"This," she said ominously, "this smacks of vetching."
The word fell like a sudden fog. Lappy, who had begun to smile, cut it sharply off. Travis, remembering what vetching meant to these people, gathered his forces.
"Woman," he said bitingly, "you speak in offense, but with patience and kindness I heal your insult. I control my choler, but my blood flows hot, therefore fasten your tongue. Tell me not that I have overvalued you, for your brain is clear, your courage thick. Wherefore speak of vetch? What vetch is there in travel? He vetches who leaves a certainty for another certainty, who attempts to avoid his starry fate. But you go from a certain end to an end not certain at all, to places of dark mystery, of grim foreboding. It may be that you perish, or pain in the extreme, as well as gain fortune. The end is not clear. This then is not vetching. Now retreat your words, and reply to me as one does to a friend, a companion, one who seeks your good."
He sat tautly while the girl thought it out. Eventually she dropped her eyes in submission and he sighed inwardly with relief. It was accomplished. He would have to shore it up perhaps with a little elaboration, but it was accomplished.
Ten minutes later he was standing free and unbound in the passageway. It was just barely in time. Down the round dark tunnel two men came.
Navel stopped gingerly over the bodies and gazed at Travis with awestruck admiration.
"A rare skill," she murmured, "they did flip and gyrate as dry leaves in the wind."
"Observe then," Travis said ominously, inspecting meanwhile the long slash down his arm with which Tude had nearly gotten him "and learn. And in the future receive my words with planetary respect."
"I will."