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part?” persisted Snake. “What else?”
    Pretorius shrugged. “You never know.”
    â€œI know you are good at your trade,” began Djibmet.
    â€œThe best,” said Snake.
    â€œThe best,” said Djibmet. “Therefore, I cannot believe that you have as little planned as you say. Are you—what is the expression?—are you holding out on us for some reason?”
    Pretorius smiled. “As a matter of fact I am.”
    â€œDo you distrust us?”
    â€œNo. At various times my life will be in each of your hands. If I distrusted any of you, I wouldn’t have accepted the assignment or solicited the aid of those assembled here.”
    â€œThen why are you unwilling to confide in us?”
    â€œBecause our next port of call is not going to meet with universal approval aboard this ship,” answered Pretorius.
    â€œOh?” said Snake.
    â€œWhere are we headed?” asked Pandora.
    â€œI’d like to know too,” said Circe.
    Pretorius took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. “We’re going to McPherson’s World.”
    â€œThere’s only one thing on McPherson’s World,” said Pandora.
    â€œA Tradertown?” suggested Ortega.
    â€œA Tradertown with the most notorious whorehouse on this side of the galaxy!” snapped Pandora.
    Circe closed her eyes and concentrated. “He’s not kidding,” she said, frowning.
    â€œA whorehouse!” repeated Snake angrily. “The most important mission in the history of the Democracy, and he’s stopping off at a whorehouse!”
    Pretorius stared at Djibmet. “You had to ask,” he said at last.

8
    The Tradertown was named for McPherson, as was the world, though no one quite remembered who he was or why he’d stopped there long enough to give the world his name. It was rumored that he’d found gold or fissionable materials there, but a couple of survey teams, three centuries apart, concluded that there was nothing worthwhile on the planet. It had some underground water (which had to be purified) and some sunny days (and one had to protect against the strong ultraviolet rays of its yellow-orange sun). There was enough vegetation to keep a few thousand herbivores alive, and enough predators to keep their herds from increasing, but most species stayed far away from the Tradertown.
    McPherson—the town, not the planet—consisted of a landing field, a boardinghouse, a message-forwarding station, a spare parts shop for the more popular types of smaller spaceships, a general store that sold everything from dry goods to medicine to antique weaponry, and then there was Madam Methuselah’s, which had a fame far out of proportion to both its size and clientele.
    From the outside it looked like a run-of-the-mill boardinghouse, with absolutely nothing special about it. The interior gave lie to that. The walls were covered with exotic and erotic art from half a hundred worlds; there was a huge, elegant bar, a trio of smaller drug dens—each accommodating a number of different races—and perhaps fifty elegant rooms, most of them hidden unobtrusively below ground level.
    It was a brothel, with females of more than a dozen races, and a few males as well. It had been patronized by dictators, kings, and celebrities from all fields of endeavor. It was even said that the legendary Santiago himself had once stopped in, though no one really believed it.
    There was one person who could have confirmed it, or definitively denied it, and that was Madam Methuselah, who was the most exotic thing about the brothel, for she had been its madam since the day it had opened some eight centuries earlier. She looked like a woman in her early twenties, though some said her eyes, which had seen so much, appeared ancient. But the madam wore no makeup, never dyed her hair or wore a wig, had not undergone cosmetic surgery or spent a day away from the brothel in half a millennium,