"Buy you a drink, sir?"

I turned my head. A medium-sized man with dark skin stood in the dim light tothe right of my table, a half-full mug in his hand, a thick thatch of whitehair shimmering in the firelight. "I'm not interested in company right now," Isaid, punching up a small vodkaline on the table's menu selector. I wasn'tinterested in drinking, either, but that little fracas with the Yavanni had drawn enoughattention to me as it was, and sitting there without a glass in my hand wouldonly invite more curiosity.

"I appreciate what you did over there," the man commented, pulling out thechair opposite me and sitting down as if he'd been invited to do so. "I've beenstuck here half an hour waiting for them to go away. Bit of a risky move, though, wasn't it? At the very least, you could have broken a couple of knuckles."

For a moment I gazed across the table at him, at that dark face beneath thatshock of white hair. From the age lines in his skin he clearly had spent a lotof his life out in the sun; from the shape of the musculature beneath hisjackethe hadn't spent that time lounging around in beach chairs. "Not all thatrisky,"

I told him. "Yavanni don't get that really thick skin of theirs untiladulthood.

Kids that age are still pretty soft in spots. You just have to know wherethose spots are."

He nodded, eyes dropping momentarily to the ship patch with its stylized "SB" on the shoulder of my faded black-leather jacket. "You deal a lot with aliens?"

"A fair amount," I said. "My partner's one, if that helps any."

"What do you mean, if it helps any?"

The center of the table opened up and my vodkaline appeared. "If it helps youmake up your mind," I amplified, taking the glass off the tray. "Aboutofferingme a cargo."