"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.