your native troopers catch those slavers?"

"Yes, they got them yesterday afternoon; we've had them ever since. Do
you want the whole thing just as it happened, Assistant Verkan, or
just a condensation?"

"Give me what you think it indicates, remembering that you're probably
trying to analyze a large situation from a very small sample."

"It's big, all right," Skordran Kirv said. "This gang can't number
less than a hundred men, maybe several hundred. They must have at
least two two-hundred-foot conveyers and several small ones, and bases
on what sounds like some Fifth Level Time line, and at least one air
freighter of around five thousand tons. They are operating on a number
of Kholghoor and Esaron time lines."

Verkan Vall nodded. "I didn't think it was any petty larceny," he
said.

"Wait till you hear the rest of it. On the Kholghoor Sector, this gang
is known as the Wizard Traders; we've been using that as a convenience
label. They pose as sorcerers--black robes and hood-masks covered with
luminous symbols, voice-amplifiers, cold-light auras, energy-weapons,
mechanical magic tricks, that sort of thing. They have all the Croutha
scared witless. Their procedure is to establish camps in the forest
near recently conquered Kharanda cities; then they appear to the
Croutha, impress them with their magical powers, and trade
manufactured goods for Kharanda captives. They mainly trade firearms,
apparently some kind of flintlocks, and powder."