dropped to one knee and raised his hands to her. "They have no armaments, no ships. Psychologically they have no power to resist. Weisser said I could become one of you."

Danton pushed Rhone from the car. He shoved the control lever and the car whirled violently, slammed into the foremost Oligarch guard, sent him spinning across the metal floor. The car swerved again, struck down the other guard. Danton jumped free, ripped the weapon from the man's waist. The guard was groaning and his hands were sliding about vaguely over the floor.

The hand-gun was familiar. It was similar to the flash-guns used by the guards on Earth a century before; there would have been no need to have altered that weapon.

Keith ran at him, kicked out, and Danton fired. Keith went to his knees and looked at Danton dully and then fell forward. He rolled over and lay there, grinning blankly at nothing at all.

Deliberately, without feeling anything, Danton burned the life out of the two Oligarchs who had lain stunned where they fell. As he spun back, the woman stood stiffly almost up against him. He had expected her to attempt to run away.

She said softly, "I know what it is now. It's because you're human. It's human to grow older. It's human to die. Maybe we have the wrong idea, or maybe we've approached it wrong, I don't know. It doesn't matter now. I—"

He pressed the flash-gun toward her. She didn't seem to notice the gun. She continued to look at his face, into his eyes, searching, for something he couldn't tell what, and he didn't care.

"Did you know you have gray eyes," she whispered, "and that they deepen, get darker and darker?"

"No."

"No. No one ever told you."

Mara had told him. He barely remembered that time when she had told him.

She put her slightly opened mouth against his lips and pulled him closer.

He pulled the trigger. Her body quivered as though from the kiss, and then he stepped away and she fell at his feet. He wasn't thinking now. There was no time for that. He lifted her, carried her toward one of the refrigerated banks. Her skin had turned a mottled ugly color and her eyes were open and rigid. Quite suddenly her eyes moved up into her head, and ugly groups of purple little veins appeared underneath the skin.

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