Inside the enclosure Marconi, seated at a bare table, labored over a sheaf of papers with one of the "Sonnies" from the ship. Sonny was wriggling in coveralls, the first clothes he had ever worn.
Ross saw they hadn't been able to get shoes onto him.
Who else did he know? Captain Delafield was sitting somberly within the enclosure; Win Fraley, the hottest auctioneer on the Port, was studying a list, his lips moving. Every trading firm was represented; the heads of the smaller firms were there in person, not daring to delegate the bidding job. Plenty of Port personnel, just there for the excitement of the first longliner in fifteen years, even though it was well after close of the business day.
The goods were in sealed cases against the back wall as usual. Ross could only tell that some of them were perforated and therefore ought to contain living animals. Only the one Sonny from the starship crew was there; presumably the rest were back on the ship. He wouldn't be able to follow Oldham's orders to snoop out the nature of the freight from them. Well, damn Oldham; damn even the auction, Ross thought to himself. His mood of gloom did not lift.
The auction was a kind of letdown. All that turmoil and bustle, concentrated in a tiny arc around the velvet ropes, contrasted unpleasantly with the long, vacant rows of dusty seats that stretched to the back of the hall. Maybe a couple of centuries ago Ross would have enjoyed the auction more.
But now all it made him think of was the thing he had been brooding about for a night and a day, the slow emptying of the planet, the .... Decay.
But, as usual, no one else seemed to notice or to care.
Captain Delafield consulted his watch and stood up. He rapped the table. "In accordance with the rules of the Trade Commission and the appropriate governing statutes," he droned, "certain merchandise will now be placed on public auction. The Haarland Trading Corporation, consignee, agrees and consents to divest itself of merchandise from Consignment 97-W amounting by estimate of the customs authorities to twenty-five per cent of the total value of all merchandise in said consignment. All receipts of this auction are to be entered as excise duties paid by the consignee on said merchandise, said receipts to constitute I payment in full on excise on Consignment 97-W. The I clerk will record; if any person here present wishes to enter f an objection let him do so thank you." He glanced at a slip of paper in his hand. "I am requested to inform you that the Haarland Trading Corporation has entered with the clerk a protective bid of five thousand shields on each item." There was a rustle in the hall. Five thousand shields was a lot of money. "Your auctioneer, Win Fraley," said Captain Delafield, and sat down in the first row of seats. The auctioneer took a long, slow swallow of water, his eyes gleaming above the glass at the audience. Theatrically he tossed the glass to an assistant, smacked his hands together and grinned. "Well," he boomed genially, "I don't have to tell you gentlemen that somebody's going to get rich tonight. Who knows—maybe it'll be you? But you can't make money without spending money, so without any further ado, let's get started. I have here," he rapped out briskly, "Item Number One. Now you don't know and I don't know exactly what Item Number One contains, but I can tell you this, they wouldn't have sent it two hundred and thirty-one lights if they didn't think it was worth something. Let's get this started with a rush, folks, and I mean with a big bid to get in the right mood. After all, the more you spend here the less you have to pay in taxes," he laughed. "You ready? Here's the dope. Item Number One———"
His assistant slapped a carton at the extreme left of the line.
"——weight two hundred and fifteen grams, net; fifteen cubic centimeters; one microfilm reel included. Reminds me," he reminisced, "of an item just about that size on the Sirius IV shipment.
Turned out to be Maryjane seeds, and I don't suppose I have to tell anybody here how much Mr. Leverett made out of Maryjanes; I bet every one of us has been smoking them ever since.
What do you say, Mr. Leverett? You did all right last tune—want to say ten thousand as a first big bid on Item Number One? Nine thousand? Do I hear——?"
One of the smaller traders, not working through a professional bidder, not even decently delegating the work to a junior, bid seventy-five hundred shields. Like the spokesmen for the other big traders, Ross sat on his hands during the early stages. Let the small fry give themselves a thrill and drop out. The big firms knew to a fraction of a shield how much the small ones could afford to bid on a blind purchase, and the easiest way to handle them was to let them spend their budgets in a hurry. Of course the small traders knew all this, and their strategy, when they could manage it, was to hold back as long as possible. It was a matter of sensing emotion rather than counting costs; of recognizing the fraction of a second in which a little fellow made up his mind to acquire an item and bidding him up— of knowing when he'd gone his limit and letting him have it at a ruinous price. It was an art, and Ross, despising it, knew that he did it very, very well.
He yawned and pretended to read a magazine while the first six items went on the block; the little traders seemed desperate enough to force the price up without help. He bid on Item Seven partly to squeeze a runt trader and partly to test his liaison with his professional bidder. It was perfect; the pro caught his signal—a bored inspection of his fingernails—while seeming to peek clumsily at the man from Leverett's.
Ross let the next two pass and then acquired three items hi rapid succession. The fever had spread to most of the bidders by then; they were starting at ten thousand and up. One or two of the early birds had spent their budgets and were leaving, looking sandbagged—as indeed they had been. Ross signaled "take five" to his professional and strolled out for a cup of coffee.
On the way back he stopped for a moment outside the hall to look at the stars and breath. There were the familiar constellations—The Plowman, the Rocket Fleet, Marilyn Monroe. He stood smoking a cigarette and yearning toward them until somebody moved hi the darkness near him. "Nice night, Ross," the man said gloomily.
It was Captain Delafield. "Oh, hello, sir," Ross said, the world descending around him again like a too-substantial curtain. "Taking a breather?"
"Had to," the captain growled. "Ten more minutes in that place and I would have thrown. Damned money-grabbing traders. No offense, Ross; just that I don't see how you stand the life. Seems to have got worse in my time.' Much worse. You high-rollers goading the pee-wees into shooting their wads—it didn't use to be like that. Gallantry. Not stomping a downed man. I don't see how you stand it."
"I can't stand it," Ross said quietly. "Captain Delafield, you don't know—I'm so sick to death of the life I'm leading and the work I'm doing that I'd do anything to get away. Mr. Fallen offered me a purser's spot on his ship; I've been thinking about it very seriously."
"Purser? A dirty job. There's nothing to do except when you're hi port, and then there's so much to do that you never get to see the planet. I don't recommend it, Ross."
Ross grunted, thinking. If even the purser's berth was no way out, what was left for him? Sixty more years of waiting for a starship and scheming how to make a profit from its contents? Sixty more years watching Ghost Town grow by nibbles on Halsey City, watching the traders wax in savagery as they battled for the ever-diminishing pool of consumers, watching obscene comedies like Lurline of the Old Landowners graciously consenting to wed Marconi of the New Nobodies? He said wearily: "Then what shall I do, Captain? Rot here with the rest of the planet?"