"I'm fully aware of my limitations. I'd never be allowed on any temple floor, much less on an altar, but I don't expect that. I dance for my own pleasure and well-being."

"You can perform for us some day," Van Rycke promised.

Rael flushed scarlet. "You're not a tamed audience! And I know you all . . ."

Jellico laughed, but he draped a surprisingly comforting arm around her shoulders. "Power down, Doctor. Our good Cargo-Master's only running you over the jets. Ibis dancing's potentially too potent a force for disruption to be loosed in the confines of a starship. Rest a.s.sured that you'll be allowed to continue exercising to your heart's content in complete privacy."

The four s.p.a.cers moved into that part of the huge market where the gems and jewelry were sold.

Here the difference between the Solar Queen and the Roving Star, the chasm between the credits each starship had at her disposal, between the routes they flew, were made clearly apparent. The really good pieces, finished or unset, coming for sale on Canuche of Halio were offered in the major enclosed facilities, not in this open field, yet they could not give the top line of even what was on display of the mounted stones more than a pa.s.sing glance.

Miceal's expression darkened as he continued to watch the Medic. Inevitably, her eyes went to the best pieces, lingered on the really good ones. She knew they were beyond the means of her party and said nothing, but the way she looked at them was sufficient. It was not hard to imagine her disappointment. Teague Cofort would have gone for those choices. s.p.a.ce, Deke Tatarcoff probably could have picked up a couple or three of them. So could the Queen, he thought bitterly. Of course, then they would have nothing left with which to lay in a Trade store ...

He stopped himself with a mental oath. What was he doing? Was this accursed woman driving him to feel ashamed of his own starship?

Jellico's mood improved again once they left the highpriced jewelry behind and found themselves surrounded by stalls stocking goods within their range.

He had no time for brooding then. The Solar Queen had almost no jewelry left, and these mid-line goods, particularly the numerous beads, were of intense interest to her Captain.

Now that she was free to act, Rael Cofort shone. She unerringly seized upon the beautifully marked agates, the oddly colored sodalite strand whose dark lavender shade might be a fault but was also strikingly attractive. She found the three unpitted strings in a bundle of otherwise poor garnets, and she spotted uniquely shaped beads and strange clasps to add distinction to the Queen's growing collection of interesting if relatively uncostly trade material.

Van Rycke glowed with satisfaction. Cofort was performing exactly as he had seen her do in that other market but with the grand difference that on this occasion she was working for the Solar Queen, not against her.

He permitted her to do only the choosing. Although each individual piece cost little, the total of their gem and mineral purchases would be significant. This was Queen business, and he was not about to turn the crucial bargaining over to any temporary hand.

Dane watched him with the awe of a knowledgeable beginner for a superb master in his craft, and with pleasure.

Someday, he would have a similar post and would perform, he hoped, with skill equal to that of his chief.

Jellico and Cofort's impressions might be less precisely tuned, but they were no less powerful. Both were veterans in Trade and recognized an ability so well honed that it transcended the professional to move into the realm of art.

Once the Cargo-Master was satisfied that they had secured everything they needed or wanted that the Queen could afford, he indicated that they should return to the freighter with their treasures. All four of them were burdened with a number of fairly substantial packages by that time. The cloth, of course, would be delivered to the ship, but when one purchased gems and minerals, he took care to carry them away with him.

"Could we at least go by the loose stones?" the Medic asked wistfully.

"If you like," Jellico replied. "I thought you agreed with Van that we wouldn't take any."

"Aye. This is for me. I just want to look."

"The Roving Star deals heavily in them," Van Rycke recalled.

She nodded. "We do our own setting, you see. Our Steward's a master jeweler. - He's taken prizes from some of the biggest guilds in the ultrasystem. - He mounts what we bring to him, both for Trade and for the rest of us personally. All we have to do is supply the materials, and he produces individual works of art. I've gotten in the habit of checking out anything that might conceivably be of interest as a result."

"It can't hurt," the Cargo-Master said. He touched one of the packages he carried. "This local stuff's nice. I wouldn't object to having a few loose stones on hand."

