10 VEYADA’S INFORMATION turned out to be the most frustrating ever. His interpretation suggested to me that Benton Leck had likely walked into some kind of trap that might have been designed to get him to work cheaply on turning the investment into making Tamerians into a useful venture, but we could do nothing about it unless I applied for assistance from Asto’s army. And I didn’t know that anything in the case was serious enough to warrant that type of action. I was sure that “I have a bad feeling about this” didn’t qualify as serious enough. But I did have a bad feeling about it. Over the next few days, I could do nothing except attempt to go back to work. A gamra sitting was coming up, in which the arrangements for Melissa’s office and the arrival of other Earth delegates were goin