He took some hand-drawn maps from the case in his hand. "Brodis and I made these from memory and a little inside information—one of the palace, one of the roof, and one of the grounds. The whole thing depends upon whether they are using an old style one-way shield. If so, we can get out all right. Otherwise we're finished."
She nodded and bent over the maps. Glayne bit the end off of a cigar, then lit it meticulously. He smiled quizzically at the girl. "How's your courage?" he asked.
Her wide green eyes looked up thoughtfully into his. "I've seen some shoe-string deals pulled before, but Captain, I'll have to award you the prize—never one as thin and short as this."
Glayne felt a sudden fear and a sudden hunger as he looked at her. He could not bear the thought of failure—and the consequent fate of Niala Chodred. His cheek twitched nervously and he reached for her, gathering her into his powerful arms and drawing her face to his. Her breath was hot against his cheek and he could feel her heart pounding heavily against his chest. Willingly she responded to his kisses.
"Here's to luck," he breathed.
"And plenty of it," she replied.
V
Try as he might, Glayne could never accustom himself to these Sectors which lay far out on the edge of the galaxy. Neighboring stars were hundreds of light years apart while the great belt of stars that was in the Main Galaxy revealed itself only as a faint haze twenty thousand light years distant. He could not shake off the loneliness that settled over him like a shroud, separating him from everything he knew. He was accustomed to the vast star clouds of Sagittarius; it was there he had spent the first ten years of his Guardianship.
A dry and thirsty wind seemed to suck the moisture from his body as he waited by the after lock with Niala. It swept across the hard surface of the space-port and sang dolefully around the mass of the grounded Algol; it even seemed to characterize the Delbans themselves. A lonely people out on this forsaken edge of the galaxy, they hungered and thirsted after wealth and power. The Guardian sympathized with them to some extent, yet at the same time realized the awful threat to civilization they represented with the mysterious, titanic broadcast power at their disposal.