“Hard times,” Sandor said finally, when they were on blue dock’s margin and walking through the section arch to green. “Big ships take care of themselves, but small ships have worries. I really need those goods.”

Continued silence. Finally: “You hear anything down the line?” the man asked.

“Nothing solid. Mazianni hitting ships—Hang, what can I do? I don’t have the kind of margin I can take out and not haul for months like some others might do. I don’t have it. Little ships like me, combine forgets about us when trouble hits on that scale. WSC is stationer-run, and they’re going to say haul, come what may. And some of their big haulers are going to hide out while the likes of me gets caught in the middle. But who’ll keep the stations going? Marginers and independents and the like. I’d really like those frozen goods.”

“Cost you extra.”

“No way. You stung me for the two. I do it again and I get closer and closer to a company audit, man. You think two thousand’s nothing? In an account my size it’s something.”

“You think your combine’s pulling you out of here?”

“Don’t know what they’re going to do.”

“Running under-the-table courier, it sounds like they want you out of here.”

“I don’t know.”

Silence again. “Bet they’re not going to check that account too closely. Bet they’ll be more than glad to get their ships herded in to safer zones if there’s action around here. They’re realists. They know their ships have got to protect themselves. In all senses. You know the gold market?”

His pulse sped. “I know I’m not licensed to transport.” Times like these, value goes up. The less on a station, value goes up. A lot of merchanters like to carry a little in pocket”

“I can’t do that kind of thing. WSC’d have my head.”

“Get you, say, some oddments. Little stuff. You put fourteen more with that extra thousand, and I know a dealer can get you station standard price plus fifteen percent, good rate for a merchanter, same as the big ships get.”

The station air hit his face with a sickly chill, touching perspiration. “You know you’re talking about felony. That’s not skimming. That’s theft”

“How worried are you? If your combine pulls you out, if it gets hot, maybe it’s going to cost you heavy. As long as you put it in again where you’re going, you’re covered, and you can pocket the increase it’s made.”

“Won’t increase that much, going away from the trouble.”

“Oh, it will. It always does. It’s the smart thing. Always good on stations. Can’t be traced. Buys you all kinds of things. And if there’s any kind of trouble—it goes up.”

He swallowed the knot in his throat. “Right. Well, you get me that check and I’ll do it, but I don’t handle it at any stage.”

“It’ll cost you another thousand on all that deal: my risk.”

“If I’m first on the docking schedule and those goods get aboard while I’m filling.”

“No problem.”

He was loaded in two hours, signed, cleared, and belted in, undocking from Viking with a gentle puff of Lucy’s bow vents, which eased him back and back and tended to a little pitch. He let the accustomed pitch increase, which was a misaimed jet, but he knew Lucy and had never fixed it. The pitch always set her for an axis roll and a little aft venting sent her over and out still within her given lane, because she was small and could pull maneuvers like that, which were usually for the military ships. He never showed more flash than that in a station’s vicinity. He had more potential attention than he wanted. He had committed felony theft, faked papers, faked IDs, had unlicensed cargo aboard, and it was time to change Lucy’s name again—if he had had the time.

He put on aft vid and saw Dublin Again, had gone right past her, that silver, beautiful ship all aglow with her own running lights and the station’s floods, in station shadow, so that she shone like a jewel among the others. Not so far away, a Union dartship stood off from dock, dull-surfaced and ominous, with vanes conspicuously larger than any merchanter afforded. It watched, its frame bristling with armaments and receptors. Viking’s sullen star swung behind it as he moved, silhouetting it in bleeding fire, and he lost sight of Dublin in the glare—shut vid down, listening to station central’s ordinary voice giving him his clear heading for the outgoing jump range, for a supposed jump for Voyager Station.

Chapter II

It was no small job, to clear Dublin Again for undock. Gathering and accounting for the crew was an undertaking in itself: 1,082 lives were registered to Dublin, of which the vast majority were scattered out over the docks on liberty, and most of those had been gone for four days, in one and the other sleepover around the vast torus of Viking, not alone on green dock, but spread through every docking section but blue and the industrial core. They knew their time and they came in, to log their time at whatever job wanted doing, if there was a job handy—to shove their ID tags into the slot when they were ready for absolute and irrevocable boarding, passing that green line on the airlock floor and walls, that let them know they were logged on and would be left without search or sympathy if they recrossed that line without leave of the watch officer.

One hundred forty-six Dubliners were entitled to wear the green stars of executive crew; of that number, 76 wore the collar stripe of senior, seated crew, mainday and alterday. Four wore the captain’s circle, one for each of four duty shifts; 24, at one level and the other, were entitled to sit the chair in theory, or to take other bridge posts. And 16 were retired from that slot, who had experience, if not the physical ability; they advised, and sat in executive council. It took seven working posts at com to run Dublin in some operations, at any one moment; eight posts at scan, with four more at the op board that monitored cargo status. Twenty-five techs and as many cargo specialists on a watch kept things in order; and with all told, posted crew and backup personnel, that was 446 who wore the insignia of working crew; and 279 unposted, who trained and waited and worked as they could. There were the retired: over 200 of them, whose rejuv had given out and whose health faded, some of whom still went out on dockside and some of whom took to their quarters or to sickbay and expected to die when jump stress put too great a burden on them. There were the children, nearly 200 under the age of twenty, 120 of whom had duties and took liberty when Dublin docked, and 40 of those on the same privilege as the crew, to sleepover where they chose.

And at mainday 1550 hours, Dublin’s strayed sons and daughters headed aboard like a silver-clad flood, past the hiss and clank of loading canisters. Some of them had had a call for 1400, and some for 1200, those in charge of cargo. All the Reillys—they were all Reillys, all 1,082 of them, excepting Henny Magen and Liz Tyler, who were married aboard from other ships (everyone forgot their alien names and called them Reillys by habit, making no distinction)—all the Reillys were headed in, out of the gaudy lighted bars and glittering shops and sleepovers, carrying purchases and packages and in many cases lingering for a demonstrative farewell to some liberty’s-love on the verge of Dublin’s clear-zone. No customs checked them off the station: they came as they liked, and Allison Reilly walked up the ramp and through the yellow, chill gullet of the access tube to the lock, carrying two bottles of Cyteen’s best, a collection of microfiches, two pair of socks, a deep-study tape, and six tubes of hand lotion—not a good place to shop, Viking, which was mostly mining and shipbuilding: there was freight and duty on all of it but the microfiches and the tape, but they were headed Over the Line into Alliance territory, and most everyone was buying something, in the thought that goods in that foreign territory might be different, or harder come by, and there was a general rush to pick up this and that item. She needed the socks and she liked the particular brand of hand lotion.