“You’re sure of that?”

“The Organization is too thorough not to have had a spy in Salgath’s household.  It wasn’t Zinganna, because she’s volunteered to talk to us under narco-hyp.  So who does that leave?”

“Well, that’s different; that makes them suspects.”  The lieutenant seemed relieved.  “We’ll pump that pair out right away.”

When he got back to Tortha Karf’s office, the Chief was awake, and doodling on his notepad with his multicolor pen.  Vall looked at the pad and winced; the Chief was doodling 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.