"I might be chuckling myself," Dasinger said, "if Quist hadn't had the sap halfway out of his pocket as soon as you reached for your lapel. If I'd ducked from the spray, I'd have backed into the sap, right? There's a little too much at stake here, doctor. You may be telling the truth, but just in case you're nourishing unfriendly ideas--and that's what it looks like to me--I'm taking a few precautions." Dr. Egavine stared at him, his mouth set in a thin, bitter line. Then he asked, "What kind of precautions?" Dasinger said, "I'll keep the hypnotic and Quist's bag of dirty tricks until we land. You might need those things on the planet but you don't need them on shipboard. You and I'll go up to the control section now to give Miss Mines her final flight directions. After that, you and Quist stay in this cabin with the door locked until the ship has set down. I don't want to have anything else to worry about while we're making the approach. If my suspicions turn out to be unjustified, I'll apologize ... after we're all safely back in the Hub." * * * * * "What was your partner looking so sour about?" Duomart Mines inquired a little later, her eyes on the flight screens. "Have a quarrel with him?" Dasinger, standing in the entry to the little control cabin across from her, shrugged his shoulders. "Not exactly," he said. "Egavine tried to use a hypno spray on me." "Hypno spray?" the young woman asked. "A chemical which induces an instantaneous hypnotic trance in people. Leaves them wide open to suggestion. Medical hypnotists make a lot of use of it. So do criminals." She turned away from the control console to look at him. "Why would your partner want to hypnotize you?" "I don't know," Dasinger said. "He hasn't admitted that he intended to do it." "Is he a criminal?" "I wouldn't say he isn't," Dasinger observed judiciously, "but I couldn't prove it." Duomart puckered her lips, staring at him thoughtfully. "What about yourself?" she asked. "No, Miss Mines, I have a very high regard for the law. I'm a simple businessman." "A simple businessman who flies his own cruiser four weeks out from the Hub into I-Fleet territory?" "That's the kind of business I'm in," Dasinger explained. "I own a charter ship company." "I see," she said. "Well, you two make an odd pair of partners...." "I suppose we do. Incidentally, has there been any occasion when you and Dr. Egavine--or you and Dr. Egavine and his servant--were alone somewhere in the ship together? For example, except when we came up here to give you further flight instructions, did he ever enter the control room?" She shook her blond head. "No. Those are the only times I've seen him." "Certain of that?" he asked. Duomart nodded without hesitation. "Quite certain!"