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. Shiva III was very understanding of the needs of Free Traders, not fussy about inspections, reports, and the like as long as omissions were repaired by paying penalties; many ships found her registration convenient.
On Finster Thorby learned another method of trading. The native fraki, known to science by a pseudo-Latin name and called "Those confounded slugs!" by the People, live in telepathic symbiosis with lemur-like creatures possessed of delicate, many-boned hands -- "telepathy" is a conclusion; it is believed that the slow, monstrous, dominant creatures supply the brains and the lemuroids the manipulation.
The planet offers beautifully carved gem stones, raw copper, and a weed from which is derived an alkaloid used in psychotherapy. What else it could supply is a matter of conjecture; the natives have neither speech nor writing, communication is difficult.
This occasions the method of trading new to Thorby -- the silent auction invented by the trading Phoenicians when the shores of Africa ran beyond the known world.
Around Sisu in piles were placed what the traders had to offer: heavy metals the natives needed, everlasting clocks they had learned to need, and trade goods the Family hoped to teach them to need. Then the humans went inside.
Thorby said to Senior Clerk Arly Krausa-Drotar, "We just leave that stuff lying around? If you did that on Jubbul, it would disappear as you turned your back
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