A flicker of surprise crossed his face, but then he smiled. "You're quick," hesaid. "I like that. I take it you're an independent shipper?"

"That's right." I wasn't all that independent, actually, not anymore. But thiswasn't the right time to bring that up. "My name's Jordan McKell. I'm captainof a Capricorn-class freighter called the Stormy Banks."

"Specialty certificates?"

"Navigation and close-order piloting," I said. "My partner Ixil is certifiedin both drive and mechanical systems."

"Actually, I won't be needing your partner." He cocked an eyebrow. "Or yourship, for that matter."

"That makes sense," I said, trying not to sound too sarcastic. "What exactlydo you need—a fourth for bridge?"

He leaned a little closer to me across the table. "I already have a ship," hesaid, his voice dropping to a murmur. "It's sitting at the spaceport, fueledand cargoed and ready to go. All I need is a crew to fly her."

"Interesting trick," I complimented him. "Getting a ship here without a crew, mean."

His lips compressed. "I had a crew yesterday. They jumped ship this morning after we landed for refueling."

"Why?"

He waved a hand. "Personality conflicts, factional disputes—that sort of thing.

Apparently, both factions decided to jump without realizing the other side was going to, too. Anyway, that doesn't matter. What matters is that I'm not going to make my schedule unless I get some help together, and quickly."

I leaned back in my chair and favored him with a sly smile. "So in other words, you're basically stuck here. How very inconvenient for you. What kind of ship are we talking about?"

"It's the equivalent of an Orion-class," he said, looking like a man suddenly noticing a bad taste in his mouth. Revising his earlier estimate of me downward, no doubt, as his estimate of how much money I was going to try to squeeze out of him went the opposite direction. "Not a standard Orion, you understand, but similar in size and—"

"You need a minimum of six crewers, then," I said. "Three each certified competent in bridge and engine-room operations. All eight specialty certificates represented: navigation, piloting, electronics, mechanics, computer, drive, hull/spacewalk, and medical."

"I see you're well versed in the Mercantile Code."

"Part of my job," I said. "As I said, I can cover nav and piloting. How many of the rest are you missing?"

He smiled crookedly. "Why? You have some friends who need work?"

"I might. What do you need?"

"I appreciate the offer." He was still smiling, but the laugh lines had hardened a bit. "But I'd prefer to choose my own crew."

I shrugged. "Fine by me. I was just trying to save you a little running around.

What about me personally? Am I in?"

He eyed me another couple of heartbeats. "If you want the job," he said at last, not sounding entirely happy with the decision.

Deliberately, I turned my head a few degrees to the left and looked at a trio of gray-robed Patthaaunutth sitting at the center of the bar, gazing haughtily out at the rest of the patrons like self-proclaimed lords surveying their private demesne. "Were you expecting me to turn you down?" I asked, hearing the edge of bitterness in my voice.

He followed my gaze, lifting his mug for a sip, and even out of the corner of my eye I could see him wince a little behind the rim of the cup. "No," he said quietly. "I suppose not."

I nodded silently. The Talariac Drive had hit the trade routes of the Spiral a little over fifteen years ago, and in that brief time the Patth had gone from being a third-rate race of Machiavellian little connivers to near dominationof shipping here in our cozy corner of the galaxy. Hardly a surprise, of course: with the Talariac four times faster and three times cheaper than anyone else'sstardrive, it didn't take a corporate genius to figure out which ships werethe ones to hire.

Which had left the rest of us between a very big rock and a very hard vacuum.

There were still a fair number of smaller routes and some overflow traffic that the Patth hadn't gotten around to yet, but there were too many non-Patth shipschasing too few jobs and the resulting economic chaos had been devastating. Afew of the big shipping corporations were still hanging on, but most of theindependents had been either starved out of business or reduced to intrasystemshipping, where stardrives weren't necessary.

Or had turned their ships to other, less virtuous lines of work.

One of the Patth at the table turned his head slightly, and from beneath hishood I caught a glint of the electronic implants set into that gaunt, mahogany-red face. The Patth had a good thing going, all right, and they hadno intention of losing it. Patth starships were individually keyed to theirrespective pilots, with small but crucial bits of the Talariac accesscircuitryand visual display feedback systems implanted into the pilot's body. There'dbeen some misgivings about that when the system first hit the Spiral—shippingexecs had worried that an injury to the Patth pilot en route could strandtheir valuable cargo out in the middle of nowhere, and there was a lot of nowhereout there to lose something as small as a starship in. The Patth had countered byadding one or two backup pilots to each ship, which had lowered the risk ofaccident without compromising the shroud of secrecy they were determined tokeeparound the Talariac. Without the circuitry implanted in its pilot—and with awhole raft of other safeguards built into the hardware of the driveitself—borrowing or stealing a Patth ship would gain you exactly zeroinformation.

Or so the reasoning went. The fact that no bootleg copies of the Talariac hadyet appeared anywhere on the market tended to support that theory.

The man across from me set his mug back down on the table with a slightlyimpatient-sounding clunk. Turning my eyes and thoughts away from the hoodedPatth, I got back to business. "What time do you want to leave?"

"As early as possible," he said. "Say, six tomorrow morning."

I thought about that. Meima was an Ihmis colony world, and one of thepeculiarities of Ihmisit-run spaceports was that shippers weren't allowedinside the port between sundown and sunup, with the entire port sealed during thosehours. Alien-psychology experts usually attributed this to some quirk of Ihmissuperstition; I personally put it down to the healthy hotel business thepolicygenerated at the spaceport's periphery. "Sunrise tomorrow's not untilfive-thirty," I pointed out. "Doesn't leave much time for preflight checks."

"The ship's all ready to go," he reminded me.

"We check it anyway before we fly," I told him. "That's what 'preflight'means.

What about clearances?"

"All set," he said, tapping his tunic. "I've got the papers right here."

"Let me see them."

He shook his head. "That's not necessary. I'll be aboard well before—"

"Let me see them."

For a second he had the expression of someone who was seriously consideringstanding up and going to look for a pilot with a better grasp of the properservility involved in an owner/employee relationship. But he merely dug intohis inside jacket pocket and pulled out a thin stack of cards. Maybe he liked myspirit, or maybe he was just running out of time to find someone to fly hisshipfor him.

I leafed through them. The papers were for a modified Orion-class freightercalled the Icarus, Earth registry, mastership listed as one Alexander Borodin.

They were also copies, not the originals he'd implied he was carrying. "YouBorodin?" I asked.

"That's right," he said. "As you see, everything's in order for a morninglift."

"Certainly looks that way," I agreed. All the required checks had been done: engine room, thrusters and stardrive, computer, cargo customs—

I frowned. "What's this 'sealed cargo section' business?"