Kidnapping!

But it was the only way.

It should be relatively simple. Neptunians were a systematic race. They slept at night. All of them. When night came, all activity ceased. He would be unmolested as he went through the city ... unless the girl raised a commotion.

Darrel rubbed his jaw. It couldn't be avoided.

When the night was black, he walked behind the beam of his torch over the crest of the hill and into the city.

Two hours later he came up to the ship from out of the dark, carrying a limp form across his shoulders. His face was pale. It had wrenched his soul to knock the girl out. He felt like a murderer. Creeping into the house that way in the dead of night, finding the bedroom, the quietly slumbering girl, then ... sock! It was the toughest thing he had ever done.

He strapped Leyloon's unconscious body onto the bunk in the cabin, sealed the airlock, and dropped wearily into the bucket-seat before the maze of manual controls. Beads of sweat oozed from his skin. He wiped them away.

The magnetic space-drive wooshed powerfully at an almost sub-audio level. Darrel glanced apprehensively at the girl. Her beauty and helplessness and the thought of what he might be doing to her, tore at him.

"If I'm wrong, I'll make it up to you in hell!" he swore, and declined the trip-lever beneath his hand.

The dark landscape dropped away rapidly. Within minutes, Neptune was a great mass on the screen, diminishing in size ... diminishing, diminishing.

He wiped his damp forehead and stared at the instrument panel.

If she came out of it with a memory of the five days, she would be in love with him. Maybe enough in love with him to condone his socking and kidnapping her. If that happened, he would give up this fool freight-hauling. It was nothing but pushing buttons anyhow. He would spit in the fleet admiral's eye. Tell him to fly his own ships. Leyloon and he....

But what if she came out of it without a memory of the five days? He was taking her away before they happened, wasn't he? He was kidnapping a Neptunian girl who had, in fact, never set eyes on him! How would he explain that?

Yes, how! She would probably hate 

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