"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 look at him. "Why would your partner want to hypnotize you?" "I don't know," Dasinger said. "He hasn't admitted that he intended to do it." "Is he a criminal?" "I wouldn't say he isn't," Dasinger observed judiciously, "but I couldn't prove it." Duomart puckered her lips, staring at him thoughtfully. "What about yourself?" she asked. "No, Miss Mines, I have a very high regard for the law. I'm a simple businessman." "A simple businessman who flies his own cruiser four weeks out from the Hub into I-Fleet territory?" "That's the kind of business I'm in," Dasinger explained. "I own a charter ship company." "I see," she said. "Well, you two make an odd pair of partners...." "I suppose we do. Incidentally, has there been any occasion when you and Dr. Egavine — or you and Dr. Egavine and his servant — were alone somewhere in the ship together? For example, except when we came up here to give you further flight instructions, did he ever enter the control room?" Contents     4      5      6      7     8      9      10