that you weren’t commerce-raiding. If I’d had any notion that
they weren’t telling the truth. I’d have listened for clues to tell
me why they weren’t. But it never entered my head. And now
it’s too late; all I can do is guess.”
“You must have heard something. Something you don’t re-
member consciously. I can guess, too, but it’s your guess that’s
important. You were listening to them; I wasn’t. Try, Don.”
“Well,” Sweeney said, “maybe they didn’t know that what
they were saying was untrue. There’s no law that says a Port
cop has to be told the truth by his bosses. They’re back on
Earth; I was on the Moon, and so were they. And they
sounded pretty convinced; the subject kept coming up, all the
time, just casually, as if everybody knew about it. They all
believed that Ganymede was raiding passenger liners as far
m as the orbit of Mars. It was a settled fact. That’s how I
heard it.”
“That fits,” Mike said. Nevertheless, she was not looking at
Sweeney; instead, she bent her head farther down over the rim
of the Gouge, her hands locked together before her in dim
space, until her small breasts were resting lightly on the rail-
ing. Sweeney took a long breath. The effluvium of the vines
suddenly seemed anything but lulling.
“Tell me, Don,” she said. “When did you hear the cops
begin to talk this subject up? For the first time, I mean?”.
His veering attention snapped back into the frigid center of
his being so suddenly that it left behind a bright weal, as if a
lash had been laid across his exposed brain. Mike was dan-