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He looked at me for awhile, and then went on just as if I hadn’t spoken.

“I’d been doing all right with Delta Crucis,” he said, “and salting away plenty of cash, but I wasn’t satisfied. It was mostly short-haul stuff—ten or twenty light years—and it was mostly run-of-the-mill loads. Fleeder jewels, kharran, morab fur—that sort of thing, you know. I was getting bored. They said a Delta class freighter could carry just about anything, and I wanted to prove it. So when I heard that a rich eccentric, one planet out, on Penguin, might have an interesting job for me, I flitted right over.

“The Prinkip of Penguin wasn’t just rich. He was rich rich. Penguin has almost twice the diameter of this planet, but it’s light enough to have about the same surface gravity. To give you an idea, its two biggest bodies of water are about the size of the Atlantic Ocean, back on the Earth you’ve studied so much about. On Penguin they call them lakes. And the Prinkip owns the whole planet—free and clear. I should be so lucky with Delta Crucis.