fully into one of his coat pockets, brought the pouch he had taken
from Egavine out of the other pocket.

"Now, doctor," he said, "let's talk. I'm unhappy about this. I
discovered you were carrying this thing around before we left Mezmiali,
and I had a sample of its contents analyzed. I was told it's a hypnotic
with an almost instantaneous effect both at skin contact and when
inhaled. Care to comment?"

"I do indeed!" Egavine said frigidly. "I have no intention of denying
that the instrument is a hypnotic spray. As you know, I dislike guns and
similar weapons, and we are engaged in a matter in which the need to
defend myself against a personal attack might arise. Your assumption,
however, that I intended to employ the spray on you just now is simply
ridiculous!"

"I might be chuckling myself," Dasinger said, "if Quist hadn't had the
sap halfway out of his pocket as soon as you reached for your lapel. If
I'd ducked from the spray, I'd have backed into the sap, right? There's
a little too much at stake here, doctor. You may be telling the truth,
but just in case you're nourishing unfriendly ideas--and that's what it
looks like to me--I'm taking a few precautions."

Dr. Egavine stared at him, his mouth set in a thin, bitter line. Then
he asked, "What kind of precautions?"

Dasinger said, "I'll keep the hypnotic and Quist's bag of dirty tricks
until we land. You might need those things on the planet but you don't
need them on shipboard. You and I'll go up to the control section now to
give Miss Mines her final flight directions. After that, you and Quist
stay in this cabin with the door locked until the ship has set down. I
don't want to have anything else to worry about while we're making the
approach. If my suspicions turn out to be unjustified, I'll apologize
... after we're all safely back in the Hub."

* * * * *

"What was your partner looking so sour about?" Duomart Mines inquired a
little later, her eyes on the flight screens. "Have a quarrel with him?"

Dasinger, standing in the entry to the little control cabin across from
her, shrugged his shoulders.

"Not exactly," he said. "Egavine tried to use a hypno spray on me."

"Hypno spray?" the young woman asked.

"A chemical which induces an instantaneous hypnotic trance in people.
Leaves them wide open to suggestion. Medical hypnotists make a lot of
use of it. So do criminals."

She turned away from the control console to lo