He halted just within the doorway and eyed Dane, Ali, and Rip with mock
severity. "You're baaaad boys," he told them with a shake of the head and
a drawl of the adjective. "You've been demoted ten files each on the
list."
Which must put him on the bottom rung once more, Dane calculated swiftly.
Or even below--though he didn't see how he could fall beneath the rank he
held at assignment. However, he found the news heartening instead of
discouraging. Compared to a bleak sentence at the moon mines such
demotion was absolutely nothing and he knew that Van Rycke was breaking
the worst news first.
"You also forfeit all pay for this voyage," the Cargo-master was
continuing. But Jellico broke in.
"Board fine?"
At the Cargo-master's nod, Jellico added. "Ship pays that."
"So I told them," Van Rycke agreed. "The Queen's warned off Terra for ten
solar years--"
They could take that, too. Other Free Traders got back to their home
ports perhaps once in a quarter century. It was so much less than they
had expected that the sentence was greeted with a concentrated sigh of
relief.
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