king the lead
in that. Franz Veltrin and Dolf Kellton sided with Leibert, and
Fawzi's office clique had split into two factions. Judge Ledue was
maintaining strict impartiality, as befitted his judicial position.

"Why hasn't your father gotten those detectives of his to work on this
fake preacher?" Zareff wanted to know, when he and Tom Brangwyn were
able to talk to Conn alone.

"Well, they've been busy," Conn said. "Trying to keep him alive, for
one thing. You heard about the robo-bomb somebody launched at us the
day we brought the ships in, didn't you?"

"Yes, and we heard about the Nocero girl, too," Brangwyn said. "But
hasn't it ever occurred to you or your dad that this fellow that calls
himself Leibert might be mixed up with the gang that did that?"

"You suspect him, too?"

Brangwyn nodded. "I took a few audiovisuals of him, when he didn't
know it; I sent them to some different law-enforcement people over in
Morven, where he says he comes from. They never saw him before, and
couldn't find anybody who did."

"Well? He just doesn't have a police record, then."

"He says he's a preacher. Preachers don't go off in the woods by
themselves to preach; they get up in pulpits, in front of a lot of
people. Those towns over in Morven are small enough for everybody to
have known something about him. He's a fake, I tell you."

"Let me have copies of those audiovisuals, Tom. I'll see what can be
found out about him. I'm beginning to wonder about him myself. I'm
sure I've seen him, somewhere...."

When he got back to Storisende, he found that the marathon conference
on the sixth floor down at the Interplanetary Building had finally
come to an end. Everybody seemed satisfied, and apparently nobody was
going to have pistols and coffee with anybody else about it.

"We have things fixed up," his father told him. "The gang who are
building the ship out of four air-freighters are chartered as Janicot
Industries, Ltd.; they're going to specialize in chemical products.
The other company has a charter now, too. They're going to operate on
Jurgen and Horvendile. We'll sell them ships, and Alpha-Interplanetary
will put on scheduled trips to all three planets and also Koshchei.
We're getting along very nicely with them, except that everybody's
competing for technicians and skilled labor. We have two hundred more
people signed up for Koshchei. What you want to do is train as many of
them as you can for ship-operation. Alpha-Int