I would and did. Doc Challenger happens to be the president of the IPS, the corporation that owns the Saturn. Any friend of his is a friend of my pocketbook's.
"Well," I said, "if you're going to put it that way—"
"I'm puttin' this Thaxton guy," Hanson frowned, "in your quarters, on account of they're furthest from the aft holds. Friend or no friend, I ain't aimin' to have him find out we're runnin' a load of rotor-guns an' ammunition to the New California rebels."
He was right there. That was nobody's business but our own. Now, understand me. I think we had a right to help the rebels. For one thing, they deserved their independence. For another, our arch-competitors, the Cosmos Company, was backing the present New California overlords. A third good reason was, of course, that every day this war continued, we were losing money.
Earth itself hadn't had a war for almost a hundred and twenty years—not since the North India uprising of '92. But the distribution of land and governmental control of the colonies was still what you might call "unfinished business."
There were always tiny local squabbles going on. Like the Fontanaland siege three years ago that damn near ruined Mars as a summer resort; the Rollie Rebellion last year on Mercury; and now, this year, the struggle for autonomy on the part of a bunch of Californian Earth colonists in the Venusian hill country.
Our freight experts had decided that of all the IPS ships, the Saturn would be the least likely suspect when it came to gun-running. The Saturn was as old as a statesman's jokes. It was the slowest, wallowingest lugger still pushing vacuum. But I agreed with Hanson, it would not do for anyone connected with the present Venus government to discover our cargo included contraband.
We'd find ourselves playing tit-tat-toe on the walls of a Sun City clink faster than a stuttering android could gargle, "Planck's Constant!"
So I nodded, "Okay, Skipper. You're right and I'm wrong, as you usually are. So what do I do now? Sleep in the galley?"