Death Between the Stars

They asked me about it, of course, before I boarded the starship. All through the Western sector of the Galaxy, few rules are stricter than the one dividing human from nonhuman, and the little Captain of the Vesta-he was Terran, too, and proud in the black leather of the Empire's merchant-man forces-hemmed and hawed about it, as much as was consistent with a spaceman's dignity. "You see, Miss Vargas," he explained, not once but as often as I would listen to him, "this is not, strictly speaking,