An Elephant for the Prinkip

BY L. J. STECHER, JR.
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
A Delta class freighter can carry anything—maybe more than its skipper can bear!
A delta class freighter isn't pretty to look at, but it can be adapted to carry most anything, and occasionally even to carry it profitably. So when I saw one I didn't recognize sitting under the gantry at Helmholtz Spaceport, I hurried right over to Operations.
It looked as if I might be able to get my Gasha root off-planet before it started to spoil, after all.
It was the Delta Crucis , they told me. She was a tramp, and she hadn't yet been signed for a cargo. The skipper was listed as his own agent. They told me where they thought I could find him, so I drifted over to the Spaceport bar, and looked around.
I found my man quickly enough. He had the young-old look of a deep spacer. He wore a neat but threadbare blue uniform, with the four broad gold rings of command—rather tarnished—on each sleeve. He had a glass of rhial—a liquor that was too potent for my taste—in front of him at ten o'clock in the morning, and that wasn't a good sign. But he looked sober enough.
So I picked up a large schooner of beer at the bar and strolled over to his table in the far corner away from the window.
Mind if I join you? I asked casually. I hate to drink alone.
He stared at me for a minute out of those pale-blue spacer's eyes of his, until I figured he thought he had me catalogued.
Then he motioned me to the chair across from his at the small table. We sat for a few minutes in silence, sizing each other up.
That's a mighty nice looking freighter out there on pad seven, I said at last. Yours?