"I was afraid it was something like that," she said. "For the last few
days, well, ever since the news about the slave trade got out, he's
been worried about something. I've always thought somebody had some
kind of a hold over him. Different times in the past, he's done things
so far against his own political best interests that I've had to
believe he was being forced into them. Well, this time they tried to
force him too far. What then?"

Vall continued the story. "So we're keeping this hushed up, for a
while. The way we're letting it out, Salgath Trod is still alive, on
Police Terminal, talking under narco-hypnosis."

She smiled savagely. "And they'll get frightened, and frightened men
do foolish things," she finished. She hadn't been a politician's
mistress for nothing. "What can I do to help?"

"Tell us everything you can," he said. "Maybe we can be able to take
such actions as we would have taken if Salgath Trod had lived to talk
to us."

"Yes, of course." She got another cigarette from the case Vall had
laid on the table. "I think, though, that you'd better give me a
narco-hypnosis. You want to be able to depend on what I'm going to
tell you, and I want to be able to remember things exactly."

Vall nodded approvingly and turned to Dalla.

"Can you handle this, yourself?" he asked. "There's an audio-visual
recorder on now; here's everything you need." He opened the drawers in
the table to show her the narco-hypnotic equipment. "And the phone has