"Check. Particularly since it explains so beautifully the merry-go-round they have been on so long—chasing the same packages of dope backwards and forwards so many times that the corners of the boxes got worn round. We've got to get the top men, and they're smart. Which reminds me—Morgan as Big Boss does not square up with the Morgan that you and Fairchild smacked down so easily when he tried to investigate the Hill. A loud-mouthed, chiseling politician might have a lock-box full of documentary evidence about party bosses and power deals and chorus girls and Martian tekkyl coats, but the man we're after very definitely would not."
"You're telling me?" This point was such a sore one that Samms relapsed into idiom. "The boys should have cracked that box a week ago, but they struck a knot. I'll see if they know anything yet. Tune in, Rod. Ray!" He Lensed a thought at his cousin.
"Yes, Virge?"
"Have you got a spy-ray into that lock-box yet?"
"Glad you called. Yes, last night. Empty. Empty as a sub-deb's skull—except for an atomic-powered gimmick that it took Bergenholm's whole laboratory almost a week to neutralize."
"I see. Thanks. Off." Samms turned to Kinnison. "Well?"
"Nice. A mighty smart operator." Kinnison gave credit ungrudgingly. "Now I'll buy your picture—what a man! But now—and I've got my ears pinned back—what was it you started to say about pirates?"
"Just that we have very little to go on, except for the kind of stuff they seem to like best, and the fact that even armed escorts have not been able to protect certain types of shipments of late. The escorts, too, have disappeared. But with these facts as bases, it seems to me that we could arrange something, perhaps like this...."
A fast, sleek freighter and a heavy battle-cruiser bored steadily through the inter-stellar void. The merchantman carried a fabulously valuable cargo: not bullion or jewels or plate of price, but things literally above price—machine tools of highest precision, delicate optical and electrical instruments, fine watches and chronometers. She also carried First Lensman Virgil Samms.