Cakewalk to Gloryanna

BY L. J. STECHER, JR.
The job was easy. The profit was enormous. The only trouble was—the cargo had a will of its own!
Captain Hannah climbed painfully down from the Delta Crucis , hobbled across the spaceport to where Beulah and I were waiting to greet him and hit me in the eye. Beulah—that's his elephant, but I have to take care of her for him because Beulah's baby belongs to me and Beulah has to take care of it—kept us apart until we both cooled down a little. Then, although still somewhat dubious about it, she let us go together across the field to the spaceport bar.
I didn't ask Captain Hannah why he had socked me.
Although he has never been a handsome man, he usually has the weathered and austere dignity that comes from plying the remote reaches among the stars. Call it the Look of Eagles. Captain Hannah had lost the Look of Eagles. His eyes were swollen almost shut; every inch of him that showed was a red mass of welts piled on more welts, as though he had tangled with a hive of misanthropic bees. The gold-braided hat of his trade was not clamped in its usual belligerent position slightly over one eye. It was riding high on his head, apparently held up by more of the ubiquitous swellings.
I figured that he figured that I had something to do with the way he looked.
Shipping marocca to Gloryanna III didn't turn out to be a cakewalk after all? I suggested.
He glared at me in silence.
Perhaps you would like a drink first, and then you would be willing to tell me about it?
I decided that his wince was intended for a nod, and ordered rhial. I only drink rhial when I've been exposed to Captain Hannah. It was almost a pleasure to think that I was responsible, for a change, for having him take the therapy.
A Delta Class freighter can carry almost anything, he said at last, in a travesty of his usual forceful voice. But some things it should never try.
He lapsed back into silence after this uncharacteristic admission. I almost felt sorry for him, but just then Beulah came racking across the field with her two-ton infant in tow, to show her off to Hannah. I walled off my pity. He had foisted those two maudlin mastodons off onto me in one of our earlier deals, and if I had somehow been responsible for his present troubles, it was no more than he deserved. I rated winning for once.