pening had been cut, shielded on each side from the
shifting sands by an up-curving lip. A ramp led down into darkness.

"You will find your cargo down there. Also enough trundle-sleds to go
around," Orkap explained. "The cargo is crated. The crates must remain
intact. Is that understood?"

It was understood.

Their sudden mutual suspicion a pall worse than the heat, the Ophiuchans
descended the ramp. They needed the money or they wouldn't be here. The
money meant more to them than anything: this was no time to be
far-sighted. Yet one of them was a spy for the Galactic League--Johnny
Mayhem.

One of them, but which?

Pandit made a quick estimate of the number of crates. They were stacked
neatly against one wall, each about four feet by four by four. And from
the size of them, a single crate would fill the cargo bay of each of the
jets. Pandit made a rough estimate. Two dozen crates, perhaps. In the
dim light it was hard to tell. Two dozen crates, six jets, twelve
Ophiuchans. Four trips for each jet. A half hour to load, ten minutes to
unload, an hour and a half by jet to the spacefield. Three hours and
forty minutes, round trip. Say, four hours. Four times four, sixteen.
Sixteen hours of steady work for eighty credits. No time for mystery or
suspicion. Barely time for mistrust....

"You, there!" a voice called. "What are you doing?"

It was one of the other Ophiuchans, quite the biggest of the lot. Pandit
had seen him outside and remembered his name. He was Raj Shiva, a tall,
muscular, swarthy Ophiuchan, with small, alert, suspicious eyes and a
livid scar alongside his jaw.

"Nothing," Pandit said. "Nothing."

"No? The others are loading already. I'll be watching you."

For a hundred credits, Pandit thought furiously, but said nothing. Sria
touched his shoulder. "I have one of the trundle-sleds," she said.
"Let's get about it."

"Right," said Pandit.

Raj Shiva watched them a few moments longer, then drifted away with his
own partner. It took Pandit and Sria, sweating copiously in the
tremendous heat, a few minutes less than half an hour to load one of the
crates aboard their jet. Three of the other ships were already airborne,
whining away toward the spacefield.

Pandit looked at the crate. There were no markings on it anywhere. The
wood looked new, but that meant absolutely nothing. In the dry heat of
the Empty Places, wood would last a century, a millennium. They could
not tell how old it was.