Jay nodded, looking back into the cave where the other girl slept. "He'll probably go to prison or be shipped off to the asteroids," he agreed, "when we report this affair."
Ina's eyes narrowed.
"You must say nothing to anyone if we are rescued," she told him. "The company would probably have you murdered before you reached the government heads of Earth or Mars."
"What's to keep her from telling them, then?" demanded Jay.
"I think she's going to keep quiet," Ina smiled. "Just let me handle it my way."
Jay stared down into the foggy plain that extended outward for perhaps fifty feet from the cave mouth before it merged with the eternal gray blanket. Somewhere down there the Frogs would be swimming to the deserted space ship—searching it.
"I wish I knew who and what I was before the company scientists worked on my brain. Was I a criminal or a political refugee? Or did they pirate a spacer I was on?"
"It is a profitable racket," mused Ina. "Taking humans and making robots out of them. Cheaper than creating and educating androids. Probably they made a few of the real article too."
Jay nodded sleepily. He wondered how many human beings had been condemned to the certain death of the uranium mines of Jove's satellites.
Ina went back into the cave to sleep and he sat there on guard. Yet he was weary and his head started to droop. In a moment he would have been asleep.