly growing louder, as an airship churned her way upwind. Erotopia was looking for them.

Lots of luck. Antelope fed on sward moss. So did springbok and moropus. Dire wolves fed on them, and jackals cleaned up afterward. There were so many human-sized infrared sources and heat trails hereabouts that examining them all was hopeless.

Whoever piloted the airship agreed. Propeller sounds passed laboriously overhead, then slowly faded upwind.

Jem called out softly, “Let’s go.”

They set out again, across the flat sward. Jem no longer headed straight downwind, casting about instead, checking out streams and low spots. Tiffany dropped back to ask, “Where are we going?”

“We are looking for cover,” SinBad explained. “Thuria will be up soon.” Too soon. Slavers had high-powered optical scanners designed to work by Thuria light. If you could see Thuria, Slavers could see you. And Tiffany was just what they wanted. Jem too.

Finally they found a shallow draw, with an overhanging bank big enough to hide them from Thuria. There they slept and rested, while Barsoom’s nearer moon raced overhead. At seven xats past the eighth zode, Thuria set. This time they headed straight north. Rigel, Barsoom’s north star, could not be seen at this latitude, but Betelgeuse was up, a great yellowish-red beacon, pointing the way to Exhume.

Beyond some low hills, mossy ochre sward gave way to sandy short-grass steppe, dotted with thorn trees. Barsoom’s few forests lay mainly along the equator. Halfway through the ninth zode, Thuria rose again, and they sheltered beneath a spreading thorn tree. Betelgeuse was down by now, but the red lights of Exhume beanstalk poked above the northern horizon, pointed at the stars. Within sight of their goal, Jem sat up and sniffed the air, saying, “They’re coming.” Who’s coming? SinBad sat up and sniffed. He smelled it too, a faint catbox odor borne by the night wind.

“Ba’aths?”

Ba’aths were black-maned Barsoomian lions, bigger than any earthly cat, with saberteeth and gleaming green eyes. Jem shook her head. “Ba’aths do not stalk downwind. SuperCats.” Made sense. Lions would not waste a stalk. SuperCats were paid either way. And these knew that their prey dared not run when Thuria was up.

First light shone in the east, spilling slowly over the steppe. SinBad crouched behind the thorn tree, straining his eyes.

There they were, tall figures spread out in the short grass, backlit by dawn light. Homo smilodon stalked upright, just like humans. These carried repeating crossbows. Shit. He had been so close. Why couldn’t it be ba’aths? Why did he have to be lame? And unarmed?

“Who is it?” Tiffany asked.

“Erotopia has found us.” Or maybe it was the Aymads, looking for him. By now they had burned both their employers.

He hunkered down, watching the SuperCats come on, hoping they did not have the scent yet. No such luck. They were converging on the thorn tree, crossbows at the ready. Tiffany whispered, “Don’t worry.”

“Why not?”

“We’ll deal with them.”

“You will?” He turned to see Tiffany putting lipstick on Jem. Then freshening up her own.

“SuperCats don’t kiss.” Saberteeth made liplocks awkward. Smiling, Tiffany slipped a hypo-ring on Jem’s finger, showing the Red girl how to use it. That was more useful. Unless you were facing a dozen armed bio-engineered killers. “Just lie low,” Tiffany advised, squeezing his hand. “You have been wonderful. This is my problem, not yours.” Too true. Leave it to the Peace Corps.

“Sorry, I cannot kiss you good-bye,” Tiffany added.

He understood.

Taking Jem’s hand, Tiffany strolled out to meet the advancing SuperCats. Warily the cat circle closed on them.

SinBad tensed, worried for Tiffany. Jem too. He had been putty in their hands, taking insane risks for their sake, but these were hunting cats, bred to be better than humans. Three hypersonic missiles streaked silently down from orbit, exploding in a triangular pattern just above the SuperCats. Osiris orbit-to-surface missiles, armed with sleep gas. SinBad recognized the white puffs of anesthetic, followed by triple sonic booms, arriving well after the missiles hit. Silence settled over the pre-dawn plain. Thuria shone down on Tiffany and Jem, lying amid sleeping SuperCats. SinBad cowered under the thorn tree, peering through the short grass. Presently a silver ship fell out of the sky, a stripped down Fornax Skylark, with strap-on antimatter boosters. Someone’s fancy gravity yacht that now fairly screamed “Slaver.” As soon as she set down, men in gas masks emerged, stepping over the SuperCats, then scooping up Jem and Tiffany, taking them back to the ship.

