SinBad had nothing against ba’aths. Even hungry ones. Leo barsoom, the big black-maned Barsoomian lion, was a dozen sofads long, a bio-engineered carnivore twice the size of Numa on Old Earth, ending in twin sets of sabertooth canines. Megafauna require mega-predators.

  Aiming to be at best a mini-meal, SinBad settled in between the sand sail’s tricycle tires, his cocked crossbow pointed at the night. Half a haad behind him glowed the fires of a nomad camp. Red men. Crows, from their tall hourglass shaped tipis. Being a Huron outcast, SinBad had not hurried to introduce himself. Now it was too late. Thuria was up, and the Slaver Moon made the usually friendly Crow wary of strangers.

  As the fire sank down to embers, SinBad pulled his sleeping furs tighter, then flicked his sand goggles to night vision, peering into the infrared, seeing by Thuria light. Slavers had made Barsoom’s inner moon highly reflective, so they could scan the planet’s surface more closely at night.

  Nothing moved. Aside from some ghostly acacia trees, swaying in the wind.

  Ba’ath calls slackened, replaced by mounting boredom, while the strange stars of Carthoris system wheeled overhead. Thuria set, and the Crow camp stirred behind him. Fear alone kept SinBad from drifting off.

  Then he saw a silver form slither out from beneath a wait-a-bit thorn tree, barely thirty sofads away. Too small to be a full-grown ba’ath, the lithe shape stayed low to the ground, creeping toward him. Juvenile ba’ath? Dire wolf ? Jackal? At full charge a ba’ath covered thirty sofads faster than you can say it—if this was a ba’ath.

  He shifted his crossbow to cover the approaching shape with the cold sight. Dark metal formed a sharp black V, blotting out the infrared glow. His finger found the curved trigger.

  Even in the dark, he was a decent shot at this range. Explosive bolts made any hit hurt. By holding down the trigger, while working the cocking lever, he could empty his clip in a quarter xat.

  Whatever was coming froze, as if it could feel his intent through the darkness.

  Predators and prey had a psychic relationship. At a sward waterhole south of Ptarth, he once saw steppe gazelle grazing beside some sleeping ba’aths. Suddenly, the grazers bolted, disappearing into dawn fog. Presently the ba’aths perked up, starting to yawn, stretch, and sniff the wind. The gazelles had sensed the carnivore’s hunger, before the ba’aths themselves.

  Without warning, the shape in the dark hissed at him, “Sush. Outcast. Do not shoot.”

  Hastily, he lowered his bow. It was a woman’s voice, a young woman. Pretty, too, from the sound of her. Sex offenders also had psychic links to their prey. “Who are you?”

  “Pretty Bottom,” the woman replied, confirming his instincts. Lest he get any ideas, she added, “Third wife to Alligator Stands Up.”

  SinBad had heard of him, an aging Crow war chief, with a famously young harem. “Kaor, Pretty Bottom.”

  Standing up, a buxom black-braided teenager in beaded buckskins strolled into the firelight. SinBad could not see her bottom, but the rest of her was enticing, from her dark smiling eyes, to the bone-handled skinning knife tucked into her calf-length boot. Old Alligator Stands Up had notoriously sweet taste in wives. “Kaor, outcast.”

  SinBad set aside his crossbow, still cocked. “How do you know I am an outcast?”

  “Why else would you be sitting alone in the dark?” Pretty Bottom wrinkled her pert nose. “I can smell it on you, along with the fear. Sex offenses, right?”

  He nodded. Too true.

  “Is that why you are shaking?”

  “I nearly shot you.” That still had him rattled. “What are you doing, sneaking about at night?”

  She laughed. “Silly, it is Wife Stealing Time.”

  “Already?” He would be late getting to Kaol.

  Setting her namesake down by the fire, Pretty Bottom asked, “Isn’t that why you are here?”

  Hardly. “I was headed for Kaol, when the wind failed.” Right at Wife Stealing Time, half a haad from a Crow camp. Why did these things always happen to him? His parole specified that he could not come within a thousand sofads of a commercial sex operation, fertility festival, or communal orgy. Technically, Wife Stealing Time was none of these, but try telling that to a judge. Especially a married one.

  Ba’aths called in the blackness. SinBad reached for his crossbow, but a slim hand stopped him. Her brown fingers felt firm and exciting.

