[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine August 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
A Delta class freighter can
carry anything--maybe more
than its skipper can bear!
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.
So I picked up a large schooner of beer at the bar and strolled over to
his table in the far corner away from the window.
"Mind if I join you?" I asked casually. "I hate to drink alone."
He stared at me for a minute out of those pale-blue spacer's eyes of
his, until I figured he thought he had me catalogued.
Then he motioned me to the chair across from his at the small table. We
sat for a few minutes in silence, sizing each other up.
"That's a mighty nice looking freighter out there on pad seven," I said
at last. "Yours?"
* * * * *
He uncapped his glass, took a sip of rhial, snicked the cover back, and
let the heady stuff evaporate in his mouth. He breathed in sharply in
the approved manner, but he didn't even shudder. He just nodded slowly,
once.
That appeared to pass the conversational ball back to me. "I might
have a cargo for you, if you can handle it," I said. "I hear these
Delta class ships can manage almost anything, but this is a rough one.
The _Annabelle_ is the only ship in the area built to take my stuff,
and she's grounded with transposer troubles."
He cocked one sandy eyebrow at me. I interpreted this to be a request
for the nature of my cargo, so I told him, and let him ponder about it
for a while.
"Gasha root," he said at last, and nodded once. "I can handle it.
That'll be easy, for _Delta Crucis_. Like you said, she can handle
anything. Her last cargo was a live elephant."
We completed our deal without much trouble. He drove a hard bargain,
but a fair one, and he had plenty of self-confidence. He signed a
contingent-on-satisfactory-delivery contract, and that's unusual for a
ship that's handling Gasha. Hadn't thought I'd be so lucky. Gasha is
tricky stuff.
We went over to the Government office to complete the deal--customs
arrangements, notarizations, posting bonds and so forth--but we finally
signed the contract, all legal and binding. His name turned out to be
Bart Hannah.
Then, by unspoken consent, we went back to the bar.
It was after noon, by that time, so I had a Scotch, and then I had
another. I was so relieved to have found a ship for my cargo that I
didn't even think about lunch.
* * * * *
I got more and more mellow and talkative as time went by, but the
skipper just sat there, breathing rhial. He didn't seem to change a bit.
Something had been bothering me, though, and I finally figured out
what it was. So I stopped talking about my farming troubles, and asked
Captain Hannah a direct question.
"You say you carried an _elephant_?" I asked. "A _live_ elephant? In a
_space ship_?"