"This might take a little while," said Callahan, applying to the ends of their cigars a lighter that could have welded I-beams. "It ain't every day we get a through traveler here. I gotta look up the Galatlas an' the shipping notices."
He hoisted a bulky catalogue from a side table onto his desk and blew off a cloud of dust. Winstead seized the excuse to cough out a lungful of smoke. His host reached out for the ticket.
"Ultimate destination Fomalhaut VIII," he read off. "Say! That ain't one I ever had to handle before!"
He leafed through the volume for some minutes, reexamined the ticket, then dug into two or three appendices. He tapped a knobby knuckle against his chin.
"It don't look to me, Mr. Winstead," he said thoughtfully, "like you shoulda wound up here at all. Fomalhaut VIII! That's a hell of a way from here!"
"The clerk at the last spaceport did seem to think there had been a mistake," Winstead volunteered cautiously.
"Somethin' sure slipped. Maybe some jet-head read his directions wrong an' sent you so many degrees Sol north instead of Sol south. Best you can say is you're still on the right general side of the Solar System."
"Oh, dear!" Winstead said, flustered. "What can you do about that?"
"Depends what ships, if any, are due here. If I was you, I'd take the first one out. Get to a bigger settlement, where you'll get a better choice of ships."