the night, going over for the hundredth time Traxt Cam's sketchy
recordings in another painstaking attempt to discover why and how the
other Free Trader had succeeded where the Queen's men were up against a
stone wall.

The harvesting of Koros stones was, as Dane and all those who had been
briefed from Cam's records knew, a perilous job. Though the rule of the
Salariki was undisputed on the land masses of Sargol, it was another
matter in the watery world of the shallow seas. There the Gorp were in
command of the territory and one had to be constantly alert for attack
from the sly, reptilian intelligence, so alien to the thinking processes
of both Salariki and Terran that there was, or seemed to be, no point of
possible contact. One went gathering Koros gems after balancing life
against gain. And perhaps the Salariki did not see any profit in that
operation. Yet Traxt Cam had brought back his bag of gems--somehow he had
managed to secure them in trade.

Van Rycke climbed the ramp, hurrying on into the Queen as if he would not
get back to his records soon enough. But Dane paused and looked back at
the grass jungle a little wistfully. To his mind these early morning
hours were the best time on Sargol. The light was golden, the night winds
had not yet arisen. He disliked exchanging the freedom of the open for
the confinement of the spacer.

And, as he hesitated there, two of the juvenile population of Sargol came
out of the forest. Between them they carried one of their hunting nets, a
net which now enclosed a quiet but baneful eyed captive--Sinbad being
delivered for nightly ransom. Dane was reaching for the pay to give the
captors when, to his real astonishment, one of them advanced and pointed
with an extended forefinger claw to the open port.