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transfer, and I’ll see what looks possible.”
    A large transfer-point station orbits four AUs from a star, out at the edge of its gravity well, near the transition line. No planets are nearby. The station is dimly lit against the black background of space.
    Several ships are attached to the station. One liner is approaching, and a freighter is leaving. Both glow faintly. It is a facility like hundreds of others in Human-space, serene and quiet, everything moving in accordance with a precise, computer-regulated plan.
    An explosion flashes from one of the docked liners, and debris sprays away from it into space.
    Inside the transfer-point station’s docking ring, a pair of uniformed starliner crew stand at the top of the ship’s gangway, saying the routine “Goodbye and thanks for flying with us” to the departing passengers. Their voices are flat, visages grim. The one-armed Plataean stands at stiff attention in the background, wearing a brand new ship uniform and a barely contained smile. He salutes Lag as he walks by. Lag nods and grins. “Looking sharp, young man! Do your family proud! Now, get out of here. You’ve got work to do!” The young man turns smartly about and strides away.
    Penger Trask passes by as Lag turns to leave. He extends a hand and says, “Good luck on your trip, and I hope our paths cross near Throwdart next month so we can connect on the ground.”
    Lag returns the shake firmly. “I will, I will. And if you ever find out where that missing two-and-a-quarter percent went, let me know. Sounds interesting.”
    Lag heads down the gangway with the Doctor, Senator, their wives, and others, while Trask goes back for his wife. Helton, carrying his duffel, and Bipasha, carrying nothing, walk side-by-side a little ways behind, pausing to look up and around at the lights as they fluctuate in brightness.
    “Another power system problem? Glad we made it to the station,” Bipasha says.
    “Yeah. And lucky there are some other ships docked with room to squeeze us all into, if only barely. Too bad we couldn’t both make the same one, though.”
    The lighting fluctuates more, and a distant, barely audible thump sounds amid the hubbub. They walk down the gangway together. The waiting room beyond has a couple of exits with reader boards above each listing different ships and parts of the station. They pause and face each other uncomfortably, both starting to say something, then Bipasha waving for Helton to speak first.
    “Here is where we part, I guess. Good luck with the job. Maybe you can get out to–”
    “Yes, maybe so,” she says. “We’ll see.”
    They shake hands awkwardly, then she goes one way, and he goes another.

HARBIN
    Slaves
    Helton lies face-down, stretched out in the dirt. A puff of dust blows by his face; he twitches, blinks his eyes, and squints at a reddish sun low in the sky. He starts to move, groggily, as do a few of the other people lying near him. A big brute of a man, chewing a dopestick and wearing something vaguely resembling a uniform, drags two men by their collars and roughly drops them in the dirt next to Helton. Then he walks back the way he came, as another man in similar clothing drags and drops a woman and a child. All told, about two dozen men, women, and children are scattered about, dropped like so many sandbags around the loading ramp of a small anti-grav transport, at the bottom of a dry, dusty desert basin.
    Dopestick Puffer picks up a large canister, shaped like a two-gallon fire extinguisher, and sprays a white chemical fog over the unconscious people, sweeping it back and forth as he stands on the ramp. The cloud settles over the bodies, then dissipates. “Wakey wakey, sleeping beauties!” Slaver Two thinks this is hysterical.
    The sleeping beauties start to twitch and slowly turn over, shaking heads, spitting dirt out of their mouths, sitting up or getting unsteadily to their hands and knees. Dopestick walks around, kicking passengers who aren’t