Slavers overpowered anyone. So pretty women, young girls, and graceful boys hid from Thuria. Blame it on the Greenies, who forced Barsoom to make do with homemade weapons, like bows, slings, and hand-forged rapiers.

He watched the Skylark seal herself and take off, with both his air hostesses aboard. Easy come, easy go.

Leaving some sleeping SuperCats, who would soon be awake and angry, at him. He had to go, but where? Away from Hastor and some very mad Aymads, that was for sure. By now, his sand sail was even further off. That left Exhume.

SinBad climbed to the top of the thorn tree, no easy feat. Going out on a prickly limb, he leaped off, flapping his solar wings. Stored power lifted him into the air, where he found a thermal, rising off a bare patch in the plain. Spiraling upward, he gained a couple of haads in height, then headed north, aiming at the base of Exhume beanstalk.

He almost made it. Landing several haads short of Exhume, he limped the rest of the way. Exhume beanstalk stretched up into orbit, providing free transport to a geosynch point, connecting Barsoom to the cosmos. SinBad dragged himself up the Avenue of Offworlders, past swank hotels, cheap bars, curio shops, Outback brothels, and airship docks, offering service to Erotopia and the Heliums.

Having neither the time or credit for offplanet pleasures, he staggered straight to the lift shaft, entering the negative-g zone, rising up alongside hungover tourists and hopeful emigrants, headed offplanet. SinBad got off at a platform ten haads up, where the view was terrific and the air was okay, thin but breathable. SinBad spread his wings and dived off the beanstalk, soaring from thermal to thermal, using long ridgelines, prevailing winds, and hot dark patches of red-orange sward, headed for his sand sail, thousands of haads to the southwest.

Fifty haads out, he spotted a flier following him, lower down, half a haad back, sporting pink and black primaries. Erotopia colors. So long as he had height advantage, SinBad was not much worried. When night came, he would shake this pursuer, then find somewhere to roost and rest. His pursuers did not wait for dark. Soon he spied a silver airship coming up behind him, closing fast. Eros was written on its nose. More pink and black fliers emerged from the forward gondola. Dumping air, SinBad dove into a stoop, folding his wings back, sacrificing height for speed. His one hope was to go to ground. Somewhere down there, he would find a place to hide. But he never got the chance. Suddenly a big silver shape came between him and safety. It was the Slaver ship, returning for him. What in Issus for? He was not that attractive. SinBad backed off, feathers spread, flaps down, braking franticly. An airlock opened on the silver ship. Jem stood at the lock door, wearing what was left of her air hostess costume, waving at him.

She did not have to ask twice. Pulling in his flaps, SinBad beat hard with his primaries, propelling himself into the lock. He landed in a heap, piled against the inner hatch. Jem shut the lock and the ship took off, headed for orbit. Struggling out of bent wings, he wiggled to his feet, feeling the here-we-go sensation given off by gravity drive. Barsoom fell away beneath them. Cycling the inner hatch, Jem stepped onto the ship’s control deck. Tiffany lay on the command couch, giving him her sweetest air hostess smile. “Welcome to the Draco…” Slavers named their ships for dragons, to better prey on other vessels.

“...formally the Fornax Star. Missing more than a century.” A twice stolen antique that Tiffany flew easily. There was no end to her talents. He stepped through the inner hatch. “Where’s the crew?”

“Asleep.”

Figures. Waking up in a Navy brig was a hazard of slaving. “Where are we headed?” Tiffany engaged the antimatter boosters. “Away from Thuria.” How like a man, he had forgotten the nearer moon was up. SinBad checked the aft screens. Thuria loomed big and round behind them. Slavers had seen the whole rescue, and knew they had lost a ship. Two dots separated from the nearer moon’s cratered surface, headed their way, swiftly closing the gap.

“Who’s that?”

“Hiryu and Salamander, two high-g Slaver starships, based on Thuria.”

“Can they catch us?”

“With ease.” Tiffany did not seem worried. She never did. Peace Corps training. No wonder folks hated her. Personally, SinBad found pretty, fearless women endearing—if somewhat unnerving. Tiffany Panic had dragged him halfway across Barsoom, and now totally offplanet, to face new and different dangers. Alarms blared, “RADAR LOCK, HELLHOUNDS ENGAGED.”

