And while they were studying the rule book, they studied the history books as well. They realized that before Man had turned to conquering and exploiting the races he had found among the stars, he had put in long centuries of practice back on his home planet. Their leader, a gold-feathered humanoid from Morioth II, found that he felt a special empathy toward the Amerinds, which had been methodically decimated on one of Man’s last home-world frontiers. He took the name of Sitting Bull, though he was physiologically incapable of sitting and had no idea what a bull was, gave every member of his band an Indian name (oddly enough, Crazy Horse was the only other one derived from the Sioux), adopted certain practices of the Plains Indians, and named the group the Great Sioux Nation. Before long he had instilled in them the conviction that it was their destiny to adjust the balance of power on the Inner Frontier, while realizing a handsome profit in the process. They would commit no crime against any race except Man; they would accept no commission from any race except Man; and they would use no weapons against Man except those he had created himself.

Once Orpheus had written them up, neglecting to mention that they were aliens (though he revised it some years later), most of his audience thought they were a band of fanatics bent on revenge for injustices that had been perpetrated on the Amerinds in aeons past. Others held that they were a group of misguided idealists out to redress an imagined grievance on behalf of a small branch of humanity that had long since been exterminated or assimilated. Only the handful of people who had actually had dealings with them knew that they were simply alien outlaws and opportunists, trying their best to fit into a frontier culture that they could never fully comprehend.

But whatever the Great Sioux Nation’s motivation, its efficiency was never in question. Sitting Bull’s headquarters were on the mining world of Diamond Strike, some twenty-five miles south of Mother Lode, the planet’s sole Tradertown. Through him, one could purchase contracts for anything from human contraband to human life.

One could also purchase information, which was why the Swagman had instructed Virtue MacKenzie’s navigational computer to lay in a course for Diamond Strike.

Two days later Virtue set the ship down at the tiny spaceport just outside of Mother Lode. It was midmorning, and the distant sun glowed a dull orange through the heat-haze that blanketed the area.

The Swagman promptly walked to a local garage, where he spent the better part of ten minutes haggling with the proprietor over the rental price of a very old landcar.