Bill reflected with satisfaction that he had no relatives to be saddened by his demise. He had no great fear of death. Newspaper work in the twenty-second century is not all commonplace monotony; your veteran reporter is pretty well inured to danger.
"Glad I haven't anyone to worry about me," he observed.
"So am I," the Prince said bitterly. "I left them all, years ago."
"But you have someone!" Bill cried. "It isn't my business to say it, but that makes no difference now. And you're a fool not to know. Paula Trainor loves you! This will kill her!"
The Prince looked up, a bitter smile visible behind the bloody grime on his thin dark face.
"Paula—in love with me! We're friends, of course. But love! I used to believe in love. I have not been always a nameless outcast of space. Once I had name, family—even wealth and position. I trusted my name and my honor to a beautiful woman. I loved her! She said she loved me—I thought she meant it. She used me for a tool. I was trustful; she was clever."
The dark eyes of the Prince burned in fierce anger.
"When she was through with me she left me to die in disgrace. I barely escaped with my life. She had robbed me of my name, wealth, position. She named me the outlaw. She made me appear a traitor to those who trusted me—then laughed at me. She laughed at me and called me a fool. I was—but I won't be again!"
"At first I was filled with anger at the whole world, at the unjust laws and the silly conventions and the cruel intolerance of men. I became the pirate of space. A pariah. Fighting against my own kind. Struggling desperately for power."
For a few moments he was moodily silent, slapping at the flies that buzzed around his bloody wounds.