That part of the big market given over to unmounted gems and the metals used to complement them was not extensive, and there was almost no variety in the type of jewels offered. Canuchean amethysts and red garnets made up more than 90 percent of the stock. Most of the rest consisted of surplanetary fancy garnets, all of them flawed and none of good color, much to the woman's disappointment.

The remainder were various small, imported semiprecious gems common throughout the ultrasystem. There were no sunstones at all that day.

The Free Traders bought a few stones, fewer than they might have if the quality had been better. All were single specimens. The sets, presorted packets containing from two gems to three dozen or more, they left alone. Most such lots were of very low grade, and they had plenty from which to choose at reasonable cost without having to settle for the patently inferior.

One stand featuring them did catch Cofort's eye. It was a small, uncovered operation specializing in both imported and on-world stones plus a smattering of the more interesting readily available minerals. The array of colors was wonderful and was rendered more striking still by the masterful arrangement the merchant had employed to display his wares.

She picked up several of the clear packets encasing his goods and held them high so that Halio's light might play over the contents before carefully replacing them again.

When she seemed to linger over one lot labeled rose tourmalines, the Canuchean was quick to pick up on her apparent interest.

"Those have better than average color. They go for fifty a carat."

The s.p.a.cer's arched brows lifted even higher. "Hedon's Gem Guild wouldn't get that for stellar-quality synthetics, which these are not."

The man drew himself to the full of his not inconsiderable height. "If they were stellar quality or anything approaching it; they wouldn't be selling in sets. As for the rest, these tourmalines are natural ..."

"Save it for the locals," the Medic snapped. "Preferably the visually handicapped. It's painfully obvious that just about every stone on this table is manufactured. - If you wish to argue the point, Canuche has thoughtfully supplied appraisers to settle such disputes. Their booth's just over there. One of my comrades can fetch-"

"Power down, s.p.a.ce hound. I'm only a salesman, not a gemologist. It's as easy to fool me as anyone else. This stuff looked good to me, and I took it on faith, that's all."

"Of course," she responded dryly. She had figured he would back down quickly under that threat. The official appraisers were noted for doing their job, and the penalties for fraud were severe. The merchant might have bluffed his way out of this, but he would then be under close observation for a very long time, which would seriously handicap the questionable enterprise he was running.

"Look, I'll sell at a loss to prove my good intentions. Take what you want for ten a carat."

"Ten? We do this for a living, too, remember? You got them for a quarter a carat, maybe half for a few of the best. You'll be making a good profit at one credit."

"One! I won't be able to meet my rent!"

"Stow that debris, my friend. By rights, I shouldn't go higher than three-quarters. Besides, we're only taking a couple of sets as curiosities, one for me, one for my comrades to split. Synthetics like these wouldn't move too well, and I really don't believe your style of doing business deserves the reward of a big order."

She looked over a number of the sets before selecting two, one containing all rose-colored stones, the other a mixture of rose and green. The gems in both were cut as cabochons rather than with light-firing facets.

After watching carefully while the discomfited merchant weighed her selection, she paid him based upon the scale he had named and, much to his relief, withdrew with her companions.

Cofort caught the way Dane was looking at her and laughed. "You didn't think I had it in me, Viking?"

He started. That was the nickname some of his more insufferable cla.s.smates back at the Pool had used to taunt him. There was no barb in it now, though. In fact, he rather liked the sound of it... "Well, you usually come across as a rather quieter individual."

Her eyes sparkled. "I wasn't loud back there, either," she teased.

"Neither are Patrol lasers," Jellico told her. "They make their point, too."

Her manner grew grave again. "I didn't think Mr. Van Rycke would mind my taking the helm. The sum involved was infinitesimal, and one set is for me. I'll keep the other as well if you really don't want it."

"Not at all," replied the Cargo-Master. "As you said, it's a curiosity."

"We'll see just how much of a curiosity when we get back to the Queen."

There was such an air of mystery, of superiority, about her that his eyes narrowed. "That's where we're heading right now, Doctor Cofort. On all burners."

15.

Van Rycke ushered his companions into his office. The panel had scarcely closed behind them before he turned to Rael. "All right. What treasure have you found for us amid the debris?"

