“It’s just that I rather liked our seal friends on Largess. Honest, friendly businessbeings, they seemed to me. They’re not noted for their skill as chemists. Of course, that doesn’t rule out any of a hundred other possibilities. They might have hired off-worlders to produce the stuff locally, or may just be serving as transfer agents. Go on.”

“A jar full of very high grade heroin—for traditionalists, I suppose. And scattered throughout several jars, I am mottled and shattered to say, a probably priceless quantity of a foul substance that cannot be anything but bloodhype.”

That set Hammurabi back a bit. They’d all heard rumors that the jaster traffic had been resumed. But to be confronted with the stuff in person! He thought again of his friends among the seal-beings. They’d be equally susceptible to the stuff. The fact that the drug operated on such a tremendous range of sentients greatly enhanced its value, since it could be marketed practically anyplace.

And he’d been selected to play delivery boy! He thought of the fellow who would be expected to find the blue box on another ship and his frantic efforts to locate it when he found it had been shipped to the wrong freighter.

“You separated all of it out, then, Doc?”

Japurovac gave the thranx equivalent of a mild shrug. “As I said, and with extreme care. Lucky you didn’t taste one of those bottles. And I wish you would address me as ‘Ship-healer,’ as is my right, and not as a ‘Doc.’ ”

“Sorry, D . . . Ship-healer. Didn’t you know when you signed on that humans are notorious for an addiction to nicknames and abbreviations?”

“Please, Captain. No talk of ‘addictions’ now. My insides are queased enough from handling this stuff. It is dangerously potent if taken orally, and since my olfactory organs are located on my hand-feet, extreme delicacy in handling was required to insure safety. Injection works a lot faster, but is no more deadly.”

She turned and grasped a labeled, covered vial with a truhand, switched it to the less delicate but stronger grip of a hand-foot. It contained a small quantity of a plain white powder. A thousand kilos of poisonous projector polish was less dangerous.

“That is all of it?”

“Well, perhaps I have been too positive. However, after separating out all I could, I placed the metal box and the twelve crystal jars in the sterilizer. The resultant slag was reduced to powder, remelted, and ejected out of the gravitational field of the planet via courier drone. After which I let the sterilizer bake itself for several hours, then sprayed the entire dispensary with a disinfectant designed to break down any unsealed organics. Cost me a good leather neck-strap I forgot to seal, too.”

Hammurabi took the vial gingerly. “I’ll buy you a new one, Japur. With perfume striping.”

The vial, Mal noticed, was quartzine, thick and solid. He held it up to the brilliant surgical lighting and the creamy crystals within sparkled. If a gram of the stuff was powdered and released into the ship’s ventilating system, everyone on board would be dead in a week. The unbreakable permalloy silicon dioxide vial was pressure sealed. It would take an hour’s soaking in strong acid to dissolve the bonding resins.