“Who’s this?” asked Cain, holding up the holograph of a very exotic dark-haired woman with chalk-white skin.

“Altair of Altair,” answered the Sargasso Rose. “She murdered Kastartos.”

He studied the holograph. “She’s a professional killer?”

“One of the best. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of her.”

“It’s a big galaxy,” he said. “There are a lot of people I haven’t heard of.” He looked at Altair of Altair again. “Are you sure she’s human?”

“Who knows? But I’m sure she’s an assassin.”

He came to the final holograph.

“This is the man who met with Santiago?”

“Yes. His name is Socrates. I haven’t dealt with him in more than a year, but I know where to find him. We do a little business together from time to time.”

“Maybe it’s not such a big galaxy after all,” said Cain, staring at the pudgy, smiling face in the holograph.

“What do you mean?”

“I knew this man when his name was Whittaker Drum.”

“The name’s not familiar to me,” said the Sargasso Rose.

“No, I don’t suppose it would be.”

“Who is he?”

Cain smiled ironically. “The man I helped put in power back on Sylaria.”

“Will he recognize you?”

“I hope so,” answered Cain.

5.

Socrates is hard to please:

He lives in the shade of the gallows-trees;

He prays for life on bended knees—

But he’s bound for hell, is Socrates.

There weren’t a lot of people on the Inner Frontier that Black Orpheus didn’t like, but Socrates was one of them. You’d think that cutthroats and bandits and gamblers would have bothered him more, but for the most part they were pretty honest and aboveboard about what they did, and if there was one thing Black Orpheus couldn’t abide, it was a hypocrite.

Now, there are people who say that Black Orpheus must have had some respect for Socrates or he wouldn’t have given him even the single verse that he did, but Black Orpheus knew that Socrates was the ruler of an entire planet back when he was plain old Whittaker Drum—and besides, his job as he saw it was to write up the folks that he met and leave it to others to judge them.