“As I’m the owner, Count Georgi Klimov,” the Count said, stepping forward with the help of the spacer behind him, “I believe it’s my place to greet you. I trust you’ll find our papers in order, and also that you’ll honor me by accepting this little token.”
He flashed a little sheaf of circuit-imprinted bills, each with the picture of Guarantor Porra, toward the inspector unreeling the optical fiber, then handed them to the other man. Adele used his helmet camera’s image to see the denominations which the Count’s hand hid from her: eighty-five marks, which according to the rate current in Xenos when the Princess Cecile lifted would be worth one hundred and twelve Cinnabar florins. She frowned at this further evidence that the Count was worthy of more respect than she’d been willing to grant him.
The inspectors huddled for a moment, taking much longer to count the money than Adele had. At last they looked up and the one with the camera shrugged. “Your papers are fine,” he said. “You’ve got berth D-73.”
The money vanished into his tool pouch. His partner added, “There’ll be wharf charges too. We’re just clearing you to land.”
“D-73 is in the Outer Arc,” Daniel said, drawing the eyes of everyone present toward him. “I notice slip A-12 is open, alongside the Aristoxenos where some of us might have old shipmates. I wonder if there might be a way we could land there? The causeway to the Inner Arc would save the Count and Countess from having to take a boat to shore; their aircar came to a bad end on the world we just visited.”
“The A slips are for fleet only,” said the inspector who’d taken the bribe; his fingers touched his tool pouch. “Or special cases.”
“Anyway, the Piri Reis already cleared a freighter for A-12,” said the man with the camera. “It’d mean squaring the Piri’s crew too.”
“How much?” said the Klimovna bluntly.
The inspectors looked at her, then toward one another. The man with the camera shrugged. The other nodded in decision and said to the Klimovs, “For the A slips, two hundred and fifty marks. We couldn’t do it for less.”
“Done,” said the Count. He opened his money belt again.
Daniel pushed off from the bulkhead, sliding backward to the command console as smoothly as a seal swimming. His fingers began to dance forcefully over his touchplate, adjusting the display.
As the Count paid the additional sum into one inspector’s gloved hand bill by bill, his partner closed his helmet so he could use its microphone to speak to the crew of the other guardship. He spoke with animation, finally grasping his partner’s hand with the money and holding it directly in front of his helmet camera.
Nodding forcefully, he opened his visor again. “I made a mistake,” he said. “Slip A-12 is open after all. We have assigned it to your fine vessel, Count Klimov. A pleasure doing business with you!”
He turned and opened the airlock’s inner door, the air behind him shimmering as his communications cable wound back on its take-up spool. His partner, patting the bribe away in his tool pouch, followed.
As the airlock closed, everyone on the Princess Cecile’s bridge except Adele grinned with satisfaction and began to chatter. Adele was listening to the scene on the Goldenfels’ bridge where the other team of inspectors explained to Captain Bertram that his ship wasn’t cleared for slip A-12 after all.
She frowned with concern. If Bertram had been present, her hand would’ve been touching the pistol in her tunic pocket.
* * *
“Ship, this is the captain,” Daniel said, lying back on the couch of his console with the surface of Todos Santos three thousand miles below on his display. “I’ll be initiating landing sequence in two minutes and . . .” He waited for the digit to change. “Forty seconds. Prepare for landing, out.”
The Sissie’s computer would land the vessel. A sidebar listed the already-programmed thruster impulse by seconds per nozzle. If Daniel chose he could add the actual course track, a skein of red lines, which would circle the planetary image until it terminated in slip A-12 (though the harbor itself wasn’t visible at the present scale). He didn’t bother, but when they entered the atmosphere he’d switch to direct visuals.