"Don't know if I'd like you, though."

Honest, too, he thought. He went to check on Michael. The boy still watched him with wide, wary eyes.

He was bad sick. Marya would not risk a human doctor otherwise. There were few greater risks the underground Sangaree could take. Physicians could sometimes spot the subtle differences between species.

Marya returned with the doctor before Niven's conversation with Brandy became impossible.

The doctor, he decided, was "tame." She worked with a confidence and quickness that betrayed her.

Niven whispered to Marya, "Brandy's been matchmaking."

She laughed. "Husband-shopping for me again? She never gives up."

"I don't think I passed the exam."

"Doesn't matter. I won't get caught in that trap again."

"Why'd you bring them out here?" On Old Earth parents usually put their children into public care as soon as they were born. Niven had had an unusual childhood in that he had spent much of it with his mother. He still kept in touch with her, but had lost track of his father years ago.

The shedding of children was a common practice on the tamed outworlds, too. Fewer than a quarter of Confederation's children were raised by their biological parents.

Marya was shocked. Her Sangaree sense of Family had been outraged. But she could not tell him that. "I forgot. You do things differently where you come from. Yeah, it would be convenient sometimes. But they're my kids."

"Don't try to explain. Just call it one of the differences between the Inner Worlds and the frontier. I'm getting used to them."

The doctor returned from the bedroom. "I gave him a broad-spectrum antibiotic, Marya. And an antiviral. It's nothing serious. See that he gets plenty of bed rest and lots of fluids, and keep an eye on his temperature. It'll go up. Give him some aspirin if it gets too high. Do you need a thermometer?"

Marya nodded. She portrayed embarrassment beautifully.

You did that well, lady, Niven thought. Too poor to afford a thermometer. But you serve genuine coffee. He smiled. She was doing a chemo-psychiatric internship, but had to summon an outside doctor... Was she driven by some secret death wish?

"Nice to have met you, Doctor Niven," the doctor told him.

"You too." He watched her go to the door. There was no pride in the way she walked.

"You want to get some sleep now, Gun?" Marya asked.

"Going to have to." But would his nerves permit it here in the heart of enemy territory?

They would. After he had skinned down to his underwear, had flopped into Marya's bed, and had told Michael, "Good night, Captain," the lights went out.

He wakened once, hazily, when Marya slipped into bed beside him. He mumbled foggily, then knew nothing for hours.

He wakened slowly. Gradually, he realized that The Broken Wings' truncated day had sped by. It was night again. He did not remember where he was till he rolled against the woman.

That simple movement initiated three tempestuous days.

Marya was insatiable. The only word he found to fit her was "hungry." He had never encountered a woman who had such a need for a man.

Niven astounded himself. Their lovemaking became so savage, so narrowly scoped, that it was more like combat. As if, "Let he who first cries ‘Hold! Enough!' be damned forever."

They seemed to do nothing but sleep and copulate, making attack after attack in some sort of sexual war. The outside world seemed to have lost all meaning.

Yet there was method. There was rationality. In struggling to please Marya, who was struggling to distract him, Niven kept himself motivated by remembering who she was. He kept trying to convince himself that he was doing this to sabotage the enemy chain of command.

He knew Marya was not motivated entirely by lust either.

Oh, but they did have one hell of a good time on the rumpled sheets of that battlefield.

In the interims Niven sometimes wondered what had become of Mouse. Mouse, he reflected, sure had the free hand he always wanted.

Brandy, recognizing the way of things, had taken her brother out the first night. They were staying upstairs with the doctor. Michael, looking a little better, sometimes wandered in, moped around without saying much, then wandered out again. Brandy stayed away all the time.

"What are we doing?" Niven once muttered to himself. They were enemies to the death. That was the prime rule, the blood rule, by which he and she were supposed to live and die. Yet they were denying it, or sublimating it in the form of love...

He began to dread mission's end. Debriefing... He would have to answer questions. He would have to explain.

Niven was snoring. He had one arm beneath Marya's neck.

The building shuddered like a dog shaking off water. A window cracked. Tableware clattered onto the kitchen floor. The whole neighborhood reverberated to the explosion.

Niven jerked upright. "D-14," he grunted.

"What?"

"What was that?"

"An explosion."

They dressed, almost racing. Reflections of dancing firelight colored the cracked window. Marya looked out. "Oh, Holy Sant!"

"What?"

"The warehouse... "

"Eh?"

"I'll be right back... What's that?"

A yell had come from somewhere downstairs. Cries and screams followed it.

Niven knew that first yell. That was Mouse in assassin's mind.

Earlier, he had seen the shape of the needlegun lumping her underwear in a dresser drawer. He beat her to it.

The door crashed inward. A ragged, battered, bloody Mouse hurtled through. He was so keyed for action that he looked three meters tall.

"Easy," Niven said, gesturing with the needlegun. "Everything's under control, Mouse."

Mouse was not hurt. The blood was not his own. "Got everything," he croaked through a dry throat. "Message away. Got to bend the bitch and get out."

That was their business, but... Niven could not permit the woman's murder. That she was Sangaree seemed irrelevant. "No. There's no need. Not this time."

Mouse was coming down. Thought was replacing action. He glanced at Niven's weapon, at the woman. "All right. You're the boss, Doc. But I've got to get something out of this. Where're the damned kids?"

"Upstairs. But I won't let you kill children, either."

"Wouldn't think of it, Doc. Wouldn't even drown a puppy. You know old John. So tie her up, will you? Can't have her coming after us." He backed out the door.

Siren howls tortured the streets. The grumble of a gathering crowd slipped tentacles into the room. "Sorry it had to end this way, Marya. But business is business."

"I almost believed... " She stared at him. For an instant she looked small and defenseless. He reminded himself that she was Sangaree, that she would become instant death if he were careless. "I suppose you're soothing your conscience. I wouldn't if the tables were turned. You've hurt us too much already."

Not a smart thing to say to somebody pointing a gun at you, Niven thought. He shrugged. "Maybe. It's not conscience, though. A different weakness. You'd probably have to be human to understand." He left it to her to figure out what he meant.

Mouse returned with the children and doctor. In the process he had acquired a weapon. "Tie these three, too, Doc."

The doctor was more frightened than Brandy or Michael. Humans on the fringes of the Business generally imagined operations by and against the organization to be more deadly than they were.

Brandy asked, "What're you doing, Gun?" Straight out, emotionlessly. As if she were used to being under the gun.

"Business, dear."

"Oh." She sped her mother a disgusted look.

"He's the Starduster," Marya told her.

"And you fell for his story?"

Niven tore sheets into strips, tied the doctor, then the girl, then Michael. "Told you I knew a pirate, Captain."