Hunter changed the subject. "Are you going to start talking to Boran to undo the damage Narf and Sonig have done?"
"It would be a waste of time, my boy. Val Boran's mind is already made up."
"Then what are you going to do?"
"Drink six cans of beer and go to sleep."
"I thought you had a plan."
"I have, a most excellent plan."
"What is it?"
"You'd scream like a banshee if you knew. You'll learn—if you manage to live that long."
Rockford was sound asleep an hour later, snoring gently. Hunter sat thinking, hearing the steady murmur of a voice coming from Val Boran's cabin. Sonig's voice—using every means of persuasion he could think of, at the moment capitalizing on the New Jardeen incident and Boran's withheld grief over the sister he had lost.
And the Terran Republic's representative was sprawled fat and mindless in a fog of beer fumes.