Cosmo's face was grim, his green eyes cold. "She's a cross between a Jovian Dawn Man and an Earth woman. She's supposed to be the most beautiful girl in the System. She belongs to Bemmelman. He forced her mother to mate with a Jovian primitive as an experiment. He's asking five thousand monad for her on the Slave Mart. Hal Bemmelman is a slave breeder."
"I don't believe it!" Mia said in horror, then asked with feminine perversity: "How do you know?"
Cosmo sat down in the hammock, grinned faintly. "I'm going to tell you something I've never told anyone but your father, Mia. I think you ought to know, because you're in danger." His green eyes twinkled. "Quit chewing your fingernails."
"Go on," said Mia. "Go on, for the Lord's sake, before I burst."
He said: "Twenty-six years ago my father owned the Bemmelman plantation. He was murdered under almost the same circumstances as your father. So was my mother. My nurse escaped with me, hid me out in the mountains. I was only five."
"Who did it?"
"Jovian Dawn Men. Slaves imported from Jupiter. They run amok during their rutting season, you know, and they were supposed to be amok at the time."
"But ..." began Mia.
"Wait a moment. Bemmelman held notes on the plantation. He moved in. But before Bemmelman took over our plantation, he was a slave runner. He imported Dawn Men from Jupiter for the Venusian Slave Mart."
"You—you think Hal Bemmelman was in back of it?"