Scowling, Herndon said, "You and Mardlin are probably in league. We have to take his word for what he brings us—but always, three or four of the stones are defective. We believe he buys, say, forty stones from you, pays the three hundred twenty thousand stellors over to you from the account we provide, and then takes three or four from the batch and replaces them with identical but defective stones worth a hundred stellors or so apiece. The profit to him is better than twenty thousand stellors a voyage.
"Or else," Herndon went on, "You deliberately sell him defective stones at eight thousand stellors. But Mardlin's no fool, and neither are we."
"What do you want to know?" the Vyaporan asked.
"How many functional starstones are included in the current consignment?"
Sweat poured down Brennt's face. "Thirty-nine," he said after a long pause.
"And did you also supply Mardlin with some blanks to substitute for any of these thirty-nine?"
"N-no," Brennt said.
"Very good," said Herndon. He smiled. "I'm sorry to have seemed so overbearing, but we had to find out this information. Will you accept my apologies and shake?"
He held out his hand. Brennt eyed it uncertainly, then took it. With a quick inward twitch Herndon jabbed a needle into the base of the other's thumb. The quick-acting truth-drug took only seconds to operate.
"Now," Herndon said, "the preliminaries are over. You understand the details of our earlier conversation. Tell me, now: how many starstones is Mardlin paying you for?"