dressed in winter field uniforms and combat helmets. But when Ekaterina reached for her pistol, Grushenko took it from her.

"Would you conquer them with this, Comrade Saburov?" he asked.

She flushed. Her words came muffled through the tenuous air: "It might give us a chance to break free, if we must escape."

"They could overhaul this boat in ten seconds. And ... escape where? To interstellar space again? I say here we stop, live or die. Even from here, it will be a weary way to Earth."

"Forget about Earth," said Holbrook out of tautness and despair. "No one is returning to Earth before Novaya is strong enough to stand off a Soviet fleet. Maybe you like to wear the Party's collar. I don't!"

Ekaterina regarded him for a long time. Even through the dehumanizing helmet and nose-piece, he found her beautiful. She replied: "What kind of freedom is it to become the client state of an almighty Zolotoy? The Soviet overlords are at least human."

"Watch your language, Comrade Saburov!" snapped Grushenko.

They fell back into silence. Holbrook thought that she had pierced him again. For surely it was true, men could never be free in the shadow of gods. Even the most benign of super-creatures would breed fear and envy and hatred, by their mere incomprehensible existence; and a society riddled with such disease must soon spew up tyrants. No, better to flee while they had a chance, if they still did at all. But how much longer could they endure that devil's voyage?

The linked vessels fell downward on micrometrically controlled blasts. When a landing was finally made, it was so smooth that for a moment Holbrook did not realize he was on Zolotoy.

Then he unbuckled himself, went to the airlock controls and opened the boat. His eardrums popped as pressures equalized; he stepped out into a still, cold air, under a deep violet sky and a shrunken sun. The low gravity made it wholly dreamlike.

Unthinkingly, the three humans moved close together. They looked down kilometers of glass-slick blackness. A spaceship was landing far off; machines rolled up to attend it, but otherwise there was no sign of life. Yet the emptiness did not suggest decay. Holbrook thought again of the bustle around a Terrestrial airport. It seemed grubby beside this immense quietude.

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