  “Just ba’aths.” Pretty Bottom seemed totally unconcerned by a pride of saber-toothed killers. “Afraid they want to eat you?”

  “Maybe.” Not him personally perhaps, but they were out flesh shopping.

  His visitor smirked. “They are not that hungry.”

  “Let’s hope so.” He kept the cocked crossbow within reach.

  “Here, this will help.” Pretty Bottom got up, dusted off her buckskinned butt, then wiggled into his sleeping furs, totally taking his mind off the prowling ba’aths. Pretty Bottom was barely into her teens, Barsoom years, twice as long as those on Old Earth. Ten years younger than him. But that did not stop her. She whispered, “You are scared. I am cold. This will please us both.”

  “I’m not that scared,” he protested, unlacing her buckskins.

  Pretty Bottom slyly stroked his crotch. “See, it’s working already.”

  It was. How weird that young women like her had such power over men, especially men like him. He had been running late on a trip to Kaol, risking his on-time bonus, beset by starved ba’aths, afraid for his life. Suddenly none of that mattered. Not a bit. He reminded Pretty Bottom, “I am twice your age.”

  “And half my husband’s.” Pretty Bottom was aching to feel younger flesh. His even, absurd as that seemed. Who was he to complain?

  Pushing up Pretty Bottom’s buckskins, SinBad saw she deserved her name. No rawhide nomad underwear, just bare enticing flesh.

  “So tell me about your sex crimes,” she suggested, sliding her hand inside his loincloth.

  He shrugged. “Unnatural copulation, aiding in adultery, cohabiting with lesbians, that sort of thing.”

  Pretty Bottom sniffed. “I hoped for something spicy.”

  “You can learn a lot from lesbians,” SinBad protested.

  “Or from living in a crowded tipi.” She snuggled closer. “You are already aiding in adultery.”

  “I am?”

  “It is Wife Stealing Time. Anyone who hides me is committing that crime.”

  Wife Stealing time was two weeks in the spring when Crow romeos were free to kidnap wives they had seduced during the year. Then their own wives and girlfriends would dress the victims up, so their paramours could parade them around camp, showing off their success with other men’s wives. Unmarried women and faithful wives were immune. Husbands could do nothing to interfere. Guilty wives had to flee the village, bedding down with the ba’aths and jackals. There was no embarrassment in being eaten. “Alligator Stands Up is smoking in his lodge. He will lose his standing if he comes after me.”

  “How many wives does old Alligator have?” SinBad asked.

  “Eight.” Enough Panthans to play Jetan. “Half of them are hiding out. Leaving just old wives, and young favorites to pound his meat and flatten his sleeping furs.”

  Since poor neglected Pretty Bottom had already done the crime, and made him her accomplice, SinBad saw no sense being shy. Slipping off his loincloth, he prepared to put her most famous asset to use. But his partner in crime preferred natural copulation. “Don’t worry,” she whispered. “I am pregnant.”

  Nature’s best birth control, already knocked up. He ran a hand over the smooth curve of her belly, which was just starting to swell. “Did Old Alligator stand up?”

  “Not for me,” she sighed. “My baby is from the scout, Goes Ahead.”

  Who got in ahead of her husband. Old Alligator’s loss. Pretty Bottom was full of youthful, guilt-free enthusiasm, which was plainly going to waste. SinBad had never had so much fun breaking parole.

  Afterward they slept, wrapped in his sleeping furs. Near to dawn, she nudged him. “Listen?”

  He heard nothing. “What?”

  “Do you hear the ba’aths?”

  “No.” He had totally forgotten about the toothy cats.

  “They have made their kill.” Pretty Bottom kicked off the furs, pulling on her beaded boots. Then she stood up, drawing her skinning knife, looking incredibly fetching in just the calf-length boots.

  He hated to see her leave. “Where are you going?”

  “To get breakfast.”

  “By driving ba’aths from their kill?”

  “No,” she replied coyly, “by convincing them to share.”

  He grabbed his crossbow, starting to get up. “Let me come with you.”

  She shook her head. “They would not like that.”

  “Probably not,” he admitted.

  “Then get the fire going again, and leave the ba’aths to me.” With that she walked off into the chill of first light, without looking back. He hoped she returned in one pretty piece. On less than a day’s acquaintance, SinBad could already tell what Alligator Stands Up saw in her. Goes Ahead, too.

