ates or a
particularly obstreperous prisoner being led to a medieval solitary
confinement cell. They're not pretty, but they're _solid_.

Jack Ravenhurst went into her own room after flashing me a rather hurt
smile that was supposed to indicate her disappointment in not being
allowed to go nightclubbing. I gave her a big-brotherly pat on the
shoulder and told her to get plenty of sleep, since we had to be up
bright and early in the morning.

Once inside my own room, I checked over my luggage carefully. It had
been brought there from the spaceport, where I'd checked it before
going to Ravenhurst's Raven's Rest, on orders from Ravenhurst himself.
This was one of several rooms that Ravenhurst kept permanently rented
for his own uses, and I knew that Jack kept a complete wardrobe in her
own rooms.

There were no bugs in my luggage--neither sound nor sight spying
devices of any kind. Not that I would have worried if there had been;
I just wanted to see if anyone was crude enough to try that method of
smuggling a bug into the apartment.

The door chime pinged solemnly.

I took a peek through the door camera and saw a man in a bellboy's
uniform, holding a large traveling case. I recognized the face, so I
let him in.

"The rest of your luggage, sir," he said with a straight face.

"Thank you very much," I told him. I handed him a tip, and he popped
off.

This stuff was special equipment that I hadn't wanted Ravenhurst or
anybody else to get his paws into.

I opened it carefully with the special key, slid a hand under the
clothing that lay on top for camouflage, and palmed the little
detector I needed. Then I went around the room, whistling gently to
myself.

The nice thing about an all-metal room is that it's impossible to hide
a self-contained bug in it that will be of any use. A small, concealed
broadcaster can't broadcast any farther than the walls, so any bug has
to have wires leading out of the room.

I didn't find a thing. Either Ravenhurst kept the room clean or
somebody was using more sophisticated bugs than any I knew about. I
opened the traveling case again and took out one of my favorite
gadgets. It's a simple thing, really: a noise generator. But the noise
it generates is non-random noise. Against a background of "white,"
purely random noise, it is possible to pick out a conversation, even
if the conversation is below the noise level, simply because
conversation is patterned. But this little generato