Astounding Science Fiction, August 1955 (British Edition) — page 102: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

100 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION “Zinganna, I’m going to tell you something that is being kept from the public,”’ he said. ““By doing so, I will make it necessary for us to detain you, at least for a few days. I hope you will forgive me, but I think you would forgive me less if I didn’t tell you.” ‘“Something’s happened to him,” she said, her eyes widening and her body tensing. Yee, Zinganna. At about 2010, this evening,” he said, “Councilman Salgath was murdered.” 7 ‘“Oh!”? She leaned back in the chair, closing her eyes. ‘““He’s dead?” Then, again, statement instead of question: ““He’s dead!” For a long moment, she lay back in the chair, as though trying to reorient her mind to the fact of Salgath Trod’s death, while Vall and Dalla sat watch- ing her. Then she stirred, opened her eyes, looked at the cigarette in her fingers as though she had never seen \it before, and leaned forward to stuff it into an ash receiver. “Who did it?” she asked, the Stone Age savage who had been her ancestor not ten generations ago peeping out of her eyes. ‘The men who actually used the needlers are dead,”’ Vall told her. “‘I killed a couple of them myself. We still have to find the men who planned it. I’d_ hoped you’d want to help us do that, Zinganna.” | He side-glanced to Dalla again; she nodded. The relationship between Zinganna and Salgath Trod hadn't been purely business with her; there had been some real affection. He told her what had happened, and when he reached the point at which Salgath Trod had called Tortha Karf to confess complicity in the slave trade, her lips tightened and she nodded. “I was afraid it was something like that,”’ she said. “For the last few days, well, ever since the news about the slave trade got out, he’s been worried about something. I’ve always thought somebody had some kind of a hold over him. Different times in the past, he’s done things so far against his own political best interests that I’ve had to believe he was being forced into them. Well, this time they tried to force him too far. What then?” Vall continued the story. “So we’re keeping this hushed up, for a while. The way we're letting it out, Salgath Trod is still alive, on Police Terminal, talking under narco-hypnosis,”’ She smiled savagely. “‘And they'll get frightened, and frightened men do foolish things,”’ she finished. She hadn’t been a politician’s mistress for nothing. ““What can I do to help?” ‘ ‘Tell us everything you can,”’ he said. “‘Maybe we can be able to take such actions as we would have taken if Salgath Trod had lived to talk to us.” “Yes, of course.’ She got another cigarette from the case Vall had laid on the table. “I think, though, that you’d better give me a narco-hypnosis. You want to be able to depend on what I’m going to tell you, and I want to be able to remember things exactly.” Vall nodded approvingly and turned to Dalla. “Can you handle this, yourself?’ he asked. “‘There’s an audio-visual recorder on now; here’s everything you need.” He opened the drawers in the table to show her the narco-hypnotic equipment. “And the phone has a whisper mouthpiece; you can call out without worrying about your message P P y yins connie DOs Coma