She kept on all fours in the corridor.
Thusly, if light should suddenly be cast upon her, perhaps the strangers, the boarders, might not instantly fire. Was this not the fashion in which they wished civilized women, at least initially, to be before them?
Once away from her cabin area there was a dim lighting in the corridors.
This frightened her, but the corridors seemed empty, empty and very long.
She rose to her feet, but kept close to the walls of the corridors.
At points she noted certain passages, of which she would have liked to avail herself, were sealed, and the pressure gauges indicated a near vacuum behind them. The elevators were doubtless inoperable, and in any case, were to be avoided. But she would not have needed them, in any event, or stairs, to reach the lounge from her cabin, the main floor of the lounge.
She cried out.
There was a body bolted to a bulkhead, to her right. It was in uniform. It was that of the minor officer, he who had sat near her on the evening of the entertainment, he who had conversed with the woman in the pantsuit, the same evening the Alaria had come under attack. The front of his uniform had been drenched with blood, now long dried. He had served as the target, it seemed, in some primitive contest.
In a moment she had come to the large viewing port in the hall, not far from the lounge.
She had looked through this before. It was here that the gladiator had come up behind her, and here that the captain had offered to escort her to her cabin.
Outside she could see, from this vantage point, the outlines of four barbarian ships. The Alaria was illuminated in their search beams. Here and there, there were pieces of debris, floating in space, seemingly suspended there in a calm steadiness and stillness. And then she saw, too, the shattered wrecks, blasted apart, of certain escape capsules, of lifeboats. Such, clearly, had been fired upon. Others had perhaps been blown open but propelled outward into space, then as lifeless as small asteroids. The strangers, the boarders, doubtless had guns ready, set to track and fire on such vessels. A number must have fled the Alaria in the first hours of the attack. She wondered how many might have been successful in their escape, what the crowding would have been. She remembered the press at the door of Section 19, in the hold. She knew nothing of the mechanisms of the lifeboats. Too, she would be terrified to trust herself to such things, so tiny, such frail barks in such vast seas, like lonely motes of steel in the enormous night, so far from commercial lanes, in an area of space scarcely charted.
Perhaps it would be too open, too bold, she thought, to proceed directly to the lounge.
And might they not have it guarded, lest others, like herself, think to find food or drink there?
Perhaps she could approach it, she thought, by means of the upper balcony of the general entertainment hall, which gave access, through a passage, to the lounge’s upper balcony. Then she could look down into the lounge, the main floor, and see if it were safe.
At this point she heard, from the hallway behind her, feminine laughter.
She cast about, wildly, looking for a place to hide.
But there seemed none.
Then, as the voices seemed almost upon her, she crouched down, back, between the lower rim of the port and the railing, to the right, as one would face the port. If one were searching for her there one would doubtless have discovered her, but if one were not looking for her, it was not unlikely that her presence in this simple ensconcement might be overlooked.
“Move!” said a female voice, sharply.
“Yes, Mistress,” said another female voice, frightened.
“It is heavy, Mistress,” said another female voice.
“Hurry,” said another female voice, this one, too, with uncompromising sharpness.
“Yes, Mistress!” said the female voice which had complained of the weight of something.
The officer of the court heard, too, the sounds of chains.
She pressed herself back into her nook.
Two women, stripped, passed her. Between them they bore a bulging silken sheet filled with a miscellany of precious items, doubtless loot taken from cabins. They could scarcely manage their burden. The officer of the court noted, to her horror, that their ankles were shackled. These were the chains she had heard. But even more startling to the officer of the court was the nature of the two women who followed the laden pair, two who stood to them obviously in some strict supervisory capacity, this made clear by their mien, and, too, by the whips they carried. It was the laughter of this second pair which had reached her ears but moments before. These two women following the shackled pair were among the most sensuous women she had ever seen. They were garbed, if one may so speak of it, in brief tunics, incredibly brief, and muchly open. On the wrists of these women, and on their arms, and slung about their throats, was much jewelry, things doubtless from the loot, with which they had bedecked themselves. On the wrist of one was a bracelet of diamonds that might have been the ransom of a city. Suddenly, startled, the officer of the court noted, about the throat of the other was a golden necklace which she had little doubt was her own, that which she had worn at the captain’s table. But beneath the necklaces, and strings of jewels, and such, which these women had flung about their necks in lavish prodigality she could detect, clearly, closely encircling each’s neck, a different device, a chain. This was locked shut, behind the back of the neck. Although the officer of the court could not see this from her vantage point, there depended from this chain, in front, a disk. On this disk appeared the name of the barbarian ship to which each was assigned, and a designation of the quarters upon it which each must serve and clean. These two women were vital, and held themselves beautifully. Muchly did their appearance contrast with that of the wretched, shackled creatures they supervised, creatures which they obviously held in the greatest contempt. One of these women held in her hand a piece of roasted fowl.
“Please, Mistress, let us pause, but for a moment!” begged one of the bearers of loot. Indeed, it is not unlikely that precious objects once her own lay mixed somewhere within that weighty heap which so tested the strength of herself and her miserable companion. Indeed, perhaps she could see them.
“Very well,” said one of the muchly bejeweled women. They were ship slaves. Barbarians do not like to be without their slaves.
The burden of the two shackled women was lowered to the floor, gratefully.
The officer of the court, fearfully, shrank back further in her nook.
“Kneel,” said one of the supervisors, “hands on your thighs, where we can see them.”
Instantly the two shackled women obeyed.
“You need not open your knees,” said the other supervisor. “You are not now before men.”
One of the shackled women moaned.
The supervisors laughed.
The supervisor with the bit of roast fowl tore off a bit of it in her teeth, and chewed on it.
“Please, Mistress,” said one of the kneeling women, “may we not be fed?”
“Do not dare to look upon us,” said one of the supervisors. “Keep your head down.”
“Yes, Mistress,” said the woman, hurriedly lowering her head.
“You have not yet finished your work,” she was told.
“Yes, Mistress,” said the woman.
Suddenly the other supervisor, laughing, cracked her whip.
The two shackled women cried out in misery.
“Up,” said the supervisor, “resume your burden!”
“But Mistress!” protested one of the women, for they had knelt but a moment before.