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be questioned again, Captain Racety receives a message to hold the two for the Department of Security (DepSec). |
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Meanwhile, the Squire of Fife tells the other Great Squires about the recent events on Florina and speculates about their meaning and the actions involving the Spatio-analyst that lie behind them. He suggests that one of the Great Squires intercepted the Spatio-analyst, intended to blackmail the other Squires, kept the Spatio-analyst around for further information, and used a psycho-probe on him before transporting him to Florina where he could be kept safely and checked periodically. Fife believes that his earlier conference scared off the blackmailer. He tells them that officers loyal to him have taken over the Navy and that he is taking control of a united Sark. Rik, Valona, and the Townman are in his hands. What he does not know is that the DepSec man bringing in the Townman is a Trantorian agent. |
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The Great Squire of Steen flees to the Trantorian Embassy to ask for Trantorian intervention in return for Trantorian participation in the kyrt trade, but Abel refuses, suggesting instead that he will ask to interview the Spatio-analyst, holding possession of the Townman as a threat to Fife. But at the spaceport Terens enters Lady Samia's car at her invitation. In a mad moment he kisses her just as a pursuing car catches up and Trantorian agents take a picture of them embracing before they make off with him. |
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Abel blackmails Fife into a meeting by threatening to release the picture, a threat that can work only in Sark's sick social system. Steen, who has gone with Abel, accuses Fife of being the guilty Great Squire. Abel questions Rik and asks what he remembers. The only thing Rik can remember is the word "Fife," then a man named Fife looking down at him. Fife, whose legs are much shorter than his torso, gets down from his chair to demonstrate that he could not have looked down at a seated man. |
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Terens, who is present in trimensic personification, is questioned by Junz about the Squires who might have come to the village where he was Townman to keep track of Rik. Terens cannot remember any Squires or any patrollers who exhibited an undue interest. Then Valona points out that Terens was the only one who knew everything and watched everything. Terens admits that he was the psycho-prober. He had been temporary traffic manager at the spaceport when the Spatio-analyst landed, had identified himself as the Squire of Fife, had sent the blackmail letter, and had used a psychic probe to remove the anxiety from the surface layer of the Spatio-analyst's mind. But because Rik was a Spatio-analyst, the anxiety went much deeper, and the probe dug out |
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