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A delta class freighter isn’t pretty to look at, but it can be adapted to carry most anything, and occasionally even to carry it profitably. So when I saw one I didn’t recognize sitting under the gantry at Helmholtz Spaceport, I hurried right over to Operations.

It looked as if I might be able to get my Gasha root off-planet before it started to spoil, after all.

It was the Delta Crucis, they told me. She was a tramp, and she hadn’t yet been signed for a cargo. The skipper was listed as his own agent. They told me where they thought I could find him, so I drifted over to the Spaceport bar, and looked around.

I found my man quickly enough. He had the young-old look of a deep spacer. He wore a neat but threadbare blue uniform, with the four broad gold rings of command—rather tarnished—on each sleeve. He had a glass of rhial—a liquor that was too potent for my taste—in front of him at ten o’clock in the morning, and that wasn’t a good sign. But he looked sober enough.