Often in the spring evenings I would stroll down to the Skipper’s Marina in Dollar Bay and watch the bonded S.P. men working on their bosses’ boats. I would chat with them as they scraped, painted and varnished, and try to discover what made them tick. In general they were a cheerful lot and it was rarely that a man would openly admit that he was dissatisfied, or that he wished he had never elected to be bonded. Indeed, it was not always obvious that an S.P. man was bonded—for the rough work in the boat yards he wore coveralls with the letters S.P. front and back, just as did any other State Prisoner.
Perhaps the most interesting of these characters was Charles, Doug Marshall’s man. I would see him at work even on weekends, scraping and filling, preparing the boat for the coming season while the Freemen and their chattering wives wandered about the slipway and the wharves, grotesque marine pets flopping at their heels. These weekends had become social events, each Freeman trying to outdo his fellow in hearty commendation of his own sleek boat, while the wives vied over such niceties as minipile cookers and autoflush heads. They would stand beside their boats, these Freemen would, patting them and stroking them like racehorse owners, meanwhile barking instructions at their bonded men.
Even Carioca Jones appeared on occasion—once she came wearing the slitheskin dress I had made for her the previous autumn and the emotion-sensitive skin turned a faint pink as our eyes met and we both thought of Joanna. Her young, smooth hands rose to her vulture’s throat almost of their own accord, while her hard black eyes wrinkled in a smile.
“I must say I’m surprised to see you here, Joe, knowing your views,” she greeted me.
“I like to look at the boats.”
“Yes, but all these—people, darling. Aren’t they simply terrible?"
“No worse than anyone else, I guess,” I said coldly, wishing she would move on.
Carioca Jones was ostensibly a reformed character since the incident last year that had caused the entire Peninsula to ostracize her socially— a bitter blow for the ex-3-V star. Predictably for a woman of her drive and personality, she had thrown herself into a round of social do-gooding by way of atonement and was expected to become the next president of the Foes of Bondage Association, which had been making its presence felt around the Peninsula recently.
Unfortunately, anyone meeting her for the first time always commented on what beautiful hands she had for her age—and somewhere in the squalid workshops of the State Prison an S.P. girl named Joanna was now stitching coveralls with steel fingers.
One Friday afternoon in May I left the slithe farm in the capable hands of Dave Froehlich, my bonded man, and walked down to the Marina. By now the boats were in good shape—most of the paintwork having been completed—and the S.P. men were working on decks and below, polishing brass, overhauling engines. About twenty hydrofoils stood in line on their insect legs, looking virile and rakish.
Alone among the S.P. men, Charles was working on the outside hull of his boss’s boat, lubricating the heavy rollers of the Eye. I walked over and greeted him. He looked up from his work.
"Hi, Joe,” he said. That was one of the things I liked about him. He was able to treat me as an equal and whenever I talked with him I forgot that he was a State Prisoner and I a Freeman.
Unlike my foreman Dave, who will address me as “Mr. Sagar” no matter how often I tell him to use my Christian name. Dave is a good man, but he will go on hating me until his time is served. Nothing personal about it—1 just happen to be a Freeman.
“When are you going to get her in the water?” I asked Charles.
“About three weeks’ time, I reckon.” He stood, wiped his hands on his coveralls and gripped the huge steel loop of the Eye in both hands. He pulled, extending it on well- greased runners until it projected some eight feet from the hull of the boat, a giant polished metal D. He grinned at me and tapped it with a small hammer—it rang like a bell.
Rumor had it that an Eye fractured in use down south somewhere last summer, although the accident was hushed up. A sling-glider must have complete confidence in his equipment. Satisfied, Charles gave the Eye a seemingly gentle push. Four hundred and twenty pounds of glittering steel-titanium alloy rolled smoothly back into the hull of the boat, the flat upright of the D—the outermost part of the Eye— fitting so snugly with the contours of the hull that the joining could hardly be seen.
Charles turned his attention to the Whip, which lay on the slipway beside the boat and stretched to a small mooring buoy out in the water—a total distance of some eighty yards. This year everyone had bought new Ultrafiber-X Whips—they lay rigid across the surface in parallel green lines.
“What do you think about, Charles?” I asked curiously. “When Doug’s up in his glider and the Hook hits the Eye—what thoughts occur to you?”
He grinned, kneading grease into the attachment where the Whip joined the pilot’s harness. “There’s no time to think. I’m too busy pinning down the Whip, rolling out the Eye, trying to control the boat at the same time—while I listen to some damfool observer panicking in the stern.”
I smiled, too. I had crewed for Doug Marshall as observer and had panicked when I thought the sling- glider had gotten out of control.
“But there’s one thing I never think about,” continued Charles. “You want me to say I worry about Doug’s getting hurt, don’t you?”
“It must occur to you.”
“It doesn’t. You’d have to be a glider pilot yourself to understand. I used to be a pilot a few years back. It’s a new sport—we’ve got a lot to learn—but it’s a great sport. Joe—there’s nothing like the thrill of being up there in that little glider that’s hardly bigger than yourself— at two hundred and fifty miles per hour.”
Charles stood over six feet, blond and weatherbeaten—he looked the sling-glider type, though hardly the State Prisoner type. Doug Marshall had told me about that once. Charles had been sentenced for rape, of all things, after some incident on board his boat. I personally thought the whole thing sounded unlikely and obviously the judge had had his doubts, too—Charles only got four years.
