once to Voyager. “So just fill the tanks,” he begged of them, with that
desperation calculated to give the meanest docksider a momentary sense of power;
and to let that docksider recall that supposedly he was Wyatt’s Star Combine,
which might, if balked, receive reports up the line, and take offense at delay.
“Just that much. Give me dry goods, no freezer stuff if it takes too long. I’ll
boil water from the tanks. Just get those lines on and get me moving.”
There was what he had half expected, a palm open on the counter, right in the
open office. He sweated, recalling police, recalling that ominous line of
military ships docked just outside these offices on blue dock, two carriers in
port, no less, with troops, troops like Viking stationers, unnervingly alike in
size and build and manner, the stamp of birth labs. But tape-trained or not,
Union citizen or not, there was the occasional open hand. If it was not a police
trap. And that was possible too.
He looked up into eyes quite disconnected from that open palm. “You arrange me
bank clearance, will you?” Sandor asked. “I really need to speed things up a bit
You think you can do that?”
Clerical lips pursed. The man consulted comp, did some figuring. “Voyager, is
it? You know your margin’s down to five thousand? I’d figure two for
contingencies, at least.”
He shuddered. Two was exorbitant. Dipping to the bottom of his already low
margin account, the next move went right through into WSC’s main fund: it would
surely do that with the current dock charges added on. There had been a chance
of coming back here—had been—but this would bring the auditors running. He
nodded blandly. “You help me with that, then, will you? I really need that
draft.”
The man turned and keyed a printout from a desk console. Comp spat out a form.
He laid it on the counter. “Make it out to yourself. I can disburse here for
convenience.”
“I really appreciate this.” He leaned against the counter and made out the form
for seven, smiled painfully as he handed it back to the official, who counted
him out the money from the office safe… Union scrip, not station chits; bills,
in five hundreds.
“Maybe,” said the clerk, “I should walk with you down there and pass the word to
the dock supervisor about your emergency. I think we can get you out of here
shortly.”
He kept smiling and waited for the clerk to get his coat, walked with him
outside, into the busy office district of the docks. “When those lines are
hooked up and when the food’s headed in,” he said, his hand on the bills in his
pocket, “then I’ll be full of gratitude. But I expect frozen goods for this, and
without holding me up. You sting me like I was a big operation, you see that I
get all the supplies I’m due for it.”
“Don’t push your luck, Captain.”
“I’m sure you can do it. I have faith in you. If I get questioned on this, so do
you. Think of that.”
A silence while they walked. There were the warship accesses at their right,
bright and cheerful as merchanter accesses, but uniformed troops came and went
there, and security guards with guns stood at various of the offices on
dockside. Birth-lab soldiers, alike to the point of eeriness. Perhaps
stationers, many of them from like origins, found it all less strange. This man
beside him now, this man was from the war years, might have been on Viking
during the fall, maybe had memories, the same as a merchanter recalled the
taking of his ship. Bloody years. They shared that much, he and the stationer.
Dislike of the troops. A certain nervousness. A sense that a little cash in
pocket was a good thing to have, when tensions ran high. There was a time they
had evacuated stations, shifted populations about, when merchanters had run for
the far Deep and stayed there for self-protection, while warships had decided
politics. No one looked for such years again, but the reflexes were still there.
“Hard times,” Sandor said finally, when they were on blue dock’s margin and