“I’ll tell you anything I know,” Marconi declared positively, and insincerely. “Tend to that fellow first though, will you?” He pointed to a uniformed Yards messenger whose eye had just alighted on Ross. The man threaded his way, stumbling, through the tables and laid a sealed envelope down in the puddle left by Ross’s drink.
“Sorry, sir,” he said crisply, wiped off the envelope with his handkerchief and, for lagniappe, wiped the puddle off the table into Ross’s lap.
Speechless, Ross signed for the envelope on a red-tabbed slip marked URGENT * PRIORITY * RUSH. The messenger saluted, almost putting his own eye out, and left, crashing into tables and chairs.
“Half-dead,” Ross muttered, following hun with his eyes. “How the devil do they stay alive at all?”
Marconi said, unsmiling, “You’re taking this kick pretty seriously, Ross. I admit he’s a little clumsy, but——”
“But nothing,” said Ross. “Don’t try to tell me you don’t know something’s wrong, Marconi! He’s a bumbling incompetent, and half his generation is just like him.” He looked bitterly at the envelope and dropped it on the table again. “More manifests,” he said. “I swear I’ll start throwing tableware if I have to check another bill of lading. Brighten my day, Marconi; tell me about the longliners. You’re not off the hook yet, you know.”
Marconi signaled for another drink. “All right,” he said. “Marconi tells all about longliners. They’re ships. They go from the planet of one star to the planet of another star. It takes a long time, because stars are many light-years apart and rocket ships cannot travel as fast as light. Einstein said so—whoever he was. Do we start with the Sirius IV ship? I was around when it came in, all right. Fifteen years ago, and Halsey’s Planet is still enjoying the benefits of it. And so is Leverett and Sons Trading Corporation. They did fine on flowers from seeds that bucket brought, they did fine on sugar perch from eggs that bucket brought. I’ve never had it myself. Raw fish for dessert! But some people swear by it—at five shields a portion. They can have it.”
“The hook, Marconi,” Ross reminded grimly.
Trader Marconi laughed amiably. “Sorry. Well, what else? Pictures and music, but I’m not much on them. I do read, though, and as a reader I say, God bless that bucket from Sirius IV. We never had a novelist like Morris Halli-day on this planet—or an essayist like Jay Waring. Let’s see, there have been eight Halh’day novels off the microfilms so far, and I think Leverett still has a couple in the vaults. Leverett must be——”
“Marconi. I don’t want to hear about Leverett and Sons. Or Morris Halliday, or Waring. I want to hear about long-liners.”
“I’m trying to tell you,” Marconi said sullenly, the mask down.
“No, you’re not. You’re telling me that the longline ships go from one stellar system to another with merchandise. I know that.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Don’t be difficult, Marconi. I want to know the facts.
All about longliners. The big hush-hush. The candid explanations that explain nothing—except that a starship is a starship. I know that they’re closed-system, multigenera-tion jobs; a group of people get in on Sirius IV and their-great-great-great-great-grandchildren come giggling and stumbling out on Halsey’s Planet. I know that every couple of generations your firm—and mine, for that matter— builds one with profits that would be taxed off anyway and slings it out, stocked with seeds and film and sound tape and patent designs and manufacturing specifications for every new gimmick on the market, in the hope that it’ll be back long after we’re dead with a similar cargo to enrich your firm’s and my firm’s then-current owners. Sounds silly —but, as I say, it’s tax money anyhow. I know that your firm and mine staff the ships with half a dozen bums of each sex, who are loaded aboard with a dandy case of delirium tremens, contracted from spending their bounty money the only way they know how. And that’s just about all I know. Take it from there, Marconi. And be specific.”
The little man shrugged irritably. “That gag’s beginning to wear thin, Ross,” he complained. “What do you want me to tell you—the number of welds in Bulkhead 47 of ‘Starship 74’? What’s the difference? As you said, a star-ship is a starship is a longliner. Without them the inhabited solar systems would have no means of contact or commerce. What else is there to say?”