And, in the event, his skulking mission proved simpler than Victor had dared hope. There was even a member of the crew who recognized him.

"Fancy meeting you here," drawled Donald X. "I won't bother to ask if Captain Zilwicki invited you aboard." He glanced at the far exit to the small mess compartment where he'd been sitting at a table. "Can you wait long enough to let me get out before you start blowing apart whoever it is you came here to blow apart?" After another quick glance around the compartment: "Which must be ethereal spirits, I guess." There was no one else in the compartment.

Victor was probably flushing, as much from irritation as embarrassment. Donald had been one of the Ballroom gunmen who'd observed Victor's berserk massacre of the StateSec squad and the Scrags searching for Helen Zilwicki in Chicago's underground ruins.

"Why are you complaining? I saved you some work."

"True enough," grunted Donald, smiling faintly. He clasped thick hands on the table before him, fingers intertwined. The hands and fingers were so thick that the resultant double fist looked almost the size of a ham. Donald X had come into the universe in Manpower's slave-breeding vats, bearing only the name—breeding number, more precisely—of F-67d-8455-2/5. The "F" prefix indicated a slave bred for a life of heavy manual labor. Donald had decided otherwise, years later, but his adult body still bore the imprint of that original intention. He was not excessively tall, but thick and muscular in every dimension.

"What can I do for you, Victor Cachat?"

"You remembered my name?"

Donald's thin smile widened a bit. "You're a very hard man to forget. And now, I ask again—" He unclasped his hands and raised one of them in a pacific gesture. "Easy, comrades, there's no problem."

Victor turned and saw that two other crewmen were standing in the hatchway he'd come through to enter the mess compartment. Also members of the Audubon Ballroom, obviously. Victor hadn't even heard them arrive, and reminded himself that he was dealing with people who were generally accounted the most dangerous terrorists in the galaxy.

Or "freedom fighters," depending on how you looked at the question.

Freedom fighters, Victor told himself firmly. He turned back to Donald and said: "I need to talk to Jeremy."

Donald shrugged. "Be difficult, that. Jeremy's somewhere else."

Victor wasn't surprised. It would have been blind luck to have found the head of the Ballroom conveniently located on Erewhon.

"I still need to talk to him, as soon as he can get here."

"Just like that, eh? And what, exactly, gives you the right to summon Jeremy?"

" 'Right' has nothing to do with it. The word is 'opportunity.' " He hesitated for an instant. But, then, remembering that Donald was close to Jeremy, added:

"How would you like a planet of your very own?"