Jerry patted her shoulder. “He’ll help us, I know,” he soothed.
Rod Harrow bent to wisp sandy ice from a blob of red oxide. He put the crimson dust into his pocket.
“You’ll be in the slave compartment tonight?” he asked.
The girl turned to her work. “There’s no place else except the sleeping cubicles. I suppose I’ll be there. When will you be twenty-five?” she asked abruptly.
“One month from today.”
“I don’t see why ...” Mona’s voice died away as the guards worked their way down the tunnel. They were herding the humans back to the slave compartment for the night.
Rod Harrow entered the compartment for the first time. He was one of the last on Earth to be captured and sent on the slave ship to Tetrarch IV. His eyes were narrow, waiting for the first sign of inevitable recognition.
He had divested himself of his tight, transparent space suit. Heated space suits were necessary on Tetrarch IV, except in the compartments assigned to human slaves. In them there was air and heat. The planet itself was bitterly cold. Its only atmosphere was inert Krypton which the tetrarchians breathe. Through this dead gas activated sand coursed in eternal swirls.
Slaves were pouring through the door in droves. There were no oldsters in this crowd. None over twenty-five. Earth’s two hundred year life span had been considerably reduced.