"If you don't mind," Caine said, his voice harsh, "I'd like to be left neutral in whatever you and Mr. Fairchild might have in conflict."

"Oh," she said. "Well, that's just because you haven't seen the full potential. Let me show you what you'd be getting for your money—the way Charles saw it." She raised her glass again, drank, and stood up to cross to the ship. She climbed the ladder to the cabin, very gracefully, and touched the switch of the radio. Music pealed into the warm air.

It was minor music, issuing from the Colony station, music that had been taken from the native Venusian melodies. It had been converted and fitted to the heavy rhythm of Earth's ancient Africa, and it seemed suddenly to become a part of this jungle of Venus.

The woman stood in the doorway, and then she moved down the ladder, as though it were one sliding motion. She remained there, her back against the silver metal of the ship, swaying her hips, moving her shoulders.

"I was a dancer, you see, Mr. Caine. I worked in a very expensive club in Habrill, on Mars. I was very popular and very good, and sweet Charles took me away from it all, didn't you, Charles?"

Fairchild, Caine could see, was having trouble focusing his eyes, but the rhythmic music was heavy in the air and it beat against the ears, and Caine knew that the man was aware of what was happening.

The woman began moving easily toward Caine, her movement a practised swinging motion of hips and shoulders. "This is what Charles took me away from, Mr. Caine, by the gentle touch of gold," she said. "'Come with me,' he said, and he fitted diamonds to my ears and rings to my fingers. 'Let me take you away from the damned searching eyes of every man on Mars. Let me hide you, so no one can see you or touch you, but me, and I'll give you all I own.' Isn't that right, Charles?" she said, looking at him with narrow gleaming eyes.

The man lifted his glass and slowly drained it. He let it fall to the ground with a breaking crunch, while the woman kept time with the rhythm, with her hips and her shoulders, slight swinging motions that only intimated.

"Only now," the woman said, "poor Charles doesn't have anything more to give, and so here I go again...."

She raised her hands over her head and cracked her palms together. Her hips swung and her shoulders shook. She caught her fingers in her hair, her 

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