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getting scared they’d burned you.”
    “Sorry, Mom. Won’t happen again.”
    “Shee-it. Doc found him a girlfriend.”
    “Hey! You don’t have a copyright on . . . ”
    “All right. I know. Be cool. But give me a yell next time. Just so I don’t get hemorrhoids from worrying. I got it.”
    “What? The clap?”
    “Why we’re here. It’s stardust.”
    “We knew that. Why else this silly-ass double cover?”
    “Not little stardust. Not small-time stardust. Stardust big enough to rate a Family proctor in an outback Residency.”
    “You mean the fat broad?”
    “Yeah. She was here because Angel City depots distribution traffic for this whole end of The Arm. I’m talking a billion stellars’ worth a month.”
    “You’re talking out your butt. There isn’t enough ship traffic to handle that kind of smuggling.”
    “Yes there is. If you don’t really smuggle it. If you send it out from a legit source labeled as something legit. If you own the Customs people and the ships and crews and shippers . . . ”
    “Start over. You skipped chapter one.”
    “What’s Stink City known for? Besides the smell?”
    “Organic pharmaceuticals.”
    “Point for the bright boy. All the good organics they dredge out of the muck outside. The main reason Angel City is here. The Sangaree have gotten control of the whole industry. And most of the local officials.
    “They parachute the raw stardust into the swamp. The dredgers bring it in. The field traffic controllers are paid to ignore strange blips on their detection systems. The stuff gets refined here, in the best labs, then they ship it out along with the finest label organics. Their people at the other end intercept it and get it into the regular stardust channels.”
    “How did you dig that out?”
    “Ran into a man who knew. I convinced him he should tell me. Now, figuring how the Old Man works, he probably guessed most of it before he sent us out. So what does he want? The source. Us to find out where the stuff comes from before it gets here.”
    Niven frowned over the drink he had mixed while talking. “It is big, then. So huge it would take a cartel of Families . . . And you tried to tell me the Sangaree outfit here was . . . ”
    “The biggest, Doc. We just might be on the trail of the First Families themselves. And I know what I said. I was wrong.”
    “I’m thinking about retiring. We’re really in it, and that’s the only way out.”
    The Sangaree were a race few in number. They had no government in the human sense. Their major form of organization was the Family, which could be described as a corporation or boundaryless nation led by persons who were related. So-called “possessionless” Sangaree formed the working class.
    The Family was strongly elitist and laissez-faire capitalist. Sangaree cut one another’s throats almost as gleefully as they chopped up the “animal” races.
    A Family Head was an absolute dictator. His followers’ fortunes depended upon his competence. Succession was patrilineal. The existence of proctors only mildly ameliorated the medieval power structure.
    The First Families were the five or six most powerful Families. Intelligence had never accurately determined their number. As a consortium they determined racial policy and insured their own preeminence among their species.
    Very little was known of the Sangaree that the Sangaree did not want known.
    “Oh, hey,” Mouse enthused. “Don’t even joke about getting out. Not now. Not when we’ve got an opportunity like this. This might be our biggest hit ever. It’s worth any risk.”
    “That’s subject to interpretation.”
    “It is worth anything, Doc.”
    “To you, maybe.” Niven nursed his drink and tried to regain the mood he had had on arriving.
    Mouse would not let be. “So tell me about your friend. Who is she? Where did you meet her? She good-looking? She give you any? What’s she do?”
    “I ain’t telling you nothing. You birddog your