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present him with a remarkably sizable amount of another "universal" currency: gold bars.
    Cale turned Scorpion toward Torlon. Torlon had been a moderately successful trading center before the Fall; now it was sinking more and more quickly down the slope toward poverty, and was on the verge of losing spaceflight. He was not challenged on his way in from the jump point. In fact, he apparently wasn't even detected.
    Cale didn't have a contact on Torlon. In fact, he had no leads at all, just a barroom story about a scrap operator who scooted around the sector in a small, fast boat with jump capability. However, he found what he was looking for immediately, an orbiting junkyard full of old and scrapped ships. He grounded Scorpion at the dilapidated, weed-grown port field, careful to land as far as possible from the tower and as near as possible to the two rusting tramps occupying the field. He dressed in the workman's clothing Yan had provided him, then climbed down the footholds on Scorpion 's hull, sneezing from the smoke of the still-burning weeds his landing had ignited. Throwing the small but heavy bag he carried over his shoulder, he began the long hike to the tower.
    There was only one man in the tower, and his appearance matched that of the field. His worn clothing was none to clean. Neither was he, or the tower itself, for that matter. He was lounging in a floatchair in front of the communications board.
    "Good morning," Cale said cheerfully, "Can you direct me to the best place to buy a used ship?"
    "Hmph," the man replied ungraciously, "What fer? Ya gotta ship, ain't ya?"
    "Naw," Cale replied casually, "He just gimme a ride here. My ship give up on Cutler's World."
    The man snorted. "Cutler's World?" They ain't even got space flight anymore!"
    Cale shook his head sadly. "Don't I know it? I spent a year there workin' my ass off for food before this guy showed up an' gimme a lift. So where can I buy a ship?"
    "Huh! Th' only person on Torlon that might still have a ship to sell is Ber Nabel. But he might not have anythin' to sell. Mostly he's in the scrap business." The man waved vaguely. "His yard's over on the other side of the port. But he'll probably be up at the orbital yard cuttin' up another ship."
    "Thanks," Cale replied offhandedly. "I guess I'll try the yard. Maybe I'll get lucky."
    The man just shrugged and turned back to the comm board. Cale set off across the hot plascrete in search of Ber Nabel.
    Nabel's yard was easy to find. It consisted of at least a hectare of rusting hulks and ship parts. Small intrasystem freighter hulls were mixed inextricably with their larger interstellar brothers. Here and there, hull alloy gleamed brightly through scarred antirad coating. Cale recognized two DIN-class freighters that had been scavenged to near-skeletons.
    Ber Nabel was a small, grizzled man, his salt-and-pepper hair matched by a full beard even larger than Cale's. When Cale found him, he was using a plasma torch to cut a hull section free on a medium-sized bulk carrier.
    "Sire Nabel," Cale shouted up to him, "I wonder if I might talk with you on a matter of business."
    Nabel pushed his protective goggles up onto his forehead. "What d'ye want?" he shouted. "I'm busy!"
    "Too busy to do business?"
    The man scowled. "Business, eh? Oh, all right."
    He lowered himself in his safety harness until he stood beside Cale. "What kinda business?"
    Cale shrugged. "I might want to buy a ship. Don't you have an office where we can discuss it?"
    Nabel snorted. "Buy a ship? What kinda ship?" He led Cale to an Old Empire corvette hull that apparently served him as an office. Inside, the ship's messroom had been gutted and a scarred real wood desk installed, along with a remarkably modern comp. Nabel threw himself into an old float chair that had been welded to the deck.
    There was no other chair, so Cale simply stood. "I want something small and fast. Small enough to operate by myself, and fast enough to run courier jobs — and