"Well... assuming I have any." What talents did it take to captain an experienced crew on a boring one-way run? Now if she could figure

out a way to avoid scrapping the ship and surprise the family with a great triumph of trading...

"Don't fish, Ky; it doesn't become you."

"Right. And we shall hope I don't exercise my talent for leaping in

to help..."

"At least not until you're a little more experienced," Gaspard said.

"Though you could help me, if you would, by agreeing to copilot on the way in. There's some serious weather between us and the

mainland." She had seen the satellite images; a cold front nosing under the warm sea air and lifting clouds to towering heights.

"Of course."

"Good, then. Let's be going. That front's going to toss us around

some."

Ky climbed into the copilot's seat, and concentrated on her part of the checklist as they finished preflight and started the engines.

The first hour in the air, retracing her recent flight home, was

almost pure sightseeing. The colors of the water, changing with depth, with the shadows of clouds... the reefs... the various islands.

Puffy cumulus clouds arrayed in rows along the wind's path, all white and innocent... but ahead, a line of taller clouds, their ramparts denser. Ky had no time to brood, as she helped Gaspard ease the plane through the front's turbulence, and only the navigation instruments could have told where they were.

The city lay under dense clouds spitting cold rain, just as it had been when she left. At least here there was little turbulence, and landing offered no problems. Gaspard turned onto the ramp that led to the private terminal, and then again to reach the Vatta hangars.

"Good job, Ky," he said, when he'd handed her down from the wing. "You'll be fine with old Glennys. Shouldn't wonder if you don't start your own private fleet with her or something."

Ky started. Was she that predictable?

"Have to start somewhere, after all," he said cheerfully, and winked.

Then he turned back to the mechanic who had come out to greet him.

Her first task, she thought, was getting rid of Aunt Gracie's cakes.

She hadn't asked Gaspard to let her toss them out into the sea- Gaspard might be her friend, but he might also be one of Aunt Gracie's spies. At no point in the route from the airfield to the shuttle field was she alone and in reach of a disposal chute. The five kilos dragged at her arm. She had to carry them herself to have the chance to lose them... but a woman in a Vatta Transport captain's uniform carrying a bright flower-patterned bag, obviously heavy, would be noticed and remembered. Blast Aunt Gracie!

Vatta captains, she had been told, did not ride commercial shuttles to orbit. At least not here, where Vatta maintained its own small fleet of surface-to-orbit transport. As a captain, she had her own tiny compartment, outfitted as a workstation, with stowage for her duffel in the same compartment. She remembered her first trip alone to the orbital station, when she'd been thirteen and headed for three

months as the lowest of apprentices on Turbot. She'd been crammed into crew seating with four other family apprentices (each going to a different ship) and fifteen regular crew, and she'd been stiff, as well as scared, by the time they arrived.

This was much better. She spent the time reviewing crew information, committing faces and names to her implant's perfect memory. At the Vatta orbital station, she debarked ahead of the rest, and caught the first tram outbound for the docks. She had given up on Aunt Gracie's cakes for now; she turned them over to the Vatta handler along with the rest of her luggage. It would reappear in her cabin aboard. All she had in hand was the tidy little captain's case, with its datalinks, command wand, and orders. She tried to sneak up on Glennys without being spotted, but Vatta security was far too good for that. She had an escort all the way from the Vatta gates to the boarding platform, and when she got there, Gary Tobai left off polishing the Vatta family seal on the rail and turned to her.

"Well, if it isn't the newest captain in Vatta Fleet." He grinned at her, but Ky thought she detected a bite to his tone. "Mouth got you in trouble again, did it?"

"All I said was..." Ky shut her mouth and shook her head at him.

"If you know that much, you know I didn't do anything wrong." "Wrong? No. Wrong way to do something right, maybe. I thought you were supposed to be our white hope with the military."

"I thought so, too. So when I found something that needed to be fixed-" "You jumped in and fixed it. I understand that, but you could have anticipated it would cause trouble."

"I was trying to avoid trouble." Should she even explain how convoluted the right procedures were, and why she'd chosen to

work through contacts the family had given her? No. He wanted to condescend, so he would, no matter what she said.

"You were not bred to avoid trouble," Tobai said. "Your family

takes it on, shakes it like a dog shaking a rat, and tosses it to one

side." His voice softened. "As you did, Captain."Captain. He had actually called her Captain. She pushed aside the rest of what he'd said. "So, now that I have a ship, what can you tell me about her?"