He had applied for bonding— which carries an automatic one- third sentence remission—after he had served the six months compulsory. Doug Marshall had known him slightly in the past and had agreed to take him on. Charles was now bound by the terms of the one sided contract to serve his master faithfully and well to the utmost of his ability, until the death of either party or completion of his sentence—whichever came sooner.
The sling-glider pilot is entirely in his steersman’s hands.
I looked at Charles. Surely he must think something while Doug was in the air in that flimsy glider.
For example—he might think of Doug’s dying. If that happened Charles’ contract would be up and with it his sentence—he would be a free man. A Freeman.
For example—be had to think of Doug’s possibly being seriously injured. In which case Charles would, as ever, be required to serve Doug to the utmost.
Which might mean the donation of an organ.
Charles worked on impassively, talking technicalities as he checked and greased Doug Marshall’s harness.

It is difficult to define an air of suppressed excitement. It can be observed most easily, perhaps, in the way people will suddenly address comparative strangers, asking their views on whatever is causing the furor. Such an air was in evidence at the Skipper’s Marina during those last few weeks before the start of the sling-gliding season. Freemen talked of competitions and Freewomen spoke of the clothes they would wear at the President’s Opening Scratch Trophy— while at their feet, brought into unaccustomed proximity, land sharks fought German shepherds, pet octopi devoured micropekes.
The sloping landscape of the long slipway was busy every day and crowded on weekends when the owners arrived to assist or berate their S.P. men, according to personality. Huge boats towered everywhere. Men scuttled underneath with paintbrushes* and powertools, putting on finishing touches.
I frequently dropped by on Sunday afternoons to assist Marshall. For a few hours I breathed sawdust and cellulose as we cleaned up the boat's interior—then we drank beer with him and Charles in the dim cabin as slow nightfall came. Sometimes other boat owners would climb the ladder, hammer on the cabin roof and shout a greeting, then squeeze into the small cabin to share our beer and prolong the party past midnight.
On the last Sunday before the season began Carioca Jones came again to the marina, spectacularly dressed, land shark flopping at her heels. The brute was growing fast— by now he was over six feet long. Doug Marshall was bent double and sweating as he adjusted the shear-pin on one of the props, when the land shark undulated over to lie beside him and watch him coldly, stinking like a fishmarket. The implanted oxygenator caused its gills to pulsate unpleasantly. Doug caught sight of the fish suddenly, straightened and cracked his head on the keel.
He had not liked Carioca Jones since the Joanna episode and now he exploded. “Get that bastard away from me before I put this drill through its skull!” He brandished his whirring powertool like a rapier.
Carioca hurried over and laid a hand on her pet’s collar. She was wearing slitheskin gloves—products of my small factory—and I noticed they had turned mauve in sympathy with her temper. “Wilberforce is quite harmless.” She spoke coolly enough. “There’s no call to lose your temper with him. Mr. Marshall. He wasn’t doing anything wrong."
“Wrong.” Doug was massaging his scalp. “The swine nearly fractured my skull for me.”
“Come now, Mr. Marshall. A big brave sling pilot shouldn’t be frightened of a mere land shark, should he now?”
Doug recovered slightly, swallowed hard and spoke carefully. "Miss Jones, that fish is a menace. He’s been allowed to grow too big. Look at those teeth. He could have your leg off without batting an eyelid. You ought to have him put down.”
“Put down?” Carioca's gloves were purple and trembling. Doug met her stare levelly. She looked elsewhere for a scapegoat and, as I was edging out of the scene, Charles descended the ladder from the cockpit and glanced at the protagonists with interest. He was wearing his State Prison coveralls. Carioca’s gaze lit on the letters S.P. and her eyes flashed. “Oh, so you have a slave here doing your work for you.”
The abrupt change of subject foxed Doug. “What the hell’s that got to do with it?” he asked, baffled. “Anyway, Charles is my bonded man.”
“Oh, a bonded man, is he? I might have guessed. No wonder you love sling-gliding. Who wouldn’t, with a spare-parts man standing by?”
Doug’s eyes widened. He looked at Charles, who seemed to have been struck speechless. I couldn’t think of much to say myself— arrant bad taste has that effect on me. Fortunately help was at hand in the unlikely guise of the club secretary, who happened to be passing. He stepped in quickly.
“Miss Jones, did I hear you rightly?”
“Who are you, you strange little man?”
Bryce Alcester, secretary of the Peninsula Sling-gliding Club, flushed. “I think I heard you use an expression we don’t like around here. Miss Jones. Was I right? Did you use such an expression?” He was a small man with a face like a beaver, but he had reserves of determination.
“Of course you don’t like the expression, because it’s true. How else can men like you summon the nerve to go up in those nasty little gliders?”
“I must ask you to leave the premises, madam. I must also remind you that you are not a member.”
“And I must tell you that the Foes of Bondage will picket the President’s Trophy next week. You haven’t heard the last of this, not by a long way.”
