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Once the transaction is completed, subsequent events pass into the jurisdiction of the authorities. Our business is to sell, not to judge.”
    “But he left before the bidding closed,” Flinx mused. “Then it’s conceivable he could have outbid the woman who bought me?”
    “Naturally, that’s possible.”
    “You can’t remember anything else about him?”
    Mormis pursed his lips in disapproval. “After twelve years? I think it’s remarkable I’ve remembered what I have. If you will entertain a hypothesis, I would say that, considering the limited bidding for you, the fellow looked on you as an investment.”
    Flinx didn’t reply. He was thinking. A very large human, prematurely white-maned, gold ring in one ear . . . He grimaced. It wasn’t much to go on.
    “I need more information.” Pip, aroused from his nap, poked his head out.
    Mormis started. “By the chains of the sky, there it is!”
    “There what is?” a puzzled Flinx wondered.
    “Your quest is impossible, young master, but I will not dissuade you. That—that is the other thing.” He was pointing at Pip. Intrigued, the minidrag stuck a questioning tongue out at the slaver. Ab sang on in the background.
    “It is the second one I have seen. The other . . . the other rode on the shoulder of the bidder who ran. I swear it would be the same creature, save that I think his was smaller!”
    Flinx’s neatly organized thoughts collapsed like a bridge whose foundation had failed. In their place turmoil reigned.
    So far as he knew, Pip was the only Alaspinian minidrag on Moth. If another lived on the winged world, he was sure he would have learned of it by now. Suppose Pip was the same minidrag which Mormis insisted had ridden his would-be buyer’s shoulder? That implied that for Flinx to have ended up with the flying snake was a coincidence too extreme to be believed. Could his unsuccessful purchaser have planted Pip in the alley where Flinx eventually discovered him, for Flinx to find?
    If that was what had actually happened, it indicated much more than a casual interest in Flinx, from a person not connected with Nuaman Enterprises. An employee of his aunt’s? But to what end, what purpose?
    I will go mad, he silently screamed.
    “A name,” he demanded, “give me a name, Char Mormis!”
    The slaver recoiled at the youth’s violence. “I told you, he never voiced one. Nor could I tell where he was from. I recall no distinctive accent. Beyond his size and the earring, I can tell you nothing.”
    “I understand, I understand,” Flinx said carefully, trying to control himself. Words stormed through his brain.
    Alaspin, Alaspin, old friends a-claspin.
    “Recipe for salad dressing . . . two SCCAM bars without messing.” Ab rambled nonsensically. “Shirted on conclusion of the composition, wise not to bear a cockatrice,” the alien finished. He continued in an unknown language.
    When Flinx finally got his raging thoughts under control, he forced himself to speak slowly. “What would you do if you were in my place?” he asked the slaver. “I value your advice.”
    “Were I in your position,” Mormis instructed him through thoughtfully steepled fingers, “I would go to wherever home is, return to your work, and save your money and possibly your sanity.”
    “Next suggestion.”
    “Assuming you have unlimited time and funds, young master, I would go to Alaspin. That’s where your little beast comes from, is it not?” Mormis extended a paternal hand in Pip’s direction, but drew it back hastily when Pip hissed sharply at him. “If the creature is as rare as it is reputed to be, and as dangerous . . .”
    “It is,” Flinx assured him.
    “. . . then you might have a chance of locating one other who once also kept one.”
    So, Flinx thought, it had come to this: a search for a man who twelve or so years ago had appeared on Moth with a minidrag on his shoulder. A man who might never have been to Alaspin but who might have