Darya stood up and blundered towards the door. She was quite sure that she was right, but without evidence she would never convince anyone. Quintus Bloom was too confident, too smooth and charismatic, too well-armed with recent facts.

Well, there was only one way to deal with that. She had to find more facts of her own. And she would not do it sitting in an office on Sentinel Gate.

Chapter Seven

Darya would need facts, but at the moment she wanted something a good deal more personal.

She had not seen Hans Rebka since the beginning of the seminar. For all she knew he had left after the first few minutes, because she had been too preoccupied to notice. However, it was easy enough to find out which guest accommodation in the institute was assigned to any visitor. Darya checked the central listing. Hans had a single-story building to himself, a bungalow that lay in a wooded area behind the main complex of the institute.

Although it was raining outside and already dark, Darya didn’t want to waste time going back for more clothing. The night was chilly, but she welcomed the brisk breeze as a force to blow away her worries. She walked slowly, face tilted up to catch the raindrops. It would be hard to know what to say to Hans without sounding like a whiner and a loser. Had he been there himself, to see and hear exactly what had happened? She didn’t know.

Darya felt a touch of guilt. Chasing down her old notes after the seminar, then losing her temper at Merada’s crazy dinner before the food even appeared — she had been too busy to give any thought to what Hans was doing. Maybe she could make up for that now.

When she was fifty yards from the bungalow, the shower quickened to a downpour. Darya sprinted for the porch and stood panting beneath it for a few moments, listening to the hiss of rain and the gurgle of runoff through gutters and downspouts.

The door was not locked, and it was — unusual for Hans — slightly ajar. The inside of the house was dark, but guest quarters were on a standard plan and Darya knew the layout well. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark. She did not turn on any light as she went quietly through the open livingroom and on into the bedroom. She could make out the bed and a white sheet covering it, with a bare foot sticking out past the end.

She gripped the big toe and tugged it gently, then ran her fingers along to the ankle. “Hans? I need to talk to you. I think I just made an ass of myself.”

There was a gasp from the other end of the bed, at the same moment as Darya realized that something was wrong. Hans Rebka had hard, bony feet. The foot and ankle she was holding were smooth and soft.

“Who’s that?” said a woman’s voice. The foot jerked free of Darya’s grasp. The pale blur of a face appeared at the other end of the bed, as the woman sat upright. “What the devil are you doing?”

A light snapped on. Darya found herself face to face with Glenna Omar. “I’m sorry. I thought these were Hans Rebka’s quarters.”

“They are.” Glenna pulled up the sheet, to cover her naked breasts and shoulders. “Didn’t you ever hear of privacy?”

“What are you doing here?” It seemed to Darya that the other woman looked more pleased than annoyed. “And where’s Hans?”

She knew the answer to the first question, even before Glenna jerked her tousled blond head to the right and said, “In there. In the bathroom.”

Darya heard the sound of running water. She had taken it for the sound of rain outside. She walked across to the bathroom door and went in.

Hans stood at the sink in profile to Darya, drying his hands on a towel. He was naked and he did not look around, but he must have heard her come in because he said, “Ten more seconds, and I’ll be there. Don’t worry, I haven’t run away.”

He turned around, with a grin that changed at once to a grimace. “Oh, no.”

“Oh yes. You bastard.” She glared at him, from his scarred, concerned face to his bony knees and over-sized feet. All signs of sexual excitement faded as she watched. “I should have known. What they say about men from the Phemus Circle is true. Callous, faithless, sex-mad — I thought you and I meant something to each other.”

“We do. Darya” — she had turned, to walk back through the bedroom, and he was ignoring Glenna to hurry after her — “where are you going?”

“Leaving. Leaving you, and this lousy institute, and this rotten planet. Don’t try to follow me. Go back to your — your strumpet in there.”

“But where are you going?” They were outside in the teeming rain. The night was turning colder, and Hans stumbled bare-footed on slippery turf and fell flat in the mud. He couldn’t see a thing. “Wait a minute, and I’ll come with you.”

“You will not. I don’t want you anywhere near me. I don’t want to be on the same world as you.”

“Who’ll look after you — who’ll keep you out of trouble?”

“I’m perfectly able to look after myself. Bug off, and leave me alone!”

Darya began to run. Hans took a couple of steps after her. This time he tripped over a bush and fell again to the ground. When he got up he couldn’t see her or even the path.

He limped back to the bungalow. The door was wide open. Had it been open when Darya came? He felt sure that he had closed and locked it. He headed through into the bedroom, rubbing a bruise on his thigh. Glenna was still snuggled down comfortably in bed, the sheet pulled up to her eyes. She giggled.

“You ought to just see yourself. Your hair is soaked, and you have mud all over your chest and arms. You look like a Phemus Circle wild man.”

“Yeah. I’m a real comedy act.” Hans sat down on the end of the bed. “Hell and damnation.”

“What was all that about?”

“You know quite well what it was about.”

“I can guess. And it’s all naughty little Glenna’s fault, isn’t it? I bet you told Professor Lang that you had nothing to do with it.” A foot eased clear of the sheet, and bare toes wriggled along Hans’s leg.

“I didn’t tell her anything. She wouldn’t listen. Right now she hates my guts.” Hans frowned at Glenna as the toes crept higher on his thigh. “Quit that. What are you, some kind of animal?”

“Maybe. Try me and find out. But at least I understand men. And I’m not angry with you, not in the slightest. Come to bed.”

Hans stood up. Glenna’s expression changed from intimate to anxious. She pushed back the sheet as Hans headed for the livingroom. “Where are you going?”

“I have to make a call. Just a quick one.”

“To Darya Lang?”

“No. Not to Darya Lang. She wouldn’t talk to me if I did. Relax. This will only take a minute.”

“All right. One minute, and no more.” Glenna’s voice changed to a complacent purr, and she snuggled back down in the bed. “I do not know how such things are handled in the worlds of the Phemus Circle, but in our society it is not considered polite to leave a lady alone with her motor running.”

Hans had not lied about the need to make a call, but what he needed more than that was time to think — think without Glenna coiling herself around him and scrambling his brains.

How had he put himself into this situation? It wasn’t enough to say that Glenna was as sexy, luscious, and willing a woman as you could hope to meet. Before he left the Phemus Circle that would have been quite sufficient, but not any more.

Why hadn’t he waited around the institute, then, until Darya’s work with Quintus Bloom and Professor Merada was finished?

He had one explanation, but it wasn’t anything to make him happy. He had been feeling horny even before he met Glenna, undeniably. But that wasn’t the reason they had finished up in his bedroom. It was because he had also been peeved — at Darya.