Reluctantly, with Alcester’s hand on her arm, she began to move away. Her eye caught mine. “Really, Joe, I can’t think why you associate with such cowards.” After seeing her off the premises Alcester hurried back to us. There was a tear in the leg of his pants where the land shark had taken a snap at him. “I’m terribly sorry, gentlemen.” He looked at Charles, swallowed and said awkwardly, “And, uh, I would like to apologize to you, Charles, on behalf of the club.”
Charles smiled blandly. “I’ve been called names before.”
Later that evening as we drank beer in the cabin I asked Charles, “What does it really feel like to be called—what Carioca called you?”
I	must have had several drinks by then.
Charles grinned. “Always trying to pump me, aren’t you, Joe? I often wonder if you’re a revolutionary on the quiet, gathering information.”
“Maybe, but I’m not a Foe of Bondage.”
“But Carioca Jones is right, you know,” he. said surprisingly. “I am a spare-parts man. I’ve wagered my body against a shorter sentence. I went into it with my eyes open and so far I’ve been lucky. I’ve still got all my limbs and other items. And I don’t mind Doug’s sling-gliding, because I’ve done it myself and I know the thrill of it. Now that’s where Carioca Jones is wrong. I know that we would glide whether or not, uh, spare parts were available. Miss Jones doesn’t know that. She can’t. She’s a woman.”
I addressed Doug, pushing it a bit further. “Doug, suppose you smashed yourself up and you needed, say, a leg. Would you use Charles? Or would you spend the rest of your life limbless, watching Charles walk about whole?”
“The beer has brought honesty,” said Doug quietly. “And I can say in honesty that I don’t know. And it’s one thing about myself I never want to know.”
II
I
n the last days before the first race I had become totally infected with the sling-gliding fever. Up to then I had had no intention of competing despite Doug Marshall’s hints about the difficulty he was having in finding a competent observer. I spent most afternoons and every evening on the slipway, helping with the feverish last- minute preparations. Sling-gliding has this in common with any sport where complex equipment is used: no matter how careful the preparations, no matter how long ago such preparations started, there is always a panic at the finish. The Skipper’s Marina had put its truck at the disposal of the club and the vehicle was in constant use, commuting between Louise and the marina with suddenly remembered necessities.
. Carioca Jones did not appear, although there were rumors from time to time of the form the picketing was going to take. Some said that the Foes of Bondage had hired a boat and intended to upset the racing by zigzagging across the course on the pretext that the sea was free to all. Then, a couple of days before the first race, they were seen with their banners and placards boarding a plane for Lake William in the far north. It seemed that some idiots were going to walk the glacial coast as far as Wall Bay, a distance of several hundred miles. There were three bonded men and a doctor in the party of ten—it was reported that the doctor was taking a full set of surgical instruments along in case someone suffered severe frostbite. Not only that, but there were backup parties hover- trucking supplies to remote rendezvous where the terrain was too broken and the weather too severe to allow aircraft to get in. The personnel for this hazardous task had been hired from the State Prison.
On the Thursday, under pressure from Doug, Charles and several beers, I agreed to join Doug’s crew as observer. That evening I stayed late at the marina. I had—later—a hazy recollection of a party developing in the cramped space of somebody’s cabin—but first I awoke with a powerful headache and a desire to be sick, to find that I was lying on the floor in unfamiliar surroundings. I crawled to my feet, got as far as the door and poked my head out into the chill night air.
After a few deep breaths I felt better. I glanced around the cabin and saw a sleeping girl, partly clothed, on one of the berths. Her mouth was hanging open and she was a mess—lipstick all over her face, hair matted. Crumpled around her throat was a slitheskin neckerchief, its dull brown hue testifying the extent to which she was drained of emotion. I hoped it wasn’t I who had drained her and thought briefly of Charles and his rape case—and of how easy it is to transgress the law these days.
I shut the cabin door quietly behind me and stood in the cockpit of the beached hydrofoil, allowing the night breezes to cool my head. I felt sweaty and stale. It occurred to me that technically I was trespassing by being in the Skipper's Marina after the club was closed and without having a sleep-in permit. Since the shortage of State Prisoners—which hit the country last autumn—there has been a tightening up in various facets of the law and I’m not sure that trespass isn’t one of them. I stepped over the cockpit coaming, found the ladder and climbed quietly down to the slipway.
The next thing I did was to trip over the Whip of the unknown boat and fall flat and noisily on my face. Whips are of incredible lightness and rigidity, particularly this season’s improved models. The end of this particular Whip must have been balanced on a box—anyway, it followed me to the ground with a ringing clatter that set up a sympathetic resonance throughout its entire eighty-yard length, causing it to protest with a wail that must have come close to awakening the very fossils under the sedimentary mud of which the Peninsula is composed.
As I lay there trying not to vomit a scurrying, rustling noise came nearby and the hair at the nape of my neck prickled. The brute who made that noise could have been anything—Carioca Jones’ appalling land shark was quite innocuous compared with some of the bizarre pets I had seen that spring. It was becoming unsafe to leave one’s car or house at night, since many of the creatures, unsuited to human company, had escaped and were roaming the flat countryside, fighting one another and attacking man on sight.
I lay still and waited. The sounds continued: an uneven series of footsteps—or some sort of steps—an occasional clatter of a can of paint or similar slipway debris being knocked over and a vocal gasping noise I tried to tell myself was human. Encouragingly, the sounds began retreating and soon they faded away. I heard the distant whine of a hovercar starting up— then that too receded and all was quiet again.
