"You need a visa to get to Vyapore," the clerk said. "These visas are issued at infrequent intervals to certified personages. I don't see how you—"
"I have a visa," Herndon snapped, and produced it. The clerk blinked—one-two-three, in sequence—and his pale rose face flushed deep cerise.
"So you do," he remarked at length. "It seems to be in order. Passage will cost you eleven hundred sixty-five stellors of the realm."
"I'll take a third-class ship," Herndon said. "I have a paid voucher for such a voyage."
He handed it across. The clerk studied it for a long moment, then said: "You have planned this very well. I accept the voucher. Here."
Herndon found himself holding one paid passage to Vyapore aboard the freight-ship Zalasar.
The Zalasar turned out to be very little like the Lord Nathiir. It was an old-fashioned unitube ship that rattled when it blasted off, shivered when it translated to nullspace, and quivered all the week-long journey from Molleccogg to Vyapore. It was indeed a third-class ship. Its cargo was hardware: seventy-five thousand dry-strainers, eighty thousand pressors, sixty thousand multiple fuse-screens, guarded by a supercargo team of eight taciturn Ludvuri. Herndon was the only human aboard. Humans did not often get visas to Vyapore.
They reached Vyapore seven days and a half after setting out from Molleccogg. Ground temperature as they disembarked was well over a hundred. Humidity was overpowering. Herndon knew about Vyapore: it held perhaps five hundred humans, one spaceport, infinite varieties of deadly local life, and several thousand non-humans of all descriptions, some of them hiding, some of them doing business, some of them searching for starstones.
Herndon had been well briefed. He knew who his contact was, and he set about meeting him.