Salamander got ready to fire anti-ship missiles, while Hiryu hung back, covering the attack. Forward screens showed Tiffany was shaping straight for Cluros, Thuria’s stogy consort. A last bit of Barsoom. Beyond Cluros lay hundreds of millions of haads of vacuum. Jasoom, the main Greenie world, was on the far side of the system. Not that Greenies were much good in ship-to-ship actions. Photo sapiens lacked the killer edge that made humans the most fearsome species in this part of the spiral arm.

At the rate the Slavers were closing, Draco would not even make Cluros, much less Jasoom. Tiffany calmly ignored commands to throttle back and be boarded. “They want this ship intact, and us alive. Hellhound locks are just a bluff.”

“HELLHOUNDS AWAY.”

Some bluff. Gravity drive missiles streaked toward them, at ten times Draco’s acceleration. Salamander signaled, “DISENGAGE BOOSTERS. PREPARE TO BE BOARDED.” Tiffany ignored the Slaver commands, saying, “I am blonde, but not that blonde. We have an old family motto for just this situation.”

“What is that?”

“Don’t panic, Panic.”

“HELLHOUNDS CLOSING FAST.”

He could see that. Be boarded, or be blown apart. SinBad left it to Tiffany. Slavers would kill him either way.

Cluros loomed ahead of them, another icy cratered ball, unused by Slavers, since it was small, and slow, and far from the surface. With fewer places to hide.

“HELLHOUND IMPACT ONE HUNDRED SECONDS.”

SinBad saw a large blip, the size of a Navy corvette, separate from Cluros, firing anti-missiles.

“ANTI-MISSLES CLOSING AHEAD. HELLHOUND IMPACT FIFTY SECONDS.”

“What’s that?”

“Tarzana,” Tiffany explained, “the suburb-class corvette that brought me insystem. She has been hiding on Cluros ever since.”

Waiting for the Slavers to make a mistake. Like this one. Tarzana was more than a match for any two Slavers, carrying an arsenal full of missiles, and a reinforced company of marines. Hiryu and Salamander peeled off in opposite orbits, knowing that even a Navy corvette could not go two ways at once.

“HELLHOUND IMPACT TWENTY SECONDS.”

SinBad did the math in his head. Twenty-something tals. Hearing it in seconds made the missile sound even closer.

“Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen...”

He gripped Tiffany’s free hand as she swung the helm to port.

“Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen...”

“ANTI-MISSILES PASSING TO STARBOARD.” Good news. Tiffany gave him a squeeze.

“Twelve, eleven...”

SinBad held his breath.

“HELLHOUNDS DESTROYED.” Impact alarms ceased. Tarzana’s anti-missiles had taken out the Hellhounds. With tals to spare. He exhaled, “We did it.”

“You did it.” Tiffany smiled up at him. “You got me and my witness off Barsoom. Without you, I would be lying dead on a sand dune.”

How true. Without thinking, they kissed.

He awoke flat on his back, staring up at a bulkhead, with Tiffany bending over him, no longer at the controls. “The ship? Don’t you have to...”

Tiffany shook her blonde head. “It’s over.”

“Over?” That seemed awfully quick.

“Salamander’s been disabled by a missile burst, and boarded by marines.”

“Hiryu?”

“Got away,” she was sorry to say. “If anything else happens, the ship will tell me.” He had been out for awhile. Just as well. Win or lose, battles were best slept through—making for less stress, and a lower profile. Tiffany ran her hand over his cheek, saying, “Sorry I kissed you.”

“I am not.” He would have felt like a bigger fool if they’d never kissed. And that was all he would get. Peace Corps whores only put out in the line of duty. Tiffany would bring perfect strangers to the heights of ecstasy, repeatedly, because it was part of her cover. All he got was a drugged kiss. Not that he was complaining. One heartfelt kiss from Tiffany, was better than a free pass to a pleasure palace.

By now he knew women thought this was just fine, pleasing men “on the job” because that was business, while drawing a strict circle around “personal” relationships. SinBad much preferred crime. He and Jem split the Navy reward for returning the Draco and capturing its crew. More offworld credit than the whole Huron nation had ever seen. Issus knew what he would do with it. And he got a free ride back to his sand sail, still sitting on the sward south of Hastor. Tiffany produced a box of meds, matching the one the Massingales got, paid for by the Peace Corps. She tucked it into the cargo bay of his sand sail, then gave him a long, drug free, kiss. When they were done tongue wrestling, Tiffany told him, “Take care.”

“If you insist,” SinBad replied. He popped his sail and set out again, with the wind on his port beam, rolling over red-orange sward bordered by sand, headed north for Hastor.