Hello All!

Well this has got to be the most confusing of all the Blake's 7 episodes.

The group at this stage consists of Danya, Soolin, Avon, Tarrant and Villa.
They have Orac as well, and are in the Scorpio.

They were approached by Keela (sp?) of the Space Princess, a pleasure
cruiser that carries black gold from Xerok to Earth.  Xerok is not in the
Federation. At this stage, Servalan is not the president either, she is
Commissioner Slear I think.

Anyway, Servalan asked Keela to get these guys to steal the black gold.
Keela decided he wanted more of the gold, but the black gold was useless to
him.  So he had to go into the mine to stop the processing of the black
gold.  Servalan knew that Keela would do this, and posted her own guards
down there, so they were unsuccessful in stopping the conversion to black
gold.  The guards died in the process though.

Avon decides to continue with the plan, and they ship the black gold to
Servalan.  They get 10 billion in Xerok credits for the 17 billion dollars
worth of black gold.  Apparently Servalan can convert the black gold back
into normal gold, although I'm not sure how.  Servalan did post the guards
in the mine, so maybe they knew what the code was? The only comment made by
Avon was that the federation wouldn't question where Servalan got the black
gold from. Why not?

And then Orac goes on to tell them that Xerok seceded/acceded (?) to the
Federation, so that all the bank notes would be invalid within 7 days. So
they start tearing up the bank notes.  Why?  They've got 7 days to get them
converted haven't they?  Also, where did Servalan get the $10 billion from?
 I guess it could be a straight borrow, and she has to pay the $10 billion
back, and make a $7 billion profit.  So who actuall gets the $10 billion? 
A rich bank manager?  Perhaps Avon can't cash in the money because they've
said "watch out for an outlaw with $10 billion, don't let him cash the
money".  Perhaps there was some way that Servalan can get the $10
billion without making the bank manager rich???  BFN.

Paul

--- GoldED/2 2.42.G1114