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?"
He uncapped his glass, took a sip of rhial, snicked the cover back, and let the heady stuff evaporate in his mouth. He breathed in sharply in the approved manner, but he didn't even shudder. He just nodded slowly, once.
That appeared to pass the conversational ball back to me. "I might have a cargo for you, if you can handle it," I said. "I hear these Delta class ships can manage almost anything, but this is a rough one. The Annabelle is the only ship in the area built to take my stuff, and she's grounded with transposer troubles."