Obviously there had been a trespasser among the boats. In the morning someone would find his paintwork scored or his rudder pintles loosened. That sort of thing annoys me—I just can't see the sense in it. I wished I’d had the courage to tackle the intruder.
Twenty minutes later I was driving through my farm gates. I got out of the car and listened. Everything seemed to be in order; the reptiles were uttering that bubbling sound that characterizes the contented slithe. Relieved, I made for the house. Recently I’ve been having trouble again with otters getting into the pens and carrying off the slithes and I had mentioned to Dave the necessity for strengthening our defenses. Increasingly there are dangerous predators at large on the Peninsula.
T
he following morning Dave and I made a tour of inspection. The little reptiles were in good shape, trotting about with a faintly red tone to their skins, the shade that denotes happiness and, presumably, health. As we threw the fodder over the chicken wire the slithes scurried forward, turning pink with pleasure and feeding voraciously. Dave gave one of his rare grins. Then, noticing me testing the strength of the chicken wire with my foot, his manner assumed its accustomed seriousness.
“I heard a rumor yesterday,” he said. “Someone saw a garden barracuda loose over Long Beach way. This guy was walking along the nature trail at the back of the lagoon there and the bastard came for him straight out of the bushes, all snapping teeth—you know what they’re like. It’s getting serious. There are things running wild all over the place.”
“I was thinking about that last night. Perhaps you’d get one of the men to double the wire. It’s a good thing the brutes can’t live long.” He glanced at me. “You haven’t heard about the new oxygenator they’ve been implanting recently? It doesn’t have to be renewed. They say it stimulates the gills into a modified operation. They do a bit of surgery on the beast as well, and then the fish or whatever is totally adapted to living on land for the rest of its life.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” I said. The possibilities this development opened up were somewhat alarming. At this moment a car drove up and saved me further anxiety on the subject.
“Hi, Joe darling.” Carioca Jones. “I thought you were up in the snow somewhere,” I said tactlessly. “Joe, it was the most idiotic
hoax! Someone sent me a transcription of a Newspocket report up at Lake William and it sounded like the most heartrending thing. Dozens of poor S.P. men are supposedly being used as nothing better than pack animals. And there were some bonded men with the actual party, going across the glaciers—you know what frostbite is—and they had a surgeon with them as well. My dear, the report was positively sinister. I mean, you know and I know that I’ve learned my lesson and we both think these transplants are abominable. Barbaric.”
“Yes,” I said carefully, not looking at her hands.
“And when we got there with all our banners and placards nothing was happening! We marched down the street singing and everyone looked at us as though we were mad. And it was so cold—you’ve no idea! So we booked into the nearest hotel and I went to the local Newspocket agency—and do you know, they’d never even heard of the Great Arctic Trek, as it was supposed to be called.”
“You must have been very disappointed.”
She shot me a glance of birdlike suspicion but apparently my expression satisfied her. “Quite—and it was dreadfully embarrassing. We hadn’t really allowed for the cold there. Some of my girls were frostbitten quite badly. They were very' upset and four of them resigned
from the Foes for good.”
I nearly asked her just how badly those four had been hurt and whether, if surgery had been necessary, they had contacted the nearest State Prison. As Foes of Bondage, it was hardly likely they would have bonded S. P. girls. So if fingers were needed they would have to take their chances with the Ambulatory Organ Pool—a euphemism for long-term prisoners first on the list of compulsory donors. I nearly asked her, but I didn’t.
Instead I asked, “Are men allowed to join the Foes?”
“Of course,” she said firmly. “Why ever not?”
“I just wondered. The members all seem to be women.”
“Oh, but that’s the way it works out, my dear. You see, it’s men who go in for these dangerous sports— it’s men who get smashed up and need transplants—so naturally men will support the status quo.” "Pardon me, Carioca, but that’s garbage. Only a fraction of the male population can afford to sling-glide or tramp through the Arctic.”
“You men all stick together— that’s the trouble. Look at you, Joe. You admit you’re against legalized slavery, yet you’ve got your own bonded man and you’re friendly with lice like Marshall who risk someone else’s neck for fun. You wouldn’t join the Foes of Bondage if I begged you to, so I won’t bother.”
J
ust for the record, at this point I gave Carioca something from the depths of my soul, if I have one. “Dave Froehlich is a good man whom I rescued from that stinking prison—and I get no thanks from Dave. I’m friendly with Marshall because I enjoy his personality and to hell with his views—even if his views were unsound, which I doubt, I won’t join the Foes because I’d be the only man there and people would look on me as a crank, added to which I don’t agree with the Foes’ methods. Regardless of whether or not the members are women, they are exactly the type of person I don’t like. Your members get a vicarious personal satisfaction from the annoyance they cause others. Their methods are wrong, in that they think it right to counter problems with problems.”
Carioca Jones’ mouth had fallen agape. When I finished she hitched it up, thought a bit, then said, “You take the whole thing too seriously, Joe. The Foes are a club, that’s all. A woman’s club, if you will. This talk is nonsense. When we demonstrate we just think what fun it is to be doing it together. If it helps you any, Joe, I don’t think the members consider the objects of the Association as deeply as you seem to do."
