taking a stone from the box in front of him and throwing it away. Only
one stone remained. "One more hundred to pay."

One of the blue-jacketed plantation clerks made a tally mark; his
companion counted out coins, ten and ten and ten.

Dosu Golan, the plantation manager, tapped impatiently on his polished
boot leg with a thin riding whip.

[Illustration:]

"I don't like this," he said, in another and entirely different
language. "I know, chattel slavery's an established custom on this
sector, and we have to conform to local usages, but it sickens me to
have to haggle with these swine over the price of human beings. On
the Zarkantha Sector, we used nothing but free wage-labor."

"Migratory workers," the guard captain said. "Humanitarian
considerations aside, I can think of a lot better ways of meeting the
labor problem on a fruit plantation than by buying slaves you need for
three months a year and have to feed and quarter and clothe and doctor
the whole twelve."

"Twenty hundreds of _obus_," the clerk who had been counting the money
said. "That is the payment, is it not, Coru-hin-Irigod?"

"That is the payment," the slave dealer replied.

The clerk swept up the remaining coins, and his companion took them
over and put them in an iron-bound chest, snapping the padlock. The