"Watchung to Six-Eight-Three: pilot identify yourself."
"Pilot Farradyne here, Watchung."
"Aye-firm. Watchung Five, assume command of Six, Seven, and Eight. Take alert pattern at two hundred thousand feet and stand by, Watchung Two, Three, and Four compute and take closing course on Six-Eight-Three and convoy to Landing Area Five. Farradyne, prepare to accept convoy."
"Deny, Watchung. Request reason."
"Prepare to accept inspection, Six-Eight-Three."
Farradyne growled angrily and dropped the radio formalities. "Why?" he snapped.
"You are suspected of hauling a cargo of love lotus. Prepare to stand inspection upon landing."
From down in the salon came the sound of cynical laughter. Brenner said, "We'll let your own people punish you, Farradyne. Hellblossom running, resisting arrest, kidnaping, operating with a forged license, a ship with a questionable registry!"
Farradyne knew what Brenner meant. Taped tight in his ship were Carolyn Niles, daughter of one of Mercury's leading citizens, and a schoolteacher named Hughes. There would be a lot of other witnesses prepared to perjure him into three hundred years of hard labor on Titan. He wondered how the enemy managed this; certainly they had not been prepared to lose their captured spacecraft so quickly. Yet the counter-preparations looked as though such an eventuality had been expected.
"Six-Eight-Three, respond!"