“Then we need a new Association. Damn it, Carioca, they shout obscenities at people.”
“Well, isn’t it fun to have the chance to shout obscenities at people without fear of any comeback?”
I nearly lost my temper—and a good customer. “I’ve never felt any desire to shout obscenities at people. That’s the mentality of a teenage vandal.”
She took my arm suddenly. “Oh, come on, Joe. Let’s not quarrel. I came to do business with you. You and I are on the same side, basically. It’s people like your friend Marshall I don’t like. It was he who faked the Newspocket transcript, of course.”
“Oh, come off it, Carioca.”
“No, I mean it. It’s typical of his sense of humor. And I can tell you, it's not so funny up at William Lake for a person of my age, Joe.” It was the first time I’d ever heard her mention her age. I changed the subject hastily. “You said you came to do business.”
“Of course—you must be busy.” Her manner had become stiff. “I’d like to buy four dozen slitheskin wristlets, please.”
“Four dozen?”
“They’re for the Foes of Bondage. We shall wear them at the demonstration tomorrow and they will show the solidarity of our feelings.”
I	had a mental image of four dozen Foes with fists upraised but with wristlets unfortunately showing colors of rainbow diversity. “Do you think it’s wise?” I ventured.
“Look, Joe Sagar, do you want the business or don’t you?”
Resignedly I took her into the showroom. While she was selecting the wristlets she persisted in asking about Charles, his crime, his sentence. She seemed to be trying to work up a feeling of pity for the man.
II
Although the President’s trophy is the first event of the season and tends to be looked on as a mere hors d’oeuvre to the main course of races later in the summer, it is nevertheless an event worth winning. The psychological boost to the visitor will frequently start a winning vein in subsequent weeks that can be worth a good deal of prize money. And more than any other sport, sling-gliding depends on confidence. Confidence in one’s glider, one’s Whip, one’s boat, one’s observer and steersman—all of which comes with practice, but which is proved and improved by winning.
Traditionally, the main body of spectators gathers along the ancient stone sea wall that was one of the few human artifacts on the Peninsula to escape total destruction by the tidal waves of the Western Seaboard Slide. Here gather the curious, the casual, the enthusiasts—and the Foes of Bondage. Out across the bay, a half-mile distant, the gaunt pillar of the Fulcrum rises from the calm water.
The Foes had already picketed the entrance to the marina, screaming their epithets at the hovercars as they arrived with pilots, crews and maintenance men. On stepping from my own vehicle I had been surprised when a woman I hardly knew thrust herself before me and referred to my slithe farm as a “plantation.” This was the latest dirty word unearthed by the Foes and apparently referred to some early phase of man’s relationship with his fellows. When I replied, rather weakly, that I didn’t plant anything at the farm—if the growing of crops was what she objected to—she merely uttered a jeering noise and called me a “boss man.” Then Carioca Jones appeared. “My God, Joe,” she shrilled. “Do you mean to tell me you’re actually taking part in this pantomime?” Fortunately the press of the crowd had taken her away from me at this point, so I was spared the embarrassment of conversation.
The President’s Trophy is a distance/placement event and not strictly a race because the time factor does not enter the judges’ calculations—although the very fact of the high speeds attained during sling-gliding tend to cause the general public to refer to any event as a race. In this particular event the glider flies to a point out in the Strait, drops a marker and returns, the pilot endeavoring to land at a point as close as possible to the sea wall. A buoy, just offshore from the spectators, indicates the optimum.
It is this finish close to the crowd—allied to the fact of its being the first event of the season— that gives the race its enormous popularity.
By the time the boats were cruising about, testing their engines, the Foes of Bondage had positioned themselves at a point near the northern end of the sea wall, close to the marina. From time to time their president, an elderly woman— and, I supposed, the woman Carioca Jones hoped to supplant— whipped them into a frenzy with a few well-turned phrases. She had an imposing, almost puritanical presence that lent weight to her oracular delivery. From my position at the end of the slipway I couldn’t hear her words, but judging from the cheers of her supporters it was all good stuff. From time to time the Foes’ fists would curve forward and upward in a fair and feminine imitation of a right uppercut—symbol of the Association—but the wristlets remained neutral brown. You can’t fool slitheskin. Maybe the colors would come later, when the racing started.
In the distance a hydrofoil was racing toward the Fulcrum. The crowd was still. Behind the boat a tiny glider rose into the sky. It was too far away for us to see the Whip as the boat snapped around the Fulcrum, but we could judge the fearsome acceleration as the little dart was flung low above the water at a speed around two hundred and fifty miles per hour. For an instant we lost it against the trees of the dark island opposite, then it slipped into view above the strait. There was a murmur as those with binoculars saw the marker buoy drop away as the glider turned to make its approach. The distance of this buoy from the Fulcrum was taken into account in the final placings, encouraging pilots to go for speed and distance instead of merely stalling slowly in for an accurate landing.
Archer was gliding and he had squeezed a little too much distance from his speed. He was coming in fast and low after a wide turn and it was apparent he would not make the finishing buoy. Skimming the sea so close I’ll swear he raised ripples on the calm surface, he used his last breath of flying speed in a shallow climb, then stalled and dropped into the water about two hundred yards away. The spectators clapped politely as he struggled clear of his harness and trod water waiting to be picked up. The Foes of Bondage were silent, watching. Their wristlets remained neutral to a woman—neither showing the purple of engaged distaste nor the pink of pleasure. I assumed they had done their homework and discovered that Archer had no bonded S.P. man.
