- President Sarkoff: Assassination has always been a legitimate tool of statecraft. Its respectability and public acceptance has varied from civilization to civilization, but its practical application has remained remarkably consistent.
- [ex-President Sarkoff thinks Blake is an assassin]
- Blake: I said, I'm not a murderer.
- President Sarkoff: I'm grateful for your semantic precision. Political assassination I can... live with. To be murdered would the final, sordid indignity.
- [Sarkoff picks up an antique pistol]
- President Sarkoff: Now, my educated friend, do you know what this is?
- Blake: Uh, it's a projectile weapon.
- President Sarkoff: [pointing the gun at Blake] It's called a revolver. Explosive charge here, projectile emerges with great force and considerable accuracy, over short distances anyway. Primitive, but efficient enough for my purposes.
- Blake: [urgently] President Sarkoff, I must speak with you! Will you listen to what I have to...
- [Sarkoff pulls the trigger, knowing the gun is empty]
- President Sarkoff: [lowering the gun] Ex-president.
- Blake: I haven't got time for the niceties of this game that you're playing.
- President Sarkoff: Just time for a hasty rationalization.
- Blake: I just want you to listen.
- President Sarkoff: I've wasted my life listening, listening to people who are arrogant, or vacuous, or just plain vicious. I smiled and acquiesced in the face of prejudice and stupidity. I've tolerated mediocrity and accepted the tyranny of second-class minds. But now all that is over. I am ready to die, here among the things I value. I am ready to let you kill me but I am not ready to listen to you justify the act.
- [Vila can't contact anyone else on the Liberator]
- Vila: Zen, has something happened to them?
- Zen: Data is not available.
- Vila: I don't want data, I want to know what's happening.
- Zen: It will be necessary for you to make a personal investigation.
- Vila: Oh, you're a big help. "Personal investigation."
- [Vila worriedly begins putting on a gunbelt]
- Vila: "Personal investigation!" The next time Avon wants to make a personal investigation on how you work I shall make a personal point of handing him the instruments... personally!
- Tarvin: [removes Jenna's neckband and tosses it aside] Good to have you back with us, Jenna.
- [he touches her]
- Jenna: [walks away] This is purely a business arrangement, Tarvin.
- Tarvin: You weren't always so cold.
- Jenna: You weren't always a bounty hunter.
- Tarvin: Have you forgotten Zolaf Four?
- Jenna: Is it worth remembering?
- Tarvin: Just the two of us in the mountains.
- Jenna: And three hundred customs guards.
- Tarvin: You saved my life.
- Jenna: We all make mistakes.
- Tarvin: I thought you liked me.
- Jenna: Oh, I did. Then.
- Tarvin: Have I changed so much?
- Jenna: One of us has.
- Blake: Well, if you've got to move off-station, you've got to, but be as quick as you can. And don't take any stupid risks! We're taking enough of those down here.