"Now let me tell you about these rings." He held up his right hand, to display what appeared to be a medium-sized onyx ring on the middle finger. "This ring is a static wave transmitter and another very able computer. It responds to voice, touch, instruction from a cranial implant and tiny muscle movements. Hence it can be controlled in several alternative ways, some of them very swift. It transmits the wearer's wishes to the slave-imbedded robiot systems I've just described. All slave systems in range log into all rings they detect with their own unique code. The ring translates that into identities which it supplies to each person's cranial implant. From there, obviously, it is easy for any wearer to identify a particular subject or group.

"Maltby, up here in front of me."

Caris climbed the three steps to the stage and stood at attention in front of him. "Now, Maltby, if I told you that I would like you to masturbate to orgasm for my entertainment, but that nobody would penalise you in any way if you didn't - except that I would think bad things about you - would you do it?"

"As you state it probably not, sir."

"No. Hardly surprising. But the bad things I think are related to you as I've just described, and my ring sends them on. Now this is point ten on a three hundred point scale. It's only theoretically three hundred. All the top hundred and eighty are fatal."

He appeared to do nothing but frown at her slightly, but suddenly Caris was consumed with appalling agony. It seemed as though she was bathed in fire. She couldn't control her posture, and huddled into herself, moaning. The middie said "Up to fifteen..." and suddenly it wasn't fire, it was liquid lead, and her bones were being splintered by a hundred small hammers. Caris howled and fell to the ground, writhing.

"Twenty..." Twenty was indescribable. Caris couldn't scream, she could barely breathe. It was agony such as she had never even believed possible. Indeed, if it had come via physical damage, she was fairly certain she would have died within seconds. Suddenly it stopped and completely vanished. She lay, dazed, on the stage. The middie's voice reached her. "Of course we can do that to any one of you, just by wanting to, as I did to Maltby. More, the ring connects to the ship's sub-space TX and as I told you the slave system has a sub-space receiver, so we can do that to you - and far, far worse - instantaneously anywhere in the universe. Get the picture?"

Caris did, and nearly groaned aloud. Then he chuckled and she realised that she had in fact groaned aloud. They could cause her utterly unbearable pain and who knew what other problems anywhere - literally anywhere in the universe - at will. She wished sincerely that she had made them shoot her, rather than letting them put the robiot into her.

All too late. She was now, and for life, a slave of the Wolf. And there was no escape. There was an involuntary moan from somewhere along the line of women. Caris glanced up at the faces. They all had the point as well. The middie, contrastingly, looked very cheerful. "OK Maltby. On your feet in front of me. Caris stood hurriedly and came to attention.

The middie hooked a solitary chair from the back of the stage and sat down at the front, in profile to the women still at attention below, with Caris a few feet before him. "OK, Maltby. Same as before. Masturbate to orgasm when I say begin. Only bad thoughts if you don't, but this time they will range from fifty to seventy."

"Sir, is the range..."

"It's an arithmetic progression, Maltby. Fifty is five times as bad as ten. On ten you don't think that's possible. But when you feel fifty, you realise it is. Anything more than seventy is liable to affect the sanity of anybody who is at all vulnerable. Over ninety is a danger to the sanity of anybody at all."

She stared at him dumbly. He nodded, smiled a most offensive smile, and said casually "Begin. No rush, make it entertaining."

Caris never did decide whether to obey or not. By the time she had posed herself the question, she realised the fingers of her right hand were already caressing her inner lips. Something a little lower down in her consciousness had decided exactly what should be done about that order - and that was instant and absolute obedience. Thinking about the total power over her that the Wolf now held, she suspected that instant and absolute obedience would need to be her response to a lot of things from now on. The prospect made her shiver.

Caris Maltby was a very courageous woman, and over her years in the service had proved that repeatedly. However, she was clear in her mind that earning yourself mind-shattering agony attempting to resist what you knew in advance you would not be able to resist, with nothing to be gained by it, wasn't courageous it was simple idiocy.

And it was indeed clear that there was no possibility of resistance. Endless unlimited pain of intensities that physical abuse couldn't equal would make anybody obey eventually - probably very quickly - that was certain, so any resistance would be to invite mind-bending agony for no purpose at all.

So in this case, the options were to do this vile and humiliating thing at once, or suffer appalling pain for however long until she had to give in - and then do the same vile and humiliating thing with nothing gained.

For a few seconds she thought that through, found no hole in the reasoning, and in an agony of shame began to masturbate for this boy's amusement.

For the next few minutes, scarlet with embarrassment, she worked diligently at herself trying to generate some response. Nothing doing. Although that was barely surprising in the circumstances, as the time went on she was starting to worry about punishment, which naturally wasn't helping.

After a while, the middie stirred in his chair. "Not going well?"

Caris realised that she was genuinely nervous of him. Some punk kid in a green uniform. Probably nineteen, certainly no more. It appalled her. But what he could do to her... "No sir. I'm sorry sir, I am trying."

He shrugged. "OK I'll help you out. Hands on your head."

"Yes sir." Caris obeyed instantly, though the prospect of being groped by this singularly unattractive character was horribly unpleasant. But instead of reaching for her, he leaned back in his chair again and just focused his eyes on her. She felt a tingle, then a wash of sensation. She gasped, then gasped again. The boy was resting his arm casually on the arm of the chair. He extended one finger, and started moving it back and forth, only an inch. The sensation in her vagina was of something large and somehow electrically charged moving smoothly inside her. She almost broke position, saw him scowl and hurriedly straightened, hands glued firmly to her head.

He seemed to be concentrating harder, and within seconds a range of other sensations vied for her attention. Something else, also slightly electrically charged, was stroking and very gently squeezing her clitoris and hood - or it felt like it. Something else still was warmly massaging her breasts. That, at least, she could actually look for: no sign, other than the crinkling of her areolae and the utter rigidity of her nipples.

Suddenly, she realised that she was moving her hips back and forth in rhythm to the sensations, in rhythm to the boy's cursed finger. He changed the rhythm of his finger and her hip movement altered to match. Now that was just too humiliating! She tried to stop, and he said, "Want me to make you scream this way, or the other way, Maltby?"

Well put like that... "This way, sir, please."

"So stop it."

"Yes sir. Sorry sir."

She'd apologised? She was amazed at herself. Then forgot it and gave in to the feelings pouring through her. After another minute or two the thought occurred to her that she must look like a dancer in a sleazy bar, her hips thrusting rhythmically and hard. Then she realised that a dancer would not be likely to have juices running freely down the insides of both legs.

He'd brought her up slowly - she was certain he could have finished it much faster - but she was now reaching the stage where nothing in the universe could hold back the avalanche that was imminent. Then he slowed down his movements, and at the same time the sensations in her sex became markedly less intense. She gasped. She tried pushing harder, squeezing, but there was nothing there to press on. She struggled with dignity for a second. Dignity drowned in desperation. "Please... sir. Sir... would, would the midshipman care to... to move his finger just a little faster? Please?"

The midshipman smirked, and she hated him - and herself for abasing herself like that - then he did speed up, and everything suddenly became more vivid, more intense, more... and it came on her in a rush, and the world exploded into an orgasm the like of which she had never, never in her life experienced. She wasn't normally a shouter, but this time she yelled her head off rapturously as she came like a volcano. And came, and came, and came.