“That means you, too, lady,” said the bartender beside her. “You and your boy friend get out of here. You oughtn't to have come here in the first place.”

“May I help you, Miss?” asked a deep, resonant voice behind her.

She straightened from her anxious examination of Motwick. The squat man was standing there, an apologetic look on his face.

She looked contemptuously at the massive muscles whose help had been denied her. Her arm ached where the dark man had grasped it. The broad face before 52her was not unhandsome, and the blue eyes were disconcertingly direct, but she despised him for a coward.

52

“I'm sorry I couldn't fight those men for you, Miss, but I just couldn't,” he said miserably, as though reading her thoughts. “But no one will bother you on the street if I'm with you.”

“A lot of protection you'd be if they did!” she snapped. “But I'm desperate. You can carry him to the Stellar Hotel for me.”

The gravity of Ganymede was hardly more than that of Earth's moon, but the way the man picked up the limp Motwick with one hand and tossed him over a shoulder was startling: as though he lifted a feather pillow. He followed Trella out the door of the Golden Satellite and fell in step beside her. Immediately she was grateful for his presence. The dimly lighted street was not crowded, but she didn't like the looks of the men she saw.

The transparent dome of Jupiter's View was faintly visible in the reflected night lights of the colonial city, but the lights were overwhelmed by the giant, vari-colored disc of Jupiter itself, riding high in the sky.

“I'm Quest Mansard, Miss,” said her companion. “I'm just in from Jupiter.”

“I'm Trella Nuspar,” she said, favoring him with a green-eyed glance. “You mean Io, don't you—or Moon Five?”

“No,” he said, grinning at her. He had an engaging grin, with even white teeth. “I meant Jupiter.”

“You're lying,” she said flatly. “No one has ever landed on Jupiter. It would be impossible to blast off again.”

“My parents landed on Jupiter, and I blasted off from it,” he said soberly. “I was born there. Have you ever heard of Dr. Eriklund Mansard?”

“I certainly have,” she said, her interest 

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