white and gray fluffs of fur, their pink mouths questing hungrily.

Her eyes widened with incredulous wonder.

"Oh!"

Then the suspicion came back and she stopped the quick forward step she had taken.

"They haven't any mother and they're hungry," he said.

She did not move.

"They're yours, Lornie. To keep."

"They're—mine?" Then the doubt fled from her and she ran forward to gather them in her arms.

He left her with her head bent down over the kittens in her lap, making soft little sounds of endearment to them, her face so radiant that there was no room left for hurt or hatred on it.

Kennedy was coming, not yet knowing why he had been summoned nor that Technogration had died at dawn. He would not relinquish all his authority, of course. And he would have to remember to tell Kennedy that they were going to give him one of Binkie's pups.

The companionship of an understanding dog might be comforting in the years to come, whenever he recalled the morning he had owned a world and a bare-footed girl had taken it away from him.

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