"You won't tell who you are. That means you're somebody. An Officer's daughter, likely. Maybe even the Captain's."
Some flicker in the girl's eyes must have told him he'd hit home. He jumped up and shouted, "Hey! All of you, look here! We've got somebody—we've got the Captain's daughter!"
The mob stirred and moved in. People began to shout, to curse and make animal noises of sheer hate. For a minute Kirk thought he and the girl were going to be torn apart. He shivered violently, and the hate was so strong in the air he could smell it.
Samel pulled out his sling lazily and loaded it. The sweep of his arm stopped part of the crowd, and the rest quieted down enough to hear him say:
"Hold it! Sit down, you fools! The girl's gold. We can buy things with her."
Kirk didn't get that word 'gold', but he understood the rest of it. It was what he had told her, himself.
He wished the babies would stop crying. It was hard to hate these people so much when you knew they had kids just like the one at home, wailing in the cold.
The mob relaxed sullenly. The Captain's daughter spoke suddenly, very clear across the muttering quiet of the crowd.
"You can't buy your way into the colony with me. They'll kill me, like they did the three Hans, only this time they won't wait as long."
She was telling the truth. Samel didn't like it, and Kirk liked it even less, but she was. The muscle twitched under Kirk's eye. It was a hell of a world. You couldn't keep straight in it at all.