Merchanter's Luck

Apprehension flooded through him, rapid sort in a tired brain. “Don’t have that, Pell Dock. I’m fresh from Unionside.”

“Unionside number, then.”

“686-543-5608.”

“686-543-5608. Got you clear, then, Lucy, on temporary. Personal name?”

“Stevens. Edward Stevens, owner and captain.”

“Luck to you, Stevens, and a pleasant stay.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” He reached a trembling hand for the board, broke contact and shut down everything, put a lock on comp and on the log; and already in the back of his mind he was calculating, about the gold, about turning that with a little dock-side trade, a little deal off the manifest, very quiet, putting the profit into account, making it look right. There were ways. Dealers who would fake a bill. It might be good here. Might be the place he had hoped to find. And Dublin…

She was here.

He hauled himself out of the cushion and walked back to the access lift at the side of the lounge, opened the hatch below and got a waft of mortally cold air. He got a jacket from the locker, shrugged it on and patted his coveralls pocket to be sure he had the papers, then committed himself and took the lift down into the accessway, got out facing the short dingy corridor to the lock, and the yellow lighted gullet of the station access tube at the end. He shivered convulsively, zipped his jacket, and walked down and through the tube into the noise of the dock and the thumping of the machinery that was busy blowing out Lucy’s small systems.

Customs was there. Police were. A noisy horde of stationers beyond the customs barrier, a crowd, a riot. He stopped in the middle of the access ramp with the customs agents walking toward him—neat men in brown suits with foreign insignia. His expression betrayed shock an instant before he realized it and tried to ignore it all as he fumbled his papers out of his pocket. “I talked with the dockmaster’s office,” he said, offering them. His heart beat double time as it did at such moments, while the crowd kept up the noise and commotion beyond the barricade. The senior officer looked over the forged papers and stamped them with a seal. “Your office is supposed to put my ship under seal,” Sandor went on, trying not to look at the police who waited beyond, trying not to harass the agents at their duty. “Got no cargo this trip. They fouled me up at Viking. I’m bone tired and needing sleep. No crew, no passengers, no arms, no drugs except ship’s use pharmaceuticals. I’m headed for the exchange office right now to get some cash.”

“Carrying money?”

“Three thousand Union scrip aboard. Not on me. They promised me I could do the exchange papers later. After sleep.”

“Items of value on your person?”

“None. Going to a sleepover. Going to get a station card.”

“We’ll locate you on the card when we want you.” The man looked up at him. It was the same face customs folk gave him everywhere, hardly welcoming. Sandor gave it back his best, earnest stare. The man handed the false papers back and Sandor stuffed them into his inside breast pocket, started down the ramp.

The police moved in. “Captain Stevens,” one said.

He stopped, his heart jumping against his ribs.

“You’ll want to pick up a regulations sheet at the office,” the officer said. “Our procedures are a little different here than Union-side.—Did they give you trouble clearing Viking, then?”

He stared, simply blank.

“Lt. Perez,” the officer identified himself. “Alliance Security operations. Was it an understandable scheduling error? Or otherwise?”

He shook his head, confused in the crowd noise that echoed in the distant overhead. The question made no sense from a dock-side policeman. From Customs. From whatever they were. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m a marginer. It happens sometimes. Somebody didn’t have their papers straight. Or some bigger ship snatched it. I don’t know.”

The policeman nodded, once and slowly. It looked like dismissal. Sandor turned, hastened on through the barrier and toward the milling crowd, afraid, trying not to walk like a liberty-long drunk and trying to figure out why they chose his section of the dock to gather and what it all was.

‘Hey, Captain,” someone yelled as he met the crowd, “why did you do it?”

He looked that way, saw no one in particular, cast about again as he pushed his way through. Panic surged in him, wanting out, away from this place. Hands touched him; a camera bobbed over the shoulders of the crowd and he stared into the lens in one dim-witted moment of fright before ducking away from it

“What route?” someone asked him. “You find some new null-point, Captain?”

He shook his head. “Nothing like that. I just came through Wesson’s and Tripoint.” He kept walking, terrified at the stationers who had come to stare at him. Someone thrust a mike in his face.

“You know the whole station’s been following your com for five hours, Captain? Did you know that?”

“No.” He stared helplessly, realizing—his face… his face recorded, made public, with Lucy’s name and number. “I’m tired,” he said, but the microphone persisted, thrust toward him.

“You’re Captain Edward Stevens, right? From Wyatt’s Star? What’s the tie with Dublin? She, you said. Personal?”

“Right.” A small voice, a tremulous voice. His knees were shaking. “Excuse me.”

“How long have you been out?” The mike followed him, persistent “You have any special trouble ru

“A month or so. I don’t know. I haven’t comped it yet. No. I don’t know.”

“You’re meeting someone of Reilly’s Dublin, you said.”

“I didn’t say. It’s personal.” He hesitated, searched desperately for a way of escape that would get him to the offices. Blue dock. That was where he had to go. Stations were universal in that arrangement, if not in their interiors. He was on green. It could not be far. He tried to recall the docks from years ago—he had been eleven—with Ross and Mitri by him—

“What’s her name, Captain? Is there more to it?”

“Excuse me, please. I’m tired. I just want to get to the bank. I didn’t do anything.”

“You cleared Viking to Pell in a month in a ship that size, solo? What kind of rig is she?”

“Excuse me. Please.”

“You don’t call what you did remarkable?”

“I call it stupid. Please.”

He shoved his way through, with people surging all about him, his heart hammering in panic. People—people as far as he could see. And of a sudden…

She was there. Allison Reilly was straight in front of him, wide-eyed as the rest of the crowd.

He shoved his way past the startled curious and at the last moment kept his hands off her—stood swaying on his feet and seeing the anger on her face.

“You’re crazy,” she said. “You’re outright crazy.”

“I told you I’d see you here. I’m tired. Can we talk… when I get back from the bank?”

She took his elbow and guided him through the crowd. The microphone caught up with him again; the newswoman shouted questions he half heard and Allison Reilly ignored them, pulled him across the dock to the line of bars—toward a mass of quieter folk, a line of spacers. Fewer and fewer of the stationer crowd pursued them; and then none: the spacer line closed about them with sullen and forbidding stares turned toward the intruding stationers. He paid no attention then where she aimed him—headed through the dark doorway of a bar and fell into a chair at the nearest available table. He slumped down over his folded arms on the surface in blessed quiet and tried to come out of it when someone shook him by the shoulder.

Allison Reilly put a drink into his hand. He sipped at it and gagged, because he had expected a stiff drink and got fruit juice and sugar froth. But it was food. It helped, and he looked up fuzzily into Allison’s face while he drank. A ring of other faces had gathered, male and female, spacers ringing the table, silver-clad, white, green and gold and motley insystemers, just staring—all ma