I caught sight of Carioca Jones at the instant she glanced at me—and suddenly I knew that the Foes’ rancor was being reserved for our boat and Doug Marshall in particular.
M
arshall was gliding, Charles was steering and I was observing, sitting in the stern and watching for trouble, Charles’ attention naturally being concentrated on the Fulcrum ahead. I stole a quick glance over my shoulder and saw the black post rising solitary out of the flat sea about half a mile ahead. I looked back and Marshall was waving.
“Right!” I shouted to Charles.
He gunned the motor. The Whip took the strain and rose dripping from the water with hardly a sag in its rigid length. A feather of foam appeared at Marshall’s skis as he began to move, rising upright with the glider attached to his back like a bright vampire.
The boat rose on its foils and the last of the roiling wake fled abruptly astern to be replaced by twin hissing threads of spray. Marshall began to experience lift and kicked off the skis, raising his hands to grip the controls in the nose of the glider. He drew up his legs, jackknifing and thrusting them back into the slender fuselage. He was flying, the Whip attached to his chest harness with a snap-fastening. He sailed easily behind us at about fifty miles per hour, lying face down within the belly of the tiny dart-shaped glider. I suppressed a shudder—the takeoff always affects me like that, ever since
Patterson’s mistake last season. Patterson had grasped the controls clumsily—so we assumed afterward. Anyway, his glider had plunged down suddenly, the Whip had smashed through the nose, jamming. Then the angle of the Whip to the glider had taken it down through the water, deeper, deeper ... I think the most terrifying thing was watching the Whip shortening, shortening despite the deceleration of the boat, as the glider and Patterson dove uncontrollably into the black pressure of the deeps. He must have descended over fifty feet in about eight seconds.
A sight not easily forgotten.
But Marshall was safely aloft and veering out toward our starboard beam, ready to take advantage of the initial effect of the Fulcrum post. He had banked and I could see him grinning at us, grinning with exhilaration, a six-foot man in a ten-foot glider.
At moments like this the oddest notions come to the front of one’s racing stream of thoughts. Suddenly I was thinking of Thursday night on the slipway and of the fact that Doug Marshall seemed to be a target of the Foes of Bondage, who had returned from William Lake earlier than expected.
Charles hit the water brake for just the instant necessary to swing Doug directly abeam and, at precisely the right moment, leaned across to the Whip bracket . . .
And slipped the pin easily into its housing, locking the Whip at right angles to the boat. He eased the throttle away and we leaped forward again, the glider riveted to a parallel course eighty yards from our port beam and matching our speed of about ninety miles per hour. I exhaled a gasp of relief which was lost in the scream of the turbines. Just for a moment the thought of sabotage had crossed my mind.
“Coming up!” shouted Charles.
1 glanced around quickly and saw the Fulcrum post racing nearer, the giant Hook jutting out black and solid toward us. In June of last year, I think it was, Bennett had misjudged the clearance and run into the Hook . . .
Charles thumbed a button and the Eye slid out from the reinforced portside of the hull. The craft listed as the huge steel loop extended and I made the conventional sign to Marshall—the 0 of finger and thumb. He dipped in acknowledgment.
“Brace yourself!” shouted the bonded man. He leaned into the padded pillar to the right of the wheel. I huddled into the seat, cushioning my head in my hands.
The Hook engaged the Eye.
I	probably screamed a little as the G’s hit me—I’m told I usually do. The Hook engaged the Eye— and snatched the hydrofoil, by now traveling at around a hundred and twenty miles per hour, into a thirty- yard radius turn.
Around about this time I never know what’s happening—I just cower there and wait for it to finish. I’ve seen it from a distance, of course, and it looks quite simple. The pilot has taken his glider to a station off the starboard of the boat, so that when the Hook engages the Eye, the boat veers sharply away. Despite its rigidity, the Whip bends. The glider begins to accelerate as the centrifugal force allied to the incredible strength of the Whip takes effect.
I’ve seen boats circle the Fulcrum post on the swiveling Hook so fast that the Whip spirals like a watchspring, the glider lagging behind at first but accelerating, accelerating until the Whip finally snaps straight and flings the glider outward at speeds of up to three hundred miles per hour. A glider ten feet long with a wingspan of perhaps seven feet, made of stressed permaplast . . .
There is a certain margin for error. If the observer senses that the glider is not in the correct position, that the pilot is not quite ready, he can tell the steersman to abort at any distance up to forty yards from the Fulcrum and the boat will veer right, slowing, while the pilot detaches the Whip from his harness, closes in and, stalling, drops into the water alongside. This is the textbook procedure, although I’ve seen teams take a wide, wide circle and approach the Hook again without dropping the glider.
As the G’s forced my head into the backrest of the seat I again sensed something was wrong. I opened my eyes, saw the dizzy blur of water racing past, the gaunt blackness of the Fulcrum post partly obscuring the view. Then, climbing rapidly against the sky, the glider. The Whip spiraled back from Marshall, beyond my field of vision. I could see him fumbling one-handed with the release mechanism.
