“Are you deliberately trying to make me imprison you?”
Weinbaum said, gritting his teeth. “Or is this just a stunt, designed to show me that my own bureau is full of leaks?”
“It could turn into that,” Dana admitted. “But it hasn’t, yet. Robin, I’ve been as honest with you as I’m able to be.
You’ve had nothing but square deals from me up to now.
I wouldn’t yellow-screen you, and you know it. If this un-known outfit has this information, it might easily have gotten it from where it hints that it got it: from the field.”
“Impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because the information in question hasn’t even reached my own agents in the field yetit couldn’t possibly have leaked as far as Hammersmith II or anywhere else, let alone to the Three Ghosts system! Letters have to be carried on ships, you know that. If I were to send orders by ultrawave to my Three Ghosts agent, he’d have to wait three hundred and twenty-four years to get them. By ship, he can get them in a little over two months. These particular orders have only been under way to him five days. Even if somebody has read them on board the ship that’s carrying them, they couldn’t possibly be sent on to the Three Ghosts any faster than they’re traveling now.”
Dana nodded her dark head. “All right. Then what are we left with but a leak in your headquarters here?”
“What, indeed,” Weinbaum said grimly. “You’d better tell me who signed this letter of yours.”
“The signature is J. Shelby Stevens.”
Weinbaum switched on the intercom. “Margaret, look in the business register for an outfit called Interstellar Information and find out who owns it.”