after lunch, and I'm going back the first thing tomorrow."

"But there's enough combat equipment on hand to outfit a private army
for every man, woman and child on Poictesme!" Conn objected. "Where are
we going to sell this?"

"Storisende spaceport. The tramp freighters are buying it for newly
colonized planets that haven't been industrialized yet. They don't pay
much, but it doesn't cost much to get it out, and I've been clearing
about three hundred sols a ton on the spaceport docks. That's not bad,
you know."

Three hundred sols a ton. A lifter went by stacked with cases of M-504
submachine guns. Unloaded, one of them weighed six pounds, and even a
used one was worth a hundred sols. Conn started to say something about
that, but then they came to the lift and were crowding onto it.

He had been in Kurt Fawzi's office a few times, always with his father,
and he remembered it as a dim, quiet place of genteel conviviality and
rambling conversations, with deep, comfortable chairs and many ashtrays.
Fawzi's warehouse and brokerage business, and the airline agency, and
the government, such as it was, of Litchfield, combined, made few
demands on his time and did not prevent the office from being a favored
loafing center for the town's elders. The lights were bright only over
the big table that served, among other things, as a desk, and the walls
were almost invisible in the shadows.

As they came down the hallway from the lift, everybody had begun
speaking more softly. Voices were never loud or excited in Kurt Fawzi's
office.