The glider lagged back, dropped out of view as the Whip curled. Marshall’s snap fastening had jammed. He could not break clear of the Whip. Shortly all that coiled energy would be spent in smashing him into the sea—or whirling him and his glider into broken pieces vertically overhead . . .
Once, and once only, I saw a man make a perfect landing on the surface with the Whip still attached to his jammed fastening— yet that man died, too. Farrel. We watched from the shore as the Eye hit the Hook and the boat snapped into its turn at exceptionally high speed—the occasion was the finals of the National Distance Championships. The Whip coiled into a venomous high-tensile spring which reminds the overly imaginative of a striking cobra. Farrel had gone into his slow climb and was accelerating as the boat slowed at the post and the Whip began to straighten.
Farrel’s wife was watching through binoculars and I heard her gasp suddenly—a sudden gasp that was almost a scream. I remember the expression on the face of Farrel’s bonded man—who was standing next to Mrs. Farrel—as he snatched the glasses from her and clamped them to his eyes. Mrs. Farrel turned to me. Her face was twisted and she was only able to utter one word—but it was probably the only word applicable to the situation.
“Why?" she asked.
And the boat had slowly descended from its hydrofoils and was wallowing around the Fulcrum, while the Whip spent its venom in hurling Farrel into a speed of three hundred miles per hour. He had stopped trying to fight the release mechanism now and was concentrating on his attitude, maintaining level flight as the Whip straightened and began to slow.
At this point the other spectators had realized something was wrong. Sometimes a foolhardy pilot will delay release until the very last instant of acceleration, taking chances on the control problems that arise with a dying Whip. But Farrel had gone past even that point. There was a slow murmur of communal horror.
There were also a few anticipatory chuckles from S.P. men standing near. Except for Farrel’s man, of course—he stood like a statue, binoculars jammed against his face.
The Whip slowed—although we couldn’t tell from where we stood, the Whip must have been slowing—but still Farrel retained control, retained his horizontal attitude. He was rapidly losing lift due to the dragging effect of the Whip at his chest, but he avoided over- correcting and plunging into the sea and he avoided the disastrous stall that would have started an end-over-end spin and a breakup of the glider. He was giving a masterly exhibition.
And it was all pointless, of course. There were murmurs of appreciation from around us and I think some people really thought Farrel was going to get away with it. But they didn’t know sling-gliding the way the rest of us did. You never escape from a jammed fastening.
Farrel was decelerating visibly now, edging closer to the water, extricating his legs from the slender fuselage and dangling them, soles upturned, like a swan coming in to land.
An S.P. man chuckled, watching the Whip.
There was a communal sigh as Farrel touched the water and his speed fell to zero. He flipped the nose of the glider up in a last- minute stall. I think, even then, he felt he could avoid the inevitable if he could get the drag of the glider’s surface area against the water in addition to his own weight.
He didn’t make it. He was probably up to his waist in water when the Whip reacted. The deceleration had coiled it backward, building up a reverse tension which now exploded in snatching Farrel from the water and dragging him backward, end over end in the scattering remnants of his glider, spinning along the surface in a curved, frantic plume of spray . . .
The Whip waved to and fro a few times, gradually losing momentum, until at last it lay quiet and twitching on the surface and the boat was able to cast loose from the Hook and pick up Farrel. His neck was broken—his back and legs were broken. Hardly a bone in his body had escaped fracture—hardly an organ was not ruptured.
It might have been possible to do something about all that. But Farrel was dead, too.
It had taken just a few seconds. I remember the look on the face of the bonded man when they brought the body ashore. Absolved of all his obligations, his past crime, whatever it was, atoned for—released from his bond by the death of his principal, he was now a free man. He turned silently away from the drenched and broken thing they had laid on the sea wall and he walked off, saying nothing.

Then Farrel, now Marshall. Pressed hard against the latex headrest, I watched helplessly as the Whip straightened, preparatory to coiling in the reverse direction, while Marshall stayed high in the sky, transfixed by the tip. I rolled my head against the force that held it and saw Charles fighting his way clear of the G-post. His eyes were wide and dead as they met mine—I knew he was going to try something desperate, but his motives were anybody’s guess. He edged clear of the post and centrifugal force snatched him instantly from my view.
All this happened so quickly that I had every excuse for doing nothing—in any case, there was no way I could have gotten clear of the seat. Then the boat was slowing. The landscape ceased its crazy spin. The Fulcrum post became a solid object of iron and rust and rivets. As is the way of boats built for speed, ours stopped quickly. I stood up, my head reeling.
Marshall was clear, gliding landward, trailing the Whip behind him, the broken end hanging a short distance above the surface. I satisfied myself that he was descending quickly enough to avoid a stall—the Whip in total length is no aid to a smooth landing—and turned my attention to Charles. He was floundering in the water some twenty feet off the port bow. I grabbed the wheel, revved the engine and slipped it into reverse, backed clear of the Hook, retracted the Eye and motored toward him. I got my hands under his armpits and dragged him aboard. He was a big man, strong and heavy, but he was unable to help himself or me.
‘‘Where’s Doug?” he asked faintly.
