It was pretty obvious that if someone came along who could offer off-world transport for some of the stone—especially if middlemen and certain tax and duty formalities happened to get lost in the shuffle—then that someone stood to add a

tidy sum to his trip's profits. The next part was obvious: Waskin figured that that someone might as well be the crew of the Volga.

It was the sort of argument that had earned Waskin the half-dozen shady nicknames he possessed. Unfortunately, it was also the sort of argument he was extremely adroit at pushing, and in the end Captain Garrett decided it was worth the gamble of a couple of days to stop by and just assess the situation.

I hadn't agreed. In fact, I'd fought hard to change the captain's mind. For starters, the opaline wasn't even a confirmed fact yet; and even if it was there, it was less than certain what the Messenia survey mission would think of us dropping in out of nowhere and trying to walk away with a handful of it.

Survey missions like Messenia's were always military oriented, and if they suspected we were even thinking of bending any customs regulations, we could look forward to some very unpleasant questions.

And I, of course, would wind up with yet another job blown out from under me.

But freighter contractors weren't the only ones to whom the word "profit" brought pleasant smiles... and third officers, I'd long ago learned, existed solely to take the owl bridge shift. Half the ship's thirty-member crew had already made their private calculations as to how much of a bonus a few chunks of opaline would bring, and my arguments were quickly dismissed as just one more example of Travis's famous inability to make winning gambles, a side talent that had made me the most sought-after poker player on the ship.

Waskin always won at poker, too. And got far too much satisfaction out of beating me.