He scowled. "You haven't looked at the listing?"Ky closed her eyes and recited. "Glennys Jones, three hundred meters overall length, 200 meters beam, keel plate laid in Bramley's yards eighty-seven years ago, refitted in '04 and '38, drives replaced in '43 with expanded cruising range, fully loaded to one hundred seventy-nine days, or two hundred fifteen days empty and crewed. She has two main cargo holds, three auxiliary holds, and no autoloading capability. The largest container that will fit through the main cargo hatch is three meters by two point seven meters, and standard access now is three by four, which limits her pretty much to specialty cargo. She can't take loose bulk cargo like grain, another limitation. She's been used to haul perishables, but on her last trip the refrigerating system broke down, and Vatta had to pay the shipper for the goods as well as a penalty for nondelivery, and insurance didn't cover it all. The company's out seven hundred thousand credits. Repair of the refrigeration system would cost another five hundred thousand, so Ships decided to use her for base- supply runs and sell her for scrap when her inspection ran out." Ky paused for breath. Tobai had been nodding approval, but when she paused he didn't say anything. She went on. "So now she's due for recertification, but she probably wouldn't pass, and they're shipping her off to Lastway. I know all that, all that's in the listing. What I don't know is what her other peculiarities are. Things not in the list. I'm sure you do, because you've probably crawled all over her with a microscanner."

"You're right about that," Tobai said. "I've shipped on her five times in all, but not in the past seven years, so I had to renew my acquaintance with the lady."

"This old-"

"Now don't say that. It never does for the captain to badmouth the ship. Ships are sensitive." Ships were metal, ceramic, polymer machines; they had brains of a sort, but no feelings. Ky had been told that the first time she came aboard a ship. But however sensitive the ship wasn't, Gary Tobai was, and she wanted him on her side.

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean anything by it." "Better not to say it at all, then," he said. "Now-what you need to know is that we have to load the starboard main hold first, then the port auxiliary, starboard auxiliary, main port, and the third auxiliary, if we use it, last. We need at least a half point more mass to starboard, or she won't stay in trim. That last engine refit did something screwy to the frame, though no one will admit it. There's also a problem with the attitude jets, but all I have is hearsay.

Quince could tell you more about that."

"Dad says they've assembled a cargo for us-are you satisfied with it?"

"All done, including crew trading," Tobai said. "How much are you reserving for crew shares?"

"A scrap run, one-way? What's the usual split?"

"I'd recommend the third auxiliary hold. That's 15 percent of the total. Limit it to luxuries, is what I told them. Retain 4 percent for captain's space, and split the remaining 11 percent by seniority."

"I've already bought in for 10 percent; should I donate the 4

percent?"

"No, crew would wonder what was going on if you didn't claim it.

We're going to have trouble enough; your father had to pay a surcharge for a one-way trip since they can't make a profit on the way back. Whether you fill it or not, reserve it. Your dad sent over some; he said you wouldn't have time to deal, but I could add a few things..."

"Fine." She could put Aunt Gracie's miserable cakes in there and no one would ever know. "If you come across something that would be prime at Lastway, let me know. I'm up to my nose in chores, and we're supposed to push for a quick departure."

He grinned again. "That's what I like to see: captains doing more

than sitting in the captain's chair."

When she got to her cabin, she found a stack of packages: presents from her parents, from her brother San, from... she stared at the

card that had come with a child's kit for a military ship, a Dragon- class cruiser. MacRobert had sent her a present? She ripped open the envelope. In the same precise, blocky letters that had once informed her, in her first winter as a cadet, that she had two demerits for the state of her bunk, he offered best wishes. "If you ever need to let us know about something," the message went on, "remember that dragons breathe fire. I will be most interested in your progress with this model."

That was beyond odd; Ky stared at it a long moment before putting the model kit on the back of her closet shelf, on top of the note. She could not imagine what she would need to tell the space service, besides something rude and anatomically impossible. MacRobert's rumored connection to covert operations ghosted through her mind -but that was cadet gossip, surely? And why would he pick a disgraced exile like her to work with even if it were true? She turned to the other presents.

Her parents had, with their usual practical approach, sent her a sizable letter of credit for Lastway. For clothes, her mother suggested; her father, who signed it last, said "For yourself." Ky measured the amount against the upgrades the ship needed and came up very short. Still, it was a start. San had sent her a polished tik seed; it fit comfortably in the palm of her hand, its glossy surface a rich red-brown. She put it in her pocket, where she could touch it often; the letter of credit she put in the lockdown of her desk.

"Captain?" Someone tapped at her door. "Need a time for castoff, Captain."

She had forgotten that very elementary detail. She was the one who

had to say "Cast off at 1400" or whatever she chose. She opened the door to find Riel Amat, her senior pilot, waiting with a databoard.

He looked a little older than the picture she had in the crew list.

"We can be ready by 1320, ma'am, or anytime after," he said.

"Traffic Control says they're expecting some congestion later, but should be clear until 1500. They're asking for a time."

"Advice?"

"Fourteen thirty would be about right, ma'am, with a little leeway each way..."

"Fourteen thirty it is, then, Riel. Thanks. Anything else I need to be

doing?"

"There's paperwork on the bridge, sign-offs and stuff. Crew's all aboard, accounting's cleared, they just need your signature."

"I'll be right there."