Vix leapt to his feet. “That must be the girl being brought!” he declared. “And we still haven’t heard from Tiorin!” “I don’t think so,” Spartak countered, and now voiced the thought which had occurred to him earlier: that the port authorities would certainly advise them of the girl’s arrival by communicator. He went to open the lock, and found Rochard had returned. “I wouldn’t have been so long,” the nervous man exclaimed, “but I thought it safer to try and reach you by communicator rather than come back. Only once you’re under Imperial requisition even the palms I can normally grease seem to be put back in their pockets.…To the point, since I did have to come here again: your brother is on his way, and if you can delay your departure one more hour he’ll join you. Uh—I can’t help wondering,” he finished in a fawning tone, “whether I may not have done you too some small service.…?” Spartak had been isolated in the environment of his order on Annanworld for so long that at first he did not get the point of this delicate probe for a gratuity.
