inserted in their mouths. The other three, Daphne told me, were strictly free flight artists from low gee planets.

Annellica watched for a few minutes then got up and followed the food tray as it drifted away from us. I went after her. In the galley I found her stowing the remnants back into refrigeration. She didn't wait for me to ask the question.

"Daffy dislikes personal servants," she said. "Roboid servers are not practical on the smaller craft, so I take care of our wants."

She scraped some half-chewed food into a disposal unit and slipped the plate into a slot: the wife of the wealthy Major Daphne, handling garbage! Cook and gunbearer!

"You must love him very much," I said.

"Love?" She turned to face me. "What has love to do with—anything?" That was cue enough for me.

I couldn't convince myself she was as frigid as the Major asserted. And I was right. She came into my arms like a hungry tigress. After the most interesting moment of its kind in my eventful bachelorhood, she peeled herself away and went back to her chores.

I gasped, "Lady! What your husband doesn't know about you!"

"And he'll never find out," she said instantly. "He only holds precious things he can't have. My love—passion—call it what you will, is one thing he can't buy."

"I'm afraid I don't understand," I said. "Why did you marry him if—"

"It was that or die a spinster. Every young man who looked twice at me disappeared. At first I thought Daffy would get tired of being married to a perennial virgin, but I was wrong. It's the only thing that has kept him interested in me."

I said, "I suppose it's a natural form of perversity for a man of his wealth and power."

She wheeled, hands on hips. "Perverse? Yes, he's perverse. And perverted and bestial and greedy, boorish, cruel, inhuman, self-centered, insane, piggish—"

She glanced over my shoulder and stopped. "And a completely devoted husband," Major Daphne slobbered behind me. He reeled through the entry, loose-lipped, dishevelled and very drunk. He brushed me aside and lurched past me, arms outstretched. "My li'l Nellie's only one 'preciates me."

For a second Annellica was a 

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