How long did he have? A few months?

He groaned. He didn't even have any place to start!

"Where now?" said Flick. "It's quitting time. Do I drive to Government City and find a rooming house?"

"I don't have any money."

"Hells of a boss you are," said Flick. "I'm tired of sleeping in an airbus and I bet you have nightmares: killers always do."

"Sleep in a car?" said Madison. This was getting worse and worse. He could see himself becoming an unshaven wreck: not the slightest chance of being believed.

"Well, I ain't going to break into any of these palaces," said Flick. "That would be a fast route to Camp Kill, with all these guards around. Tell you what, we'll fly to Slum City and rob a store. You can shoot the watch­man."

Madison wished Flick wouldn't keep building on that image, yet he could see respect for him was dwin­dling. "I don't have a gun."

"Blowholes! The assignments I get! My last boss lost all his pay in gambling and finally got stabbed in a dice game. Now I'm going to starve to death."

"Don't you have any pay? Any quarters?"

"In the Apparatus? A driver's boss is supposed to provide all that. And I get a murderer who isn't even packing a gun, that's dead broke and has no pay status. Can't you do anything?"

It jarred Madison. Yes, there was something he could do. He could be a knight-errant. He could rescue Teenie; that had been allowed. He would do it even though the thought of sleeping three in an aircar presented new problems.

He mentally donned his plumed helmet. "Drive back to that park in front of the Royal Palace. I've got to rescue a girl."

They drove back a mile and slid along the curving path where he had first seen her. The light seemed bad: apparently in this place they followed day and night, and this must be dusk.

The garden space around the painted statue was all dug up but no workmen were about. Flick stopped.

Suddenly, from under the sculptured purple cloak of some long-dead monarch, an Apparatus guard moved out, rifle levelled. It was the same guard he had seen before. Madison hastily presented his identoplate through the window. The guard saw "Apparatus" and relaxed.

"There was a girl here earlier," said Madison.

"Oh, yeah," said the guard. "They're gone now. You haven't got a puffstick, have you?"

"Give him one," Madison told Flick.

With a very dirty look, Flick complied. He gave the guard an even dirtier look when he had to light it for him.

"They went over that way," said the guard. "Between those two orange-colored buildings."

Flick headed in that direction. "This is getting worse and worse," he said.

Madison privately agreed with him. If he found her, she would probably be covered with mud and this car, not overly clean already, would really ruin all his clothes then. Anyway, she would be terribly happy to see him and know that, as his assistant, she would be free.

They burst into an area of pools. There was a circular series of waterfalls, each one lower than the next, the water spilling off the lips in shimmering sheets, the underlighting turning them into a cacophony of colors.

They would have passed them by but Madison saw a sudden movement on a rim. It was pretty far away.

TEENIE!

She was running along a lip. She dived through scarlet lights into the next pool. She swam across it. She dived through yellow lights in the next pool and swam toward the next fall.

A sign plainly said:

NO SWIMMING

Oh, Gods, she was going to get into trouble before he even had a chance to rescue her!

Frantically, he directed the airbus to a point where she would come out if she dived into the ground-level pool.

She did! Her body glistened as she shot through a sheet of yellow light. She came swimming boldly across.

Madison got out of the car. He waited at the pool edge.

Teenie came to the rim and with an agile leap, sprang up on it, gleaming in the red lights. She was very lean: her stomach and her thighs were flat. Water cascaded from her shoulders and made sparkling rivulets down her legs. She swept her light brown hair out of her big eyes and looked at him.

"Teenie!" he cried. "I've got great news. I've got a chance to get us back to Earth. And you're my assistant now! You're not a slave anymore!"

She shrugged. She turned and walked over to a bench where she had evidently left her purse. She got out a comb and began to whip the water out of her hair with it.

Madison couldn't understand it. She didn't seem glad to see him at all! He walked closer. "Don't you understand? I've freed you! And when I saw the horrible way they treat slaves, you ought to be very happy!"

She gathered her wet hair into a ponytail and put a rubber band around it. Then she went over to the pool waterfall and fished up the piece of sackcloth she had been wearing. She wrung it out and, without putting it on, tossed it over her shoulder. She picked up her purse and began to walk off.

She seemed cross.

Madison tried to find a reason for it. Why was she angry with him? He hadn't been the one who had gotten her into this mess. That had been Gris.

He followed her, Flick driving the airbus at a slow pace behind him. The little procession went down a curving promenade, between two other buildings. They were approaching a gold structure that was ornate but seemed very aged. Vines had crept up its several stories and were tangled in its balconies. The wide, curving staircase was so huge that it made the thin Teenie look like a toy in a giant world.

Madison followed up. Flick stopped at the bottom.

She went through a pair of gold doors you could have flown a Boeing jetliner through.

Madison entered after her.

They were in a mammoth hall, all festooned with golden cords woven into patterns through which three-dimensional painted angels flew against a white sky. The floor was in patterns of clouds. Hundreds of jewelled chairs lined the walls: it must be some sort of a salon.

There was a mound of silken-fabricked pillows in the middle of the floor. Teenie sat down on them and they were promptly spotted with water.

Madison walked up to her, his footsteps sounding hollowly in the vast place. "Teenie," he pleaded. "I know a lot of these palaces are deserted now that families have moved out. But you're just riding for an awful fall. First you're swimming in a no-swimming pool and now you're coming in here just because it's an empty build­ing and you're even ruining those pillows. Please come along and let me get you out of here. Guards may drop by at any time to turn off the lights or something."

She picked up what must have been a priceless silken cover from a low table within her reach and began to swab herself with it, using it for a towel. She was ruining it! Oh, how could he stop her from sure disaster?

"Don't be cross with me," he begged. "I am your friend!"

She gave a short, barking laugh. "You're a fine one to talk. Some friend! On that freighter, you didn't help me a bit. You didn't even volunteer to keep books for me! You could have put up signs, 'The One and Only Too-Too!' You're even a lousy PR."

"Oh, come off of it," said Madison. "I couldn't get involved with a filthy business like that! You were making that poor boy into a prostitute, ruining his life! You even had him smoking pot. You have no conscience! No moral sense of any kind!"

"You're a fine one to talk, sleeping with your mother!"

"That's just the way I was raised!"

"Well, this is just the way I was raised!" snapped Teenie. "Have you got any money?"

"Well, no."

"And I bet you came around here just to borrow some."

Madison received a shock. He had sort of wondered if they had let her keep hers.

"I landed with a thousand credits," said Teenie. "I got it stashed. I'll let you have ten credits and that's the limit. You can then proceed to get lost."