"Maybe none," she replied, as she accepted the shears he held out to her and slit open each of the packets. She spilled then- contents out in two carefully separated piles.

"Which does the Queen want? The cost was the same."

"The bicolored one."

"Good choice," she said as she separated two pink stones from it. "These appear to be the only ones," she remarked after a few seconds' examination of the rest. A similar study of her own packet produced another prize, this one somewhat larger than the first two.

Rael peered closely at all three, holding them so that they caught the full of the bright light from the desk lamp.

Her head rose in a gesture of triumph. "Star rubies," she announced. "Very old and unquestionably the real thing. They'll have to be tested for quality, but I suspect it's first rate."

"So that's why you chose cabs rather than faceted stones," Miceal said softly.

She nodded. "I'd spotted them right off. I couldn't be entirely sure without examining them more carefully, but I knew I did have something out of the ordinary. I just had to be careful not to arouse his suspicion by paying too much attention to those particular sets." She made a wry face. "I'd probably have been vacuum-brained enough to tell him if that son hadn't tried to give us such a doing. Fifty credits a carat for those little ma.s.s-produced toys of his!"

"What if we had refused the packet you picked up for us?" the Cargo-Master asked.

The Medic answered Van Rycke, but it was Jellico's eyes that she met and held. "Temporary hand or permanent, I am part of this ship, and I'm ent.i.tled to your trust. I'd proven my knowledge of gems. If you couldn't go along with me blindly, or at least indulge my whim if you suspected nothing more, when the outlay was so insignificant, then you'd deserve to take your loss."

"You'd have just held onto both packets and kept mum about the rubies?" Jan asked.

"Naturally. What else would you expect me to do?"

"Fair enough," the Captain said. "We were testing you. You had the right to return the compliment."

Dane fingered the rubies, although he did not pick them up. It would be too much like him to drop one of them- Cofort's probably-and send it skittering into some crevice from which it could not be extracted short of dismantling the ship. "What're they worth?"

"That I couldn't venture to say with certainty, not until they've been tested," she replied, "but if they're as good as they look, they're worth plenty. Mr. Van Rycke will be the better one to lay the proper valuation on them once he has the necessary information to do it."

"They're old to judge by the way they've been polished, probably Terran . . ." The Cargo-Master stopped speaking.

His breath caught. "Spirit of s.p.a.ce!"

"What's the matter?" Miceal demanded.

"Most of Terra's good star ruby sources were played out long ago, the best of them centuries ago, and there's never been anything to equal their output since anywhere in the Federation. If these stones originated in one of those old mines, we're looking at the stuff of legend. They'll go for whatever the market'll bear."

"If we can locate that market," his Captain said gloomily.

"Hedon. We keep our mouths shut and fire all our tubes to get there. Our small constellation here, our double star," he corrected, recalling that one of the three did not belong to the Queen, "could well pay for that voyage and a number of others after it even if we moved nothing else at all on any of them."

"Do you really think that's what we've got?" Rael asked in awe.

"There's a very strong possibility of it. Doctor, judging by surface appearances at any rate. Neither this sheen nor this color has been around for a very long time."

"What if they aren't as old as we think or aren't from one of the famous Terran mines?" Thorson asked, trying to keep his head in the face of his superiors' enthusiasm.

They had seen what seemed like real prizes turn sour before, and he did not want to work himself into the same pitch over what could be nothing more than an extremely costly shot at the next galaxy. A trip to Hedon of Eros was an expensive proposition, and they had nothing else whatsoever that they could hope to trade there. "They're not even very big."

"About a carat each for ours. The Doctor's is half that weight again. That's not bad for a major gemstone. They're also dead matches for one another both in color and cut, and the Queen's two for size as well. That means we can bill them as a suite. No, provided they're natural, we have ourselves a treasure, whatever their age or source. - a.s.suming they're not hot, of course." Rael had been careful to secure doc.u.mentation of the sale, but they would still get no profit in that event and would be out the cost of the voyage as well.

Dane nodded, inwardly hoping that their "treasure" would at least prove of sufficient resale value to match the efforts they would have to expend to establish its authenticity and then dispose of it.