“Almost down. He’ll be okay.” I glanced at the rig that fastened the Whip to the boat. The steel tubing was bent—the Whip itself had snapped off short where Charles’ flying body had smashed into the swivel joint.
It was one of those occasions where the last thing you want to do is to consider the implications. I pillowed Charles’ head on a lifejacket and spun the wheel, heading for shore. Marshall was traveling parallel to the sea wall now, diving to maintain speed and at the same time lose height before the trailing end of the Whip began to drag in the water and the abrupt deceleration began. Gauging the point of impact, I drove the boat on at full throttle.
Less than a minute later I was pulling Marshall from the water and extricating him from his harness, aided by men from a milling cluster of small boats. I pulled in against the sea wall and we carried Charles to the shore, laying him on the grass while someone ran to call the ambulopter.
Almost instantly, it seemed, the Foes of Bondage were standing over us in force and I shuddered involuntarily because I’ll swear there was something akin to predatory satisfaction in their eyes as they looked at the broken figure of Charles, his soaked lifejacket 

oozing crimson. But he was alive.
Two women were to the fore— the president of the Foes, and Carioca Jones. Carioca was the first to speak. Sha indicated Marshall, who was bending over Charles lifting a bottle to the injured man’s lips.
“That’s the man I told you about, Evadne,” the ex-3-V star said in a voice sufficiently loud for us all to hear. “He’s the prankster who tried to get us all out of the way so that we couldn’t spoil his fun. Well, you big brave man,” she addressed Doug, “how do you feel now? Your man saved you—and we all know why. And now, look at him, poor thing.”
There was a murmur of agreement from the Foes and I believe someone tried to start up a chant, but some remnants of decency prevailed. Not to be outdone by Carioca, the elderly Evadne said her piece,
“It is a terrible comment on our society when a man will, quite deliberately, risk his life to save another.”
Fortunately there was a diversion at this juncture. A man stepped forward and touched Doug on the shoulder. He was carrying the harness that had been cut away from the glider. He indicated the snap release.
“Look, like you said, Doug. Someone’s been fooling with this. The release pin’s been bent. You
can see the marks of pliers.”
The crowd had gathered itself without conscious volition into two distinct factions around the bleeding man on the sea wall. To the landward side were the Foes of Bondage, an unyielding bloc of womanhood, upright and militant. Along the edge of the embank- mend, backs to the sea, were the pilots, their crews and supporters, who up to now had been quietly on the defensive.
The mechanic’s words changed this. Doug left Charles and stood, flushing. An angry muttering spread through the ranks of the pilots. The Foes backed off guiltily.
“I can assure you all—” began the president, hands fluttering, wristlet yellowing.
Carioca took one glance at her fading leader and knew her opportunity had come. She stepped forward boldly.
“It’s quite obviously a frame-up. And clever, too. Done by one of your own pilots with the object of discrediting the Foes and, incidentally, getting a competitor out of the way. Your treasurer himself told me he heard someone prowling about the slipway on Thursday night.” Her black eyes blazed at the elderly man, forcing a nervous nodding agreement. “So there you are. Only club members are familiar with the slipway and the gear you use. And only a slave-owner would think this way, knowing that a bonded man would risk injury himself rather than allow harm to come to his master.”
She bent forward over Charles. “You poor man," she said. “And you only had a year or so to go.” Her voice hardened. “Couldn’t you have taken the chance that the bastard would kill himself? You’d have been free, then.”
She moved back a little, a theatrical gesture to direct the attention to Charles and ensure that we all heard his reply—so confident was Carioca Jones. Faintly, but growing louder, we could hear the hissing whine of the ambulopter. The Foes of Bondage wore righteous expressions as they contemplated their prize specimen, their raison d'etre, while he lay bleeding on the sea wall.
Charles managed a smile.
“I’ve been a Freeman since Thursday, Miss Jones.”
I
t was fairly typical of Carioca Jones to have forgotten the factor of Charles’ one-third remission in her enthusiasm for the witch hunt. The uproar that followed Charles’ revelation lasted in various ways for several months and was discussed whenever sling-gliders met that summer. The arguments waxed furious but it was all rather pointless because, in fact, there were not many bonded men involved in sling-gliding. Many a pilot had the same fear as Doug Marshall—if he were injured so seriously that he needed a transplant, what would he do? Better by far to be able to draw on the anonymity of the Ambulatory Organ Pool, which is not available to Freemen with their own bonded men. Nobody wants to take a limb from a person with whom he may be associated for years.
Charles made a good recovery although it was feared at first that he had suffered irreparable damage to both kidneys. Luckily the original diagnosis proved false.
In the strange, sometimes primitive atmosphere of the Peninsula issues are seldom clear-cut, and solutions or explanations almost never at hand. We never discovered just who had sabotaged Doug’s equipment. Conversely, the Foes of Bondage failed to unmask the perpetrators of the Lake William hoax. There is a simple, neat possibility—but one we consider highly improbable. Things just don’t work out that way around here.
Carioca Jones weathered the setback, of course. After the elderly Evadne resigned following the Charles incident she put her own name forward and was duly elected president of the Foes of Bondage. After a decent interval for things to quiet down she began to push herself and the Association forward as forcefully as ever.
People don’t change on the Peninsula. Their fortunes may fluctuate but their characters are inflexibly formed by the time they arrive here.	★