his waist was jeweled. "Who are you?" he asked coldly.
The lean face smiled. "I am Rayth, prince of Coper City," he answered. "It was--fortunate for both of us--that I should have happened to lead the group that found you. Others would have had you killed out of hand, but I can find better uses for you." He nodded at Leda. "Yes indeed."
Her head lifted haughtily, shining raw gold of hair spilling over broad shoulders to her supple waist. Rikard snarled and wrenched at his bonds. They dug harshly into his wrists, and a guard pricked him with a spear.
Rayth held Rikard's bow between his hands, "This is an unusually fine weapon," he said. "I hadn't thought the barbarians had anything so good. You may get it back, but you'll have to earn it."

The tunnel opened into a great cavern, a reaching vastness whose farther walls could not be seen. It was farmland, peasants going between the long rows of tanks and tending a riotous greenery of food plants, an occasional hard-faced overseer pausing in his rounds to salute the prince. They went by a stockyard, cattle, pigs, sheep, and poultry in their pens, slaves cleaning and feeding. Not far off was a slaughterhouse, and Rayth's aristocratic nose crinkled.
A winding ramp led up through other levels. They passed the drab, huddled compartments of the lower classes, gray-clad peasants crowded with their families into doorless rooms. Above that was a factory level, where acolyte engineers labored over weapons and tools, over ore-smelting and refining, and other workmen turned out clothes and cord and the remaining necessities of life. The party stopped here to deliver the battle-torn spacesuits for repair. Flexicord would be mended, plastic melted together again; nobody cared about the stripped bodies withering on the outside.
Rikard could not forbear to ask: "Where is your air factory?"
"That is farther up, in the Temple and in direct charge of the Chief Engineer," said Rayth politely. "It is, after all, among the most vital jobs." He raised his eyebrows. "You didn't have an air plant at Nyrac, did you?"
"No. We bought or took it from elsewhere as needed."
"Ah, I thought so. Most of the barbarians do. Now, Rikard, you are a man of intelligence, and I ask you to think a bit. We must have extra air, to replace that which is lost one way or another, but it takes skill and some equipment to get it from the minerals in which it is locked. Rather than war on us, one of the few places where they can produce it, would it not have been wiser to accept us in friendship and receive from us a steady and dependable supply?"
"We were freemen. Now we are slaves, and must grovel to your overlords and give them all we make in exchange for a miserly ration. That is reason enough to fight 

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