  Blood-red day broke over the slowly terraforming landscape, sand and sward, dotted with acacias, and wait-a-bit thorn trees. SinBad relit his fire, listening for ba’ath calls, but hearing only birdsong. Dawn wind blew in the wrong direction. He was worried and hungry, and Thuria would be up soon, adding to his troubles. If Pretty Bottom survived her breakfast with ba’aths, he would have to hide her from the Slaver Moon.

  Before he could fret himself completely into a stupor, Pretty Bottom sauntered back into camp, carrying a fresh hunk of moropus haunch, saying, “This is all they would part with.”

  He took the bloody meat, handing her a washcloth. “I feared for you.”

  “Needlessly,” she noted, wiping moropus blood off her body.

  SinBad cooked the meat on thorn bush skewers, while Pretty Bottom wriggled back into her fringed buckskins. When the meat was done, he told her, “Thuria is rising. We need to find a safe place to eat.”

  Pretty Bottom agreed, “First I must get my possible sack. I left it in a tree.”

  Burying his precious cargo, he made a place for Pretty Bottom on the back of his sand sail. She returned with her beaded possible sack, the Red woman’s leather purse. Settling in behind him, she asked, “What do they call you?”

  “SinBad.”

  She grinned at him. “That’s a lie. You sin very well.”

  Unfurling the sail, he headed off downwind, looking for a hiding place. Not easy to find on the flat mossy sward that covered most of Barsoom. But he had to do it soon, ahead of the Slaver Moon. Pretty Bottom faced kidnapping and worse, while Slavers would kill him out of hand.

  Finally, he found a spot, a stretch of grassy steppe, cut by a dry wadi, with a high bank on the Thuria side. There was no way to hide the sand sail, so SinBad parked it at the head of the wadi, telling Pretty Bottom, “I’ll carry you from here.”

  “Really?” She looked shocked. Nomad women regularly carried men’s things, but were never carried about by men.

  “We cannot leave a line of women’s bootprints for Slavers to follow.”

  She agreed with a giggle, more embarrassed by being picked up than by serial adultery. Barsoom’s light gravity made it easy, but by the time they reached the wadi, Thuria was breaking the horizon. Slaver macroscopes were already sweeping the landscape for victims, able to see anything, even the eye color of any woman silly enough to gaze at Barsoom’s nearer moon.

  Sure enough. Huddled against the high bank, he heard the boom of an orbital shuttle breaking atmosphere, followed by the whoosh of the ship settling down next to his abandoned sand sail. But there was no woman, no cargo, nothing to tempt the Slavers to follow his heat trail into the wadi. Instead they took off again. Slavers knew it was Wife Stealing Time, and had their hands full, combing the area around the Crow camp for errant wives in hiding.

  SinBad settled back, chewing on roast moropus. Pretty Bottom asked, “Are they gone?”

  “Hope so.” He was not about to look. Macroscopes would be trained on the wadi bank, searching for human prey. Thanks to the Greenies, offworld weapons were banned on Barsoom, forcing the natives to make do with bows and swords. Slavers had line-of-sight lasers and orbit-to-surface missiles. They could pick you off without ever leaving Thuria.

  Sighing, Pretty Bottom relaxed against him. “You have been nice to me.”

  “You too.” More than nice.

  “It is not easy, being third wife to Alligator Stands Up.”

  “Or Goes Ahead’s girlfriend,” he reminded her.

  “Even worse.” She grimaced. “Goes Ahead just wants to parade me through camp, to embarrass my chieftain, and bolster his pride.”

  Everyone had plans for her, including him. Though his would have to wait until Thuria set. Making love in a wadi was not very practical, especially with Slavers watching.

  Instead they waited, while Thuria hurtled overhead. SinBad noticed several pugmarks in the sandy wadi, one quite large. He pointed them out to the young nomad. “Ba’ath?”

  “Two ba’aths,” she replied. “Mother and cub.”

  “You can tell that from these tracks?”

  “Yes.” Pretty Bottom read the spoor as if it were a sensor readout. “The mother was teaching the cub to hunt. She trapped a young gazelle against the bank of the wadi, where they played with it for awhile. Then they killed it, and went off that way, carrying the dead gazelle.”

  Looking closer, SinBad saw the smaller prints among the pugmarks, jumbled and frantic, as the terrified gazelle bounded about before being killed and eaten. Like the moropus they had for breakfast.

