oodling bugs again--red ants with black
legs, and blue-and-green beetles. Then he saw that the psychist,
Nentrov Dard, was drinking straight 150-proof palm-rum.

"Well, tell me the worst," he said.

"Our boy's memory-obliterated," Nentrov Dard said, draining his glass
and filling it again. "And he's plastered with pseudo-memories a foot
thick. It'll be five or six ten-days before we can get all that stuff
peeled off and get him unblocked. I put him to sleep and had him
transposed to Police Terminal. I'm going there, myself, tomorrow
morning, after I've had some sleep, and get to work on him. If you're
hoping to get anything useful out of him in time to head off this
Council crisis that's building up, just forget it."

"And that leaves us right back with our old friends, the Wizard
Traders," Tortha Karf added. "And if they've decided to suspend
activities on the Kholghoor Sector, too--" He began drawing a big blue
and black spider in the middle of the pad.

Nentrov Dard crushed out his cigar, drank his rum, and got to his
feet.

"Well, good night, Chief; Vall. If you decide to wake me up before
1000, send somebody you want to get rid of in a hurry." He walked
around the deck and out the side door.

"I hope they don't," Vall said to Tortha Karf. "Really, though, I
doubt if they do. This is their chance to pick up a lot of slaves
cheaply; the Croutha are too busy to bother haggling. I'm going
through to PolTerm, now; when Dalla and Zinganna get through, tell
them to join me there."

* * * * *

On Police Terminal, he found Kostran Galth, the agent who had been
selected to impersonate Salgath Trod. After calling Zulthran Torv, the
mathematician in charge of the Computer Office and giving him the
Esaron time-line designations and Nentrov Dard's ideas about them, he
spent about an hour briefing Kostran Galth on the role he was to play.
Finally, he undressed and went to bed on a couch in the rest room
behind the office.

It was noon when he woke. After showering, shaving and dressing
hastily, he went out to the desk for breakfast, which arrived while he
was putting a call through to Ranthar Jard, at Nharkan Equivalent.

"Your idea paid off, Chief's Assistant," the Kholghoor SecReg Subchief
told him. "The slaves gave us a lot of physical description data on
the estate, and told us about new fields that had been cleared, and a
dam this Lord Ghromdour was building to flood some new rice-