Zingaro was under oath only to be reticent about certain details of the whole matter. From there she had taken the business into her own hands, had told Miran that she would inform the Duchess of Green's whereabouts unless he permitted her and her family to go along on the voyage.

"Here I am, your faithful and loyal wife," she said, opening her arms in an expansive gesture.

"I am overwhelmed with emotion," replied Green, for once not exaggerating.

"Then come and embrace me," she cried, "and don't stand there as if you'd seen the dead return from the grave!"

"Before all these people?" he said, half-stunned, looking around at the grinning captain and first mate on the foredeck beside him and at the sailors and their families on the middeck below. The only ones not watching him were the goggled helmsmen, whose backs were turned because they were intent on wrestling with the great spoked wheel.

"Why not?" she retorted. "You'll be sleeping on the open deck with them, eating with them, breathing their breath, feeling their elbows at every turn, cursing, laughing, fighting, getting drunk, making love, all, all on the open deck. So why not embrace me? Or don't you want me to be here?"

"The thought never entered my head," he said, stepping up to her and taking her in his arms. Or, if it had, he reflected, you can bet that I'd not dare say it.

After all, it was good to feel her soft, warm, firmly curved body again and know that there was at least one person on this godforsaken planet that cared for him. What could have made him think for one minute that he could endure life without her?

Well, he had. She just would not, could not, fit into his life if he ever got back on Earth.

Miran coughed and said, "You two and your children and maid must get off the deck and go amidships. That is where you will live. Never again must you set foot upon the steering deck unless you are summoned. I run a tight ship and discipline is strictly adhered to."

Green followed Amra and the children down the steps to the deck below, noticing for the first time that Inzax, the pretty blond slave who took care of the children, was also aboard. You had to give credit to Amra. Wherever she went she traveled in style.

He also thought that if this was a tight ship a loose one must be sheer chaos. Cats 

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