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said. “It will mean the collar for me. Oh, oh.”
    Then in moments she moaned and wept.
    I forced her to yield well, to the very limits of the free woman. Then I was finished with her.
    She looked up at me. “Have I pleased you?” she asked, tears in her eyes.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “Let me go,” she said.
    I took her ankles, crossed and tied them. Then I threw her beside the man, her head to his feet. I tied her neck to his feet, and her feet to his neck. They would wait, thus, for the guardsmen.
    “They will banish him and collar me,” she said.
    “Yes,” I said.
    I knelt down on one knee beside her. I took a tarsk bit from my pouch, and thrust it in her mouth. She was a free woman. Since I had no intent of enslaving her myself, it seemed fit that I should pay her for her use. She had asked, as I recalled, for a tarsk bit. Had I intended to keep her, I might have simply raped her, and then put the collar on her. A slave has no recourse.
    I rose to my feet, and, shouldering my sea bag, whistling, continued on toward the pier of the Red Urt, where Ulafi’s ship, the Palms of Schendi, was moored.
    I soon hurried my steps, for an alarm bar had begun to ring.
    I heard steps running behind me, too, and I turned about. A black seaman ran past me, he, too, heading toward the wharves. I followed him toward the pier of the Red Urt.

4
    I Recapture An Escaped Slave; I Book Passage On A Ship For Schendi
     
     
    “How long has she been missing?” I asked.
    “Over an Ahn,” said a man. “But only now have they rung the bar.”
    We stood in the vicinity of the high desk of the wharf praetor.
    “There seemed no reason to ring it earlier,” said the man. “It was thought she would be soon picked up, by guardsmen, or the crew of the Palms of Schendi.”
    “She was to be shipped on that craft?” I asked.
    “Yes,” said the man. “I suppose now her feet must be cut off.”
    “Is it her first attempt to escape?” asked another man.
    “I do not know,” said another.
    “Why is there this bother about an escaped slave,” demanded a man, his clothing torn and blood at his ear. “I have been robbed! What are you doing about this?”
    “Be patient,” said the wharf praetor. “We know the pair. We have been searching for them for weeks.” The praetor handed a sheet of paper to one of his guardsmen. People were gathered around. Another guardsman stopped ringing the alarm bar. It hung from a projection on a pole, the pole fixed upright on the roof of a nearby warehouse.
    “Be on the watch for an escaped female slave,” called the guardsman. “She is blond-haired and blue-eyed. She is barbarian. When last seen she was naked.”
    I did not think it would take them long to apprehend her. She was a fool to try to escape. There was no escape for such as she. Yet she was unmarked and uncollared. It might not prove easy to retake her immediately.
    “How did she escape?” I asked a fellow.
    “Vart’s man,” said he, “delivered her to the wharf, where he knelt her among the cargo to be loaded on the Palms of Schendi. He obtained his receipt for her and then left.”
    “He did not leave her tied, hand and foot, among the bales and crates for loading?” I asked.
    “No,” said the man. “But who, either Vart’s man, or those of the Palms of Schendi, would have thought it necessary?”
    I nodded. There was reason in what he said. Inwardly I smiled. She had simply left the loading area, when no one was watching, simply slipping away. Had she been less ignorant of Gor she would not have dared to escape. She did not yet fully understand that she was a slave girl. She did not yet understand that escape was not permitted to such as she.
    “Return the girl to the praetor’s station on this pier,” said the guardsman.
    “What of those who robbed me!” cried the fellow with the torn clothing and the blood behind his ear.
    “You are not the first,” said the praetor, looking down at him from the high desk. “They