The answer to that lay in the future, but there were other mysteries still to be resolved. He turned his attention to the woman. "How did you spot them, Rael? For that matter, how'd you know the rest were synthetics?"

"Oh, by the color. Manufactured stones are subtly different from their natural counterparts. Usually, they're more intense than real ones, and the shade or tone's at least a wee bit off." She forestalled his next question. "How these came to be in those sets, I couldn't begin to say. They've probably been knocking around for a long time, moving from place to place with no one suspecting their true nature. All the gems in these two lots look like they were previously mounted. They were probably part of a large, low-value shipment gathered from all over the ultrasystem and split up into sets for resale at marginal profit."

"That's more or less what I figure, too," the Cargo-Master agreed.

There was a strange note in his tone, and she looked up to find him studying her intently. "What's wrong?" she asked in surprise.

"I hesitate to use the word preternatural. Doctor. It's too melodramatic coming from anyone but Craig Tau. However, the stones on that stand were not the work of amateurs, The fact that they were synthetic would not have been instantly apparent to most of us, myself included, and I'm not precisely a novice at buying and selling such items.

Add to that the fact that absolutely no one else I've ever known could possibly have smelled out that rats' nest and it rather makes me wonder about you."

"That's only because you're judging by purely Terran standards," she told him calmly. "When I introduced myself as Teague Cofort's sister, I should have been more specific. We're actually half-siblings. Our mothers were different. Very different. In point of fact, I'm a genetic impossibility."

Her chin lifted. "I don't know Mother's race or homeworld. My father just returned to the ship with her one day after a short absence on some planet neither they nor his crew would ever name. She definitely was not of Terran blood, not human at all, although she was very beautiful by human standards. There were some significant physiological and genetic differences, incompatibilities. Marriage was possible between them. Conception should not have been and certainly not a viable birth. That notwithstanding, I was conceived, born, and have managed to thrive.

"Like most intelligent beings, I have my own set of gifts and talents. Most seem to have come from my father, some from Mother, but none are of a nature to set me apart from the better part of the Federation's citizens. Whatever strengths I might have came by the time-honored means of determined effort and practice. If I hadn't been reared in an environment like s.p.a.ce where the lack of other distractions does wonders for the ability to concentrate on a long course of study or training, I doubt I'd have achieved much with them at all, and even with that push, I'm a far voyage from being some sort of ultrawoman.

"Admittedly, my senses are pretty acute, but there's nothing super-anything about them.

"I do have a good feel for color and can differentiate between shades quite finely, but I learned that from our former Cargo-Master, Mara's predecessor. Other than that, my vision's not remarkable. - No pin spotting at ten miles or peering through t.i.tanone plates.

"It's much the same with hearing. My sense of smell is keen, which is usually more disadvantage than blessing. I have trained myself to separate and identify different odors even when they're components in a melody. That's a bit uncommon, I suppose, but don't imagine I can perform like a tracking or hunting animal, or you're in for a major disappointment.

"Sensitivity to aroma and refined sense of taste go together. You can be sure that I appreciate Mr. Mura's fine hand with his seasonings and that I don't let many chances for a good feed of real food pa.s.s me by when they crop up."

The expression of each of her companions brightened into a grin. That, at least, was typical of their kind. When a s.p.a.ce hound hit the surface of a basically Terran-type planet and had some free time, it was almost inevitably to an eating place that he first hurried rather than to the local version of a Happy City.

Rael did not smile. "The last sense I have is touch, and that's not terribly extraordinary, though I'll admit to preferring the feel of that Thornen silk to that of our uniforms.

"There's nothing else," she continued firmly and a little wearily, "no sixth-plus powers. I don't read minds or see past or future or move solid objects by will alone."

"What about conversing with animals?" Miceal asked quickly.

"No," she said firmly. "I wish I could. They're often a galaxy nicer than our own kind. They like me because they know how much I like them. Maybe it's a little unusual," she conceded, "but it's nothing more than that. Plants, too, grow for me as they do for other gardeners who understand their ways and enjoy working with them. There's no particular magic in it."

The Captain gave a slight shake of his head. "No go, Cofort. A lot of people like animals, but none of them affects Queex the way you do."