"The Loki enslavements. Was that it?" I asked. "I read about it, but I
never seem to have heard of Gerrit."
"He was the mastermind. The ones who were caught, fifteen years ago,
were the underlings, but Ravick was the real Number One. He was
responsible for the enslavement of from twenty to thirty thousand
Lokian natives, gentle, harmless, friendly people, most of whom were
worked to death in the mines."
No wonder an Executive Special would put in fifteen years looking for
him. You murder your grandmother, or rob a bank, or burn down an
orphanage with the orphans all in bed upstairs, or something trivial
like that, and if you make an off-planet getaway, you're reasonably
safe. Of course there's such a thing as extradition, but who bothers?
Distances are too great, and communication is too slow, and the
Federation depends on every planet to do its own policing.
But enslavement's something different. The Terran Federation is a
government of and for--if occasionally not by--all sapient peoples of
all races. The Federation Constitution guarantees equal rights to all.
Making slaves of people, human or otherwise, is a direct blow at
everything the Federation stands for. No wonder they kept hunting
fifteen years for the man responsible for the Loki enslavements.
"Gerrit got away, with a month's start. By the time we had traced him
to Baldur, he had a year's start on us.
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