Free Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon Page B

mainshift, she stared at the model taking shape on her desk and decided to ration herself to one hour a day. She wanted it to last. She toyed with the idea of buying other models, keeping one always in reserve.
    Ten days later, when
Glennys
wallowed uneasily into endim translation, Ky watched the strain gauges and wondered how the ship had passed its last inspection. She didn’t miss the tension inQuincy’s expression. Shipping out as a junior on one of the newer transports, she’d never had to worry about the ship’s fabric coming apart, but now… Maybe it was her chance at glory, and maybe it was her chance to die. Her crew seemed mostly calm about the noises and the vibration, though Lee had turned the color of bad cheese. Ky hoped she didn’t match him.
    Once through translation,Quincyshrugged and shook her head. “I didn’t expect that much wobble,” she said. “Still, it ought to be good for the number of translations we have scheduled, plus a few more.”
    Glennys
settled back to being an old but not unsound ship. The telltales that should be green were all green; the ambers were amber; the few reds—indicating emergency systems on live standby—were red.
    Over the next few days she checked in with her crew every few hours, but spent the rest of the time running cost/benefit analyses. She wouldn’t actually do it, she told herself. She couldn’t do it. It was impossible in every way. But… it couldn’t possibly hurt to figure out what it would take, just as an exercise. Better than imagining herself in an office in Port, entertaining her classmates in uniform. Better than finishing the model too soon and having nothing to do with her hands.
    Pharmaceutical components to Belinta, 31 percent of estimated cargo value. Time-limited, with a penalty for late delivery or nondelivery, and a bonus for—a time so short that
Glennys
couldn’t have done it in her youth. No bonus, then. Price prearranged, profit guaranteed and nonnegotiable. That wouldn’t do it, though it put them well on the way to the tickets home from Lastway. What then? The bales of fabric scraps—old clothes, actually—for Leonora? The raw zeer nuts, the crates of modular components for Lastway? Her own crate of luxury goods, the hand-blown crystal bowls and vases, the bolts of silk brocade?
    The numbers didn’t add up. If they were very, very lucky, they might—possibly—make enough to equal what the ship would bring for scrap. They could not possibly make enough to equal that plus the cost of renovations to meet inspection standards.
    Ky called up the inspection standards for the third time. Nobody cared if their holds were inconvenient, though some trade stations would charge a premium for space to ships that could not use automated freight handling systems. But the environmental system, drives, navigation and communications systems… those had to pass. While there were sections of space in which no one bothered with inspections—or rescuing those whose ships weren’t sound—she didn’t want to go there.
    She doodled on a spare pad. What would it take, really? What was she willing to give up? Or—since she was now in the business of trade and profit—what was she willing to trade?

Chapter Four
    Customs at Belinta, their first port of call, should not have been a problem. Ky shifted from one foot to the other, and struggled not to point out that every single item on the delivery manifest—raw materials for pharmaceuticals—had been preordered. The Customs Inspector was an unmodified human, but she had seen a Mobie and a pair of Indas on the way to this office, and she wanted to see what other humods were in the system. Finally the Customs Inspector looked up from the readout and glared at her as if she had sprouted horns.
    “The thing is, we see more than enough of you Slotter Key hotshots,” he said. “Always trying to convince us our tariffs aren’t reasonable—I’ll bet you wouldn’t like it if we did that.”
    Ky