"Right where we are now, only maybe a few miles closer. We haven't got anything to lose, and we've got everything to gain."

That was the start. In the course of an hour and a half, we covered every possibility and impossibility of the situation. Whatever one of us brought up, the other argued against. We talked like crazy.

We were.

When it finally penetrated that we'd both known everything we'd covered, before we started, I said bluntly: "Shut up."

"Go to hell."

"I suppose I will, eventually. Should I expect to see you there?"

"No."

"I'm sure it can be arranged," I said as I got up.

"You're not going to—?" she asked, suddenly really alarmed.

"No." By that time, she was on her feet, too. I spun her around and forced her to the floor. Then I tied her hands behind her back with some wire that had been lying on the floor behind me. I didn't try to tie her too tightly; just tight enough to be sure she couldn't get at the knots.

She didn't resist nearly as much as I had expected.

I repeated the process on her ankles, then gagged her to stop the insane conversation, and put her in her bunk.

Then I turned out the lights and crawled into my own.

It never occurred to me that there were dozens of things she could cut herself loose with, just lying around the compartment.

I awoke and threw my arm up from sheer instinct. I grabbed something soft, and half-heard a metallic clatter behind my head. There was a weight on top of me, and then the weight and I were on the floor, locked together with the blanket between us.

Full consciousness was slow in coming, in spite of the shock of the activity. It seemed better, somehow, to just stay in that halfway state and enjoy it without knowing why. Finally, gradually, it penetrated that these were "the motions" that we were going through, but that we were not just "going through the motions."

This was for real.

A nasty question followed the thought: if this was for real, why did she keep wriggling and twisting all the time? The answer was 

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