the outside clean, I see."

Konar nodded. "It was a religious relic," he said. "Found it in an
abbey." He reached into the bag he had placed on the floor.

"And here's a mental amplifier-communicator, personnel, heavy duty.
Slightly used and somewhat out of adjustment, but complete and
repairable." He withdrew a golden circlet, held it up for a moment, and
carefully laid it on the bench beside the wrecked communicator. Its
metal was dented, but untarnished.

"Don't want to get rough with it," he explained. "Something might be
loose inside."

He reached again into the bag. "And a body shield, protector type, model
GS/NO-10C. Again, somewhat used, but repairable. Even has its
nomenclature label."

"Good enough." Meinora held a hand out and accepted the heavy belt. He
turned it about in his hands, examining the workmanship. Finally, he
looked closely at the long, narrow case mounted on the leather.

"See they counted this unit fairly well. Must have been using it."

"Yes, sir. It's operative. The Earl wore it all the time. Guess he kept
up his reputation as a fighter that way. Be pretty hard to nick anyone
with a sword if he had one of these running. And almost any clumsy
leatherhead could slash the other guy up if he didn't have to worry
about self-protection."

"I know." Meinora nodded quickly. "Seen it done. Anything more turned
up?"

"One more thing. This hand weapon came from the same abbey I got the
communicator from. I'd say it was pretty hopeless, too." Konar picked a
flame-scarred frame from his bag, then reached in again, to scoop up a
few odd bits of metal.

"It was in pieces when we picked it up," he explained. "They kept it
clean, but they couldn't get the flame pits out and reassembly was a
little beyond them."

"Beyond us too, by now." Meinora looked curiously at the object. "Looks
as though a couple of the boys shot it out."

"Guess they did, sir. Not once, but several times." Konar shrugged.
"Malendes tells me he picked up several like this." He cocked his head
to one side.

"Say, chief, how many of these things were kicking around on this
unlucky planet?"

Meinora grimaced. "As far as we can determine, there were ninety-two
operative sets originally issued. Each of the original native operatives
was equipped with a mentacom and a body shield. Each of the eight
operating teams had a communicator and three hand weapons, and the
headquarters group had a flier, three communicators, a field