Free Gibraltar Sun by Michael McCollum

like.”
    “Excellent. I have an armored transport arriving in a few minutes. Would you get it out to the loading dock?”
    “Sure thing. We’ll have it ready in ten minutes.”
    Unable to stand the interior heat in his heavy coat, Heinz wandered back out onto the loading dock to await the arrival of both his cargo and the transport. While standing out in the wind, he noticed a commotion at the VIP terminal next door.
    Several police cruisers were lined up, along with a large truck with some sort of habitat strapped to its long bed. The thing looked like photographs he’d seen of old house trailers in the history books.
    A crowd of men and women milled around, obviously waiting for something. From the equipment they carried, a number of them were reporters and cameramen. He could see at least three areas that had been set up for correspondents to make online reports.
    “What is going on over there?” Heinz asked the freight supervisor when the latter showed up with his crate.
    “They are waiting for the alien,” Charlie replied without looking up from the bill-of-lading he was studying.
    “What alien?”
    “The one the Stellar Survey captured a couple of years ago. They are bringing him down so that he can be transferred to Harvard.”
    “Harvard? They putting him through college?”
    “Some kind of a study center, I believe. It’s part of this trouble with aliens you see on the news.”
    “I’m afraid I haven’t been following it very closely,” Heinz replied. “Business has kept me pretty busy of late.”
    “You should,” Charlie replied. “They say they’ve discovered more than a million inhabited worlds out there.”
    “I’d heard that,” Heinz agreed.
    “I would think that would interest someone such as yourself,” the freight supervisor opined. “That’s one hell of a lot of potential customers for someone in the interstellar import-export business.”
    Gus Heinz took the bill-of-lading, signed it, and continued waiting for his armored truck. While he did so, he contemplated the welcoming committee in front of the VIP terminal.
    A million planets peopled by prospective customers was, indeed, something to think about!
    #

Chapter Nine
     
    Ssor-Fel perched on the lounging frame behind his work pedestal and contemplated a report concerning the planet Varkanto. It seemed the local master had diverted a river to provide scenic waterfalls for his nearby estate, and as a result, more than 12 5 square fel of prime cropland had been allowed to turn fallow. The resulting crop shortage had meant that the shipment of several delicacies much prized in the Zer System, one jump beyond Varkanto, had missed their quota for three periods in a row. The sub-sector master recommended that the miscreant, one Val-Vos by name, be discharged from his position for reasons of incompetence.
    As Sector Master, Ssor-Fel was responsible for everything that happened in the region of Civilization under his control. He had to agree with the recommendation. Anyone so egotistical as to ruin an entire river valley so that he could improve his view was not fit to administer a district, let alone an entire planet. For any other malefactor, he would have approved the request without even thinking about it.
    But Val-Vos was a name that he recognized. He was the younger cub of Val-Sat, the patriarch of the Val-Za clan. To point out that his loins had produced an idiot would not sit well with Val-Sat, and would likely have a negative impact on his, Ssor-Fel’s, future career.
    The problem was how to ease the stupid cub out of his position without his sire taking revenge. Perhaps he could promote him to the sector level, make him an assistant with an impressive title, then set him to counting the fish harvest. Eventually, he would grow bored, resign, and go home. The problem was that it would take time, and in the interim, he would be inflicted with the young cub’s incompetence.
    His sour reverie was interrupted as the soft song of