Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon Page A

homesickness…”
    Aunt Gracie’s fruit-spice cakes were, without doubt, the densest mass of flavorless, tooth-breaking pseudofoodstuff in the galaxy. She produced them at intervals, for birthdays and holidays, and the family disposed of them discreetly as soon as she was out of sight. Even a sliver of Aunt Gracie’s product left Ky with a day or so of gastric uneasiness.
    “Uh… thanks,” Ky said. She could always leave them under her bed as insect repellent blocks… she’d done that with the ones Aunt Gracie had given her each year to take to the Academy.
    “I know how rushed it can be, when people leave on a long assignment,” Aunt Gracie went on. “So let’s just let Jeannine put them in the car for you right this minute…”
    San made a sound; Ky looked at him, and his lips were folded tight but his eyes danced mischief.
    “Thank you,” Ky said again. She handed the sack to the maid and resigned herself to dumping Aunt Gracie’s creations into some unsuspecting trash container on the way to her command. She was not going to spend five kilos of her personal baggage allowance on inedible crud.
    She finished her juice, and made her escape—not without kissing that withered old cheek—to the car, where her father waited to drive her to the airfield.
    “If you’re planning to dump it somewhere,” he said without reference, “don’t do it in sight of anyone who might, by any conceivable means, know anyone who knows us. Your aunt Gracie’s connections are legendary. The only reason she doesn’t know the whole truth about your resignation is that it’s a state secret. But she suspects, and she’ll worm it out of someone inside another week, I’m sure. I don’t want to have to deal with her if she finds out you’ve tossed her cakes in the trash; it was bad enough when she found out you’d been leaving them under your bed.”
    “How did she find that out?” Ky asked.
    “Bribed the staff, I shouldn’t doubt,” her father said sourly. “But look at it this way. Anything is a commodity to someone. In a very large universe, your aunt Gracie’s cannonballs may be someone else’s favorite underwear.”
    Ky snorted, surprised into a laugh for the first time since her private disaster.
    “Courage, Ky,” he said, as he stopped the car and leaned over to give her a kiss. “You’ve got what you need to start a good life. Go.”
    Gaspard was waiting on the apron. “You look better,” he said, as he looked up from checking the oil. “So, what did the family do for you?”
    “I’m taking
Glennys Jones
to the scrapyard,” Ky said. She took her duffel from old George and slung it into the baggage compartment. “It will keep me out of the public eye.” The boring start to a dull, boring career as a truck driver in space, she did not say. She looped the tie-downs around the two bags, and slammed the door shut, latching it carefully.
    “And give you a chance to show your talents,” Gaspard said. He went on with the preflight check while she looked around, trying to fill her memory with the home she would not see for months, maybe years. Maybe ever again, space being what it was, and life being less certain than she’d thought the last time she left.
    “Well… assuming I have any.” What talents did it take to captain an experienced crew on a boring one-way run? Now if she could figure out a way to avoid scrapping the ship and surprise the family with a great triumph of trading…
    “Don’t fish, Ky; it doesn’t become you.”
    “Right. And we shall hope I don’t exercise my talent for leaping in to help…”
    “At least not until you’re a little more experienced,” Gaspard said. “Though you could help me, if you would, by agreeing to copilot on the way in. There’s some serious weather between us and the mainland.” She had seen the satellite images; a cold front nosing under the warm sea air and lifting clouds to towering heights.
    “Of course.”
    “Good, then. Let’s be