Finder’s Fee
by David Alexander & Hayford Peirce
Illustration by Darryl Elliott
All across Human Occupied Space planets continued to randomly lose congruency with nullspace, thereby isolating billions of human beings forever, but why should I care?
I was in the company of a beautiful woman, and the two of us were soaring on warm thermals high above the New Sonoran desert on the back of the biggest, gaudiest butterfly in the known Universe. The problems of interplanetary navigation should have been the farthest thing from my mind.
But I did care about the lost worlds, intensely.
After all, my life depended on it.
Only a few days before, the incomprehensible workings—or misworkings—of the currents of nullspace had unexpectedly washed me ashore here on New Sonora, the only habitable planet in the Icarus System, ninety-seven light-years from my intended destination.
And that was only the starter.
The logistics of interstellar commerce are stark. Either you voyage from star to star via nullspace or you don’t go at all. Yes, you can try building yourself a craft capable of attaining a few percent of the speed of light, then spend eighty or ninety years guiding it to the next star system, hoping that something doesn’t break down before you die of old age.
To my knowledge it had never been done, and I doubted that it ever would—and certainly not by me, a former senior facilitator and currently a neophyte star-freighter captain with little more to his name than a highly mortgaged spaceship and a cargo of almost certainly worthless crystalline blocks.
And if New Sonora fell out of congruency, as my intended destination of Charon IV apparently had, I wouldn’t be able to make my next payment to the banker-surgeons of New Zurich, and they would, in consequence, refuse to transmit the reactivation code for the artificial pancreas installed in me as security for the mortgage on the Venture.
And I, Isaiah Howe, the one-time youngest senior facilitator in the history of Human Occupied Space, would be dead at the ripe old age of thirty-four.
Of course, even if New Sonora didn’t Ml out of congruency, I still needed the money for the payment. Or I would die. All of which made it easy to understand why I was a bit distracted.
“Do you like it?” shouted Rebona Myking over her shoulder from the lead saddle, her face lit by a radiant smile.
“It’s terrific!” I called back. “The view is fantastic!”
It was, too. Not only the panorama of the improbable cactus-town and of the luridly colored mountains on all sides of its desert basin, but also the view of my companion’s slim back and long auburn hair streaming almost into my face.
Forcing a smile, I tried and failed to banish all thoughts of just how far I was from being able to meet my upcoming mortgage payment.
“You’re still brooding about the aliens and those damned crystals.”
“Yes,” I admitted, though the demands of the outlandish aliens the New Sonorans called Bagpipes were only making a bad situation worse. It was the crystals themselves that were at the root of my problems. I remembered the first time I had seen them in the cavernous warehouse back on the rain-drenched planet of Bountiful…
My third trip as the master of my own ship had begun with reasonable promise. My cargo of prepaid blank data crystals, pharmaceuticals, Sytherian and Terran spices, and the master copy of an entertainment library licensed for duplication and distribution was destined for Bountiful, a planet whose star lay near the Edelweiss Drift. No system bordering the Drift had slipped away in the more than 600 years we had been using nullspace, so I was reasonably confident I would get to Bountiful and back.
Of equal importance, my consignee, the House of Rallingsback, had paid half the shipping costs in advance. It was only after I had released the cargo to the Rallingsback warehouse and was awaiting the balance of my money that I was informed that Ryseel Rallingsback, Lord of the House, had died eight days before.
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” I murmured politely to the old man’s sons.
The heirs to the House of Rallingsback, two pasty-faced sharpies with flaming red hair atop skull-like heads, pursed their lips lugubriously. Father’s estate and all his assets, which now included my cargo, would, they explained, unfortunately be tied up in Probate Court for the next two years.
I was, of course, Reefal and Rastal Rallingsback advised, welcome to file a creditor’s claim and wait for justice to take its course. Or, they smiled into the long, appalled silence, I could accept an extremely valuable consignment of high-grade crystals now lodged in this very warehouse.
Scowling, I let the Brothers Rallingsback lead me deeper into the gloom.
“Look,” exclaimed Reefal, the marginally less skeletal of the two, gesturing at a carelessly piled heap of halfmeter by half-meter crystalline blocks glimmering in subdued yellows, bright blues, and subtie greens, “one-and-a-half tons of a unique form of gemstone. It was Father’s intention to cut them into sizes suitable for jewelry, electronic circuitry, surgical tools, and other devices. Unfortunately my brother and I have neither the time nor the experience to manage such a complicated venture.”
Human space, of course, is overrun with gems, crystals, and gemstones from hundreds of planets. As far as jewelry is concerned, artificial diamonds and rubies indistinguishable from the real article are produced on a dozen worlds. And current manufacturing techniques have long since made obsolete most industrial uses for even the finest gemstones, synthetic substrates being far more efficient, uniform, and reliable.
I eyed the Rallingsbacks bleakly as I tried to keep from screaming aloud—more at my own stupidity than at their childish larceny. Their father had obviously been crazy to buy the crystals in the first place, and I would be equally crazy in accepting them as payment for the balance of the shipping charges. But what choice did I have? A bird in the hand…
It took only a few minutes for the necessary documents to be signed, title transferred, and orders given to move the blocks to my cargo hold. I stormed out into the rain and had a quick dinner at a cheap portside restaurant. An hour later, wet and still seething with anger, I stomped across the rain-swept field and back to the Venture. There I found three sour-looking customs officials regarding the ship speculatively.
“Your purchase has been loaded?”
“Presumably. Why?”
One of them produced a paper. “Here is the calculation of the transfer taxes on the transaction. It comes to just under 19,000 credits.”
“Very well,” I said, knowing only too well that I had no more than six thousand to my name. “If you’ll wait here, I’ll get the money. Ship, lower the ramp.”
Before they could object, I hurried inside, slid into my command chair, and snapped a toggle. The hatch whined shut behind me.
“Computer, what’s the nearest human-occupied planet?” I demanded.
“Charon IV, fourteen light-years distant, sometimes called Dogwood.”
“Then start getting us there in the next two seconds.”
“There are three human beings standing by the passenger port.”
“They’re not human beings, they’re tax collectors! Take us up—now!”
The lift-off klaxon sounded three thunderous tones. Thirty seconds later, shredding a thousand port regulations to ribbons, we lurched away from the field. As we tore through the upper atmosphere my hands clamped the arms of my chair in impotent fury. This whole miserable episode was yet another lesson in the difference between intellectual brilliance and practical knowledge. Any experienced ship’s captain of even limited intelligence would have demanded payment in full before releasing his cargo to the consignee’s warehouse.