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MILK RUN
Captain Jock Warren came out of his drunken stupor to check the flight of his ship. What he found aboard made him dash for blessed oblivion!
The Star Rover, a rusty freighter that shuttled between Rigel and the home system, hovered above a transfer station some two million miles out from Rigel's twelfth planet, awaiting port clearance. Every crewman knew the skipper was oiled, but they knew the entropy barrier would set him back a full day, shocking him into cold alertness.
Second Officer Charles Guhn knocked at the captain's cabin, entered and saluted: "Sir, cargo's loaded and customs cleared."
The skipper, his face bagged like the Coal Sack, his blood-cracked eyes possessing chilling steel-blue irises that could blister a super-cargo's hide at fifty paces, was unable to focus on the papers handed him. He growled, "Blast off, Mr. Guhn! Blast off!"
"Aye aye, sir," Guhn paused, then reported: "I thought you should know, Captain. We just brought on some skags. Some archeology outfit's shipping the things to Earth for further study."
"Blasted mummies. Next, we'll be hauling heathen idols." Captain Warren glanced at his chronometer. "Shove-off time, is it? Go to the bridge and tell Mr. Caldwell I said to make her grunt."
This was his final utterance. His massive head slumped back into narcol stupor, his sotted brain dreaming of days when every space lane was a new frontier and adventure lurked on all unknown planets.
On his way up to the bow, Charlie Guhn poked his head into the wardroom, thinking it possible First Officer Mark Caldwell might be getting off one last message to the brunette on Rigel. But no one was in the lounge. Guhn followed the catwalk over the pulsing auxiliaries and mounted the starboard companionway to the bridge. There, he found the astrogator, pouring over a set of star charts.
"The old man says shove off," Guhn greeted him. "Got your DS done?"
Caldwell grinned, without looking up from his desk: "A DS is just a formality the rule book says you've got to enter in the log. Hyperspace's too slinky to obey normal laws. That's why we cut it in fifty parsec slices--to see how far we've drifted."
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