All right, boys, let's
up-ship--he doesn't look too good to me."
With a torch-bearing Salarik boy as a guide, they hurried along a path
taking in turns the burden of the stretcher. Luckily the I-S ship was
even closer to the sea than the Queen and as they crossed the slagged
ground, congealed by the break fire, they were trotting.
Though the Company ship was probably one of the smallest Inter-Solar
carried on her rosters, it was a third again as large as the Queen--with
part of that third undoubtedly dedicated to extra cargo space. Beside her
their own spacer would seem not only smaller, but battered and worn. But
no Free Trader would have willingly assumed the badges of a Company man,
not even for the command of such a ship fresh from the cradles of a
builder.
When a man went up from the training Pool for his first assignment, he
was sent to the ship where his temperament, training and abilities best
fitted. And those who were designated as Free Traders would never fit
into the pattern of Company men. Of late years the breech between those
who lived under the strict parental control of one of the five great
galaxy wide organizations and those still too much of an individual to
live any life but that of a half-explorer-half-pioneer which was the Free
Trader's, had widened alarmingly.
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