  Thuria set. By now the east wind had fallen, leaving him totally becalmed. Too bad. He would not start for Kaol today. Luckily, he had someone to occupy his time. Loosening his loincloth, he ran a hand up under her fringed buckskins.

  Pretty Bottom arched a dark eyebrow. “What? You want more?”

  “Oh, yes.” Who would not?

  She feigned surprise. “Last night you were so wary.”

  “You are even more beautiful by day.”

  “I am?” Pretty Bottom purred.

  “You know you are.” SinBad never lied to women, especially one so handy with a skinning knife.

  Pleased to have found a man who appreciated the obvious, Pretty Bottom let him lift her buckskins. This was Wife Stealing Time. Next week, it would be back to neglect and adultery.

  Before he even got started there was the boom of a shuttle breaking atmosphere. SinBad froze in mid-ravish, looking up at a silver streak falling out of the cloudless sky. This was an old Slaver trick, to leave a ship trailing in orbit, to see who broke cover when Thuria went down. And he had fallen for it.

  “What was that?” his paramour asked.

  “Nothing nice.” Rolling off her, he pushed Pretty Bottom back up against the bank. Too little, too late. He heard the whoosh of a lander settling in the long grass. What now?

  Pretty Bottom whispered, “Slavers?”

  “Probably.” Certainly not Goes Ahead, looking for a lost girlfriend to decorate. He cocked his crossbow, for all that would do against lasers and sleep gas grenades. Pretty Bottom drew her skinning knife. They waited.

  Nothing happened, at first. He sat there, clinging to his crossbow, mentally counting tals. If they were coming for him, it would be quick. Slavers did not like to linger, once Thuria had set.

  Expecting Slavers, he was shocked to have an angel flitter into view; a silver-wigged beauty, wearing glitter paint, white solar-powered wings, and a shining jeweled G-string. Silver-plated nipples shone in the sun.

  Neither he nor Pretty Bottom knew what to say. Landing in an ivory flutter of artificial flight feathers, the silver-skinned woman said, “Kaor. We come in peace.”

  Tourist. And unarmed. That much was obvious. “Kaor,” SinBad replied, setting aside his crossbow. He had to stop pointing it at pretty women. “We were going to come in peace. Then you arrived.”

  “I did not mean to interrupt,” the silver woman protested. “Please continue your copulation. I hear it is spring on this planet. What you locals call Wife Stealing Time.”

  Only if you are Crow. “Is that why you came here?”

  “Oh no.” The offworlder shook her head. “We are here to hunt.”

  “What?” asked Pretty Bottom suspiciously, still holding her knife.

  “Ba’aths.”

  SinBad grimaced. “This is the place.”

  “These are Crow hunting grounds,” Pretty Bottom pointed out. “You need to pay my people.”

  “Oh, I am not hunting.” Silver-lashed eyes rolled. “My husband is.”

  “Then he must pay.”

  “Well, I am sure he will,” the offworlder promised.

  “Now.” Pretty Bottom stood up, brushing off her buckskins, looking about. “Where is he?”

  SinBad broke cover as well, looking up over the bank, seeing a squat, shining orbital yacht, surrounded by a flickering energy fence. Their offworld guest seemed suddenly sorry to disturb their tryst. Spying on the locals was not so fun when natives started making demands.

  “Let us go.” Pretty Bottom still held the skinning knife. “I am Pretty Bottom. My husband is Alligator Stands Up, war chieftain of the Kick Belly Crow.”

  Silver-wig turned to SinBad. “Is that you?”

  Pretty Bottom laughed at the notion. “He is a Huron outcast, a sex criminal.”

  “Oh.”

  “It is Wife Stealing Time.”

  “So he stole you?” Silver-wig meant him.

  Pretty Bottom snorted. “No one stole me.”

  “And that is good?” Silver-wig did not want to make another silly mistake.

  “Of course.” There seemed to be no end to offworld foolishness. “Would you want to be stolen?”

  “No,” Silver-wig admitted.

  “Then beware,” SinBad warned. “Thuria rise is only a zode away.”

  “Thuria?”

  “Slavers,” he explained.

  “Oh. We have missiles,” she replied brightly.

  Both Red Barsoomians rolled their eyes. Pretty Bottom tucked the knife back in her boot, and went wading through the long grass toward the yacht, stopping at the sand sail to pick up her possible sack. SinBad followed, eyeing the grass tops, his crossbow out and cocked. This was ba’ath country, where your only sure warning was a twitch in the tall grass.