Andre Norton: Postmarked the Stars

He was certainly of higher rank than the others. In fact, as the guards brought him past those other prisoners, two of them lunged for him, cursing. He was cowering, obviously badly shaken, when he stood before Finnerstan.

The combination of the stun attack, his close brush with death under the crawler, and the anger of his followers broke him. The Patrol officer learned what he wanted. Under his direction they dragged out of

the wreckage in the base a tube by which they lobbed gas bombs into the opened hatches. Those broke on contact, spreading the sleep-compelling atmosphere. Masked guards from the flitter went on board to gather up prisoners, leave them wrapped by tanglers, then proceeded to put in safety all that had been about to be transported off-world.

It was three days later in Trewsport that the crew of the Queen were finally united for the first time since the LB had taken off. The settlers’ government had been badly shaken. There was an interim Patrol command in control, and specialists from off-world had been summoned to examine the Trosti labs and the material taken from the ship.

Dane sat nursing a mug of coffee. His headache had gone at long last, leaving him feeling curiously light. He had slept away some twenty planet hours and was now able to summon alert attention to what Captain Jellico said.

“—so as soon as they clean her out, she’s to be put up to auction as contraband taken in the midst of an unlawful act. There’s no one here planetside who wants a spacer or would know what to do with her if they had her. We will probably be the only bidders, as the Patrol is not going to go to the trouble of flying her to another world just to sell her. I have it on Finnerstan’s word that if we put in a time bid, she’s ours!”

“We have a ship—a good ship!” Stotz protested with the firmness of one not to be influenced.

“We have a good ship tied up by a mail contract,” Jellico returned. “We have the mail fees, yes, but they are small. And if we can build up a fund as a starter when the contract is finished—”

It was a big step, expanding from the Solar Queen to a two-ship holding. Very few Free Traders had ever done it.

“We do not have to keep her long,” the captain continued. “I do not even say deep space with her. Use her in this system only. Trewsworld is an Ag planet. But if she can grow more crops—short-term crops—than just the lathsmers, she would be sooner ready for regular stellar trade. Now look here.” He flashed a picture from a reader onto the wall. “This is the Trewsworld system. Those captured charts show that while there is some of that ore—they’re calling it esperite—on this planet, there is much more on Riginni, the next planet out. And that can be dome-mined but can’t be terraformed. So, miners have to eat, and they have to ship back ore to here for galactic transshipments. There’s a two-way trade for you—steady, growing as the dome mines grow. And considering that we had a good hand in breaking up this Trosti mess, we can get the franchise. Profit all along.”

“And a crew?” Steen Wilcox asked that.

Jellico ran a fingertip down his burn scar. “Mail run is easy—”

“Easy,” thought Dane, but did not say it aloud.

“We stagger our own men for a while. You lift her the first time, Steen, with Kamil for your engineer, Weekes as jet man. We hire on a local for steward. And, Thorson, since Van Ryke is on his way in to join us on the Queen, you can take cargo master. Next time around, Shannon can take astrogator—we change back and forth. We’ll be short-handed, but an inner-system run is easy, and you can get by with robos and a limited crew. Is it agreed?”

Dane looked from one face to the next. He could see the advantages Jellico had mentioned. That there would be difficulties the captain had not mentioned, he could well guess. But when his turn came, he added his assent to the others’.

They would bid on the spacer, begin a solar run from Trewsworld to her neighbor, spread their crew thin over two ships and hope for the best, be ready to face the worst as Free Traders so often had to. And what was the worst going to be next time? No use in allowing his imagination the chance to paint a dismal picture, Dane decided. The Queen had survived much in the past. Her new sister ship would have to learn to do the same.