"It's a smiley," I told them, holding the cage up so they could admire the soulful little brute. "From Mimas, Saturn's first moon. His name is Joey and he is very much for sale."
Everybody wanted Joey, naturally. I'd have wanted him myself if I hadn't learned from the Mimasan natives, who are as rare as smileys and a damned sight less friendly, that chewing khiff roots would immunize me against his hypnotic aura. That aura makes smileys remarkable even among Eetees, so remarkable that nobody had ever brought one in before. It's their mating call, a very practical gimmick evolved to attract each other and at the same time protect themselves from native predators while they carry on their courtship. It works on anything from swamp gnats to Syrtis Major sand snakes, and it's literally irresistible.
Joey looked something like a fist-sized marmoset shaped out of pale blue smoke, his body so insubstantial that you could see the cage wires through and behind him. It was hard to put a finger on the quality unless you had learned the hard way, but there was a weird incompleteness about him that escaped definition. Smileys are paradoxical little brutes. Unmated, they're only half material because they actually aren't complete entities. But when they mate—
"Gleef?" Joey said plaintively, yearning at the assorted faces around him and loving every one of them.
That clinched it. "How much?" somebody asked, and there was a general digging for wallets and Eetee equivalents.
I had figured my price already, allowing for dealers' profits and transferral expenses. On Earth Joey would be worth at least a hundred thousand credits to psychomedic clinics treating mental disorders ranging from simple hypertension to paranoia. He should net me twenty thousand, ten of which would go to settle a grubstake lien held by Martian Bankings against the Annabelle, my little eighty-foot space tug.
The other ten would leave me knee-deep in credit notes for a two week spree that would begin at the Argonaut Club, which is as far as any chunk-hopping asteroid prospector ever plans.
"First let me point out," I said, giving Joey's aura time to soak in properly, "that Joey is the first smiley ever captured."
Which was strictly true, though I didn't see fit to mention the second one, a female named Cora which I had left hidden in an old abandoned oxygen reduction plant I knew out in Syrtis Major. I had two good reasons for that: they'd bring higher prices if sold separately, and I wasn't taking any chances on their getting together before I disposed of them. Anything could happen if they did.