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the floor with astonishment.
    ‘Yes.’ Don was critical. ‘A drain you used to take the overspill of oil during the sampling of the barrels for analysis, perhaps?’
    ‘There was some oil spillage,’ agreed Ren. ‘But I don’t see—’
    ‘Where does the drain lead?’
    ‘To the river, I should hope.’
    Seconds later he was running across the broad forecourt toward the river, a sudden suspicion in his mind. The banks were complex with piers and moorings and wharves, but hard against the bank protruded one particular pipe whose end even now drained black dregs from the disastrous fire. The marks of a coupling that had been placed over the pipe’s end were plainly visible—the coupling itself was gone, along with the craft that undoubtedly had borne it.
    Angrily Ren scanned the river. The slow drift of barges and ships—left toward the spaceport and right toward the shipping lanes and the sea—was a complex movement that defied analysis. The number of barges and ships provided too much information for Ren to be able to determine which craft might be equipped with couplings to hold against his particular drain—and discharge tonnage quantities of oxidant under pressure into the interior of the warehouse. Here was plain evidence of sabotage, but no proof of the sort that could be used to point a finger at Dion-daizan.
    , ‘It was a honey of a scheme,’ Ren said later in grudging admiration. ‘We’ll never convince Di Irons of the truth—’
    Pictor Don had himself lowered on a cradle down to the entrance of the pipe. Here he explored with an instrument.
    ‘The water from the hosedown has washed out all real evidence,’ he said. ‘But I’d guess somebody’s been feeding pure oxygen up this pipe—and I’d say the probability was high that it was obtained by boiling off liquid oxygen.’
    ‘And the ignition?’ asked Ren.
    ‘They wouldn’t need to bother. The oil would ignite spontaneously as the oxygen concentration went up. You’ve been rather cleverly sabotaged, Tito.’
    ‘And no prizes for guessing by whom,’ said Ren morosely.
    ‘I thought you said there was no tonnage oxygen available on Roget?’
    ‘There are no plants that we’re aware of, Pictor. Native industry isn’t that far advanced. But I’m wondering if there aren’t oxygen facilities in Castle Magda. A good Terran technician supplied with the sort of money the spaceport dues provide shouldn’t have too much trouble building a liquid oxygen plant—or any other technical facility, when you come to think of it.’
    ‘But I don’t see,’ said Catuul Gras, ‘how it could be known that putting something up that particular pipe would result in a fire in our warehouse. There are hundreds of similar pipes to choose from. In any case, the drain at the other end of the pipe might not have been in the right position.’
    ‘I think I know how that was decided,’ said Ren. ‘Somebody worked out the details of that episode from inside the warehouse.’ He indicated the gang of slaves now filing back into the warehouse compound ready to start the work of demolition and clearance.
    ‘If the Imaiz could bring Zinder to Terran graduate standard, how many other slaves has he similarly educated and then resold? It’s slightly unnerving to think that we could have one or two graduate chemists working as bondslaves in our establishments. Think what an effective fifth column that would make. Is it possible, Catuul, that we’ve acquired some slaves the Imaiz might have trained?’
    ‘It’s possible. The Imaiz buys and sells many slaves, using many different auctioneers. Nobody save the prefect would have a continuous record of any single slave’s history. Dion-daizan could hold one for years and then return him to the market—and nobody would be the wiser.’
    ‘But the auctioneers keep records of their individual transactions?’
    ‘They keep all normal records by way of trade. What did you have in mind?’
    ‘I doubt Di Irons will