"Zach Hughes - Mother Lode" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hughes Zach)

your approach vertical from 90 angles. What service do you require for
your ship?"

"Nothing more than offloading," Erin said.

Hardpad A-10 was near the eastern edge of Havenport, and it was lined
with green lawns, shrubbery, and trees. Erin cracked the hatch as soon as
Mother had settled, put a harness and leash on Mop just to be sure his
enthusiasm could be controlled, and went out into air that smelled of the
refineries smoking up the skies around the city. Mop was whining in his
excitement. After a few satisfying, leg-lifting efforts, he looked up at her as
if to say, "Why are you doing this to me when there are trees just over
there?"

"All right, buster," she said, taking off his leash. "But you stay close."

Mop tore around in circles. He'd learned to run quite well on the
moving belt in the exercise room, but there was no substitute for grass,
open spaces, the occasional planting that needed hiked-leg attention, and
trees.

After a quarter hour of watching a busy little dog checking each object
that rose above the level of the lawns for messages left by fellow canines
and leaving volumes of meaning himself, she clapped her hands to bring
Mop running and took him back aboard ship.

There were two messages on her communicator, both from refinery
representatives. She returned the calls. Yes, good yielding gold ore was
very welcome on Haven. The price, U.P. standard, thirty-two credits per
troy ounce of refined gold less ten percent for the cost of refining. Both
reps offered the same price. She called one other refinery, pretended to be
a reporter for a Xanthos-based holo-magazine, and was told that the going
price for gold was thirty-two credits per troy ounce less ten percent for
refining. She rewarded the first man who had called her by selling him her
cargo.

She supervised the offloading. Mop, on a leash, cringed at the noise. A
cleaning crew went to work in the cargo hold as soon as the ore was
offloaded. She and Mop followed the ore carriers to the refinery and
visited the office.

The man who had originally contacted her was six-four, weighed in at a
solid-muscled two-hundred-ten, had a go-to-hell cowlick in his sandy hair
and a lopsided grin that, he felt, was irresistible to all persons of the
female persuasion. "What's a sweet little thing like you doing coming into
Haven all alone with a cargo of gold ore worth a few hundred thousand
credits?" he asked.

"I'm not alone," she said, rubbing Mop's blond head. "And I had hoped
a million or so credits, not just a few hundred thousand."