"Shantar followed the answering voice to where a goodˇ sized tent was pitched slightly apart from the others. The man who greeted him was almost as t...ll as he was, and heavier, but what had once been good solid muscle was gradually turning into fat. His jacket and trousers were the deep crimson of the Trader's Guild, but he lacked the black cuff stripes and sash of a master trader. Evidently, he was one of the independent caravan masters who ranged up and down the length of Kath, picking up a. I'll take it early so that we have lots of time." Elaine gave me such a smile my stomach flipped over. She leaned into me and asked if we would be in bed early. I winked at her. Then stretched."Do you know I could do with a lie down right now." Elaine thought about that for at least a split second."I believe that I could as well." She stood up and held out her hand."Take me to bed, James." I was always the gentleman. I did.The sun always went on the front of the house in the afternoon, so I had. But with two guns in the vicinity, the only hope she had was for Paul to come to her rescue, or for someone else to distract with a knock on the door. Little did she realize neither were in her future.“OK young one. If you do exactly what my man and I tell you to do, you don’t try to run, and you go along quietly, we will get along just fine. Hell, you might even find that after a few more hours you actually like us! Either way, you only have one choice. With the other one there would be no. “Heliosphere,” Jackie corrected him. “It means the sun’s magnetic field.”“Why didn’t you say that, then?” Frank complained. “I didn’t have any trouble understanding Alicia…”“Okay, back to the reason for this meeting,” Tabatha called out. “There are three major depots that weren’t destroyed when…”Tabatha hesitated for a moment, realizing that Lisa could be accused posthumously for nuking everyone she could find with the missiles the Confederacy had tossed at the group’s mountain refuge. In eight.