“Now tell him that we’ll release the gems on his written fingerprinted order to whatever Lyran citizens he sells to. And explain that this roundabout system is necessary to avoid metal smuggling. Please remove all metal from your clothes and stow it on your ship. Then we will seal that, too, and put it under guard until you are ready to take off. We regret that we will have to search you before we turn you loose, but we can’t afford to have our economy disrupted by irresponsible introduction of metals.” Alen had not realized it was that bad.
After the thorough search that extended to the confiscation
of forgotten watches and pins, the port officials changed a sheaf of the trader’s uranium-backed Vegan currency into Lyran legal tender based on man-hours. Blackbeard made a partial payment to the crew, told them to have a good liberty and check in at the port at sunset tomorrow for probable take-off.
Alen and the trader were driven to town in an unlikely vehicle whose power plant was a pottery turbine. The driver, when they were safely out on the open road, furtively asked whether they had any metal they wanted to discard.
The trader asked sharply in his broken Lyran: “What you do you get metal? Where sell, how use?”
The driver, following a universal tendency, raised his voice and lapsed into broken Lyran himself to tell the strangers: “Black market science men pay much, much for little bit metal. Study, use build. Politicians make law no metal, what I care politicians? But you no tell, gentlemen?”
“We won’t tell,” said Alen. “But we have no metal for you.”
The driver shrugged.
“Herald,” said the trader, “what do you make of it?”
“I didn’t know it was a political issue. We concern ourselves with the basic patterns of a people’s behavior, not the day-today expressions of the patterns. The planet’s got no heavy metals, which means there were no metals available to the primitive Lyrans. The lighter metals don’t occur in native form or in easily-split compounds. They proceeded along the ceramic line instead of the metallic line and appear to have done quite well for themselves up to a point. No electricity, of course, no aviation and no space flight.”
“And,” said the trader, “naturally the people who make these buggies and that blowtorch we saw are scared witless that metals will be imported and put them out of business. So naturally they have laws passed prohibiting it.”
“Naturally,” said the Herald, looking sharply at the trader. But blackboard was back in character a moment later. “An outrage,” he growled. “Trying to tell a man what he can and can’t import when he sees a decent chance to make a bit of profit.”
The driver dropped them at a boardinghouse. It was half-timbered construction, which appeared to be swankier than
Elwon looked at Alen,. who shook his head. “Sorry, sir,” said the engineer apologetically. “The Herald—”
“We are the freighter Starsong, Vegan registry,” said Alen into the audio mike as tlje,trader choked. “We are carrying Vegan gems to Lyra.”
“They’re on us,” said the astrogator despairingly, reading his instruments. The ship-to-ship video flashed on, showing an arrogant, square-jawed face topped by a battered naval cap.
“Lyra indeed! We have plans of our own for Lyra. You will heave to—” began the officer in the screen, before he noted Alen. “My pardon, Herald,” he said sardonically. “Herald, will you please request the ship’s master to heave to for boarding and search? We wish to assess and collect Customs duties. You are aware, of course, that your vessel is passing through the Realm.”
The man’s accented Vegan reeked of Algol IV. Alen switched to that obscure language to say: “We were not aware of that. Are you aware that there is a reciprocal trade treaty in effect between the Vegan system and the Realm which specifies that freight in Vegan bottoms is dutiable only when consigned to ports in the Realm?”
“You speak Algolian, do you? You Heralds have not been underrated, but don’t plan to lie your way out of this. Yes, I am aware of some such agreement as you mentioned. We shall board you, as I said, and assess and collect duty in kind. If, regrettably, there has been any mistake you are, of course, free to apply to the Realm for reimbursement. Now, heave