“Yes. It’s been a few years since I’ve taken a vacation and I decided to take a month to hike the Connecticut mountains on Huckleberry. That’s the Chandler’s next destination, unless I’m mistaken,” Ocampo said.

“You could just take a department ship, I would think,” I said.

Ocampo smiled. “It would look bad to commandeer a State Department ship as a personal taxi, I’m afraid. As I understand it the Chandler lets out a couple of staterooms for passengers. I and Vera here,” he nodded toward his assistant, “have taken them. How are they?”

“The staterooms?” I asked. Ocampo nodded. “I’m not sure.”

“Rafe has just been hired as of about an hour ago,” Hart said. “He hasn’t even been on the ship yet. He’s taking a shuttle over in about an hour.”

“That’s the same shuttle you’ll be on, sir,” Vera said to Ocampo.

“So we’ll experience it for the first time together,” the secretary said, to me.

“I suppose that’s true,” I said. “If you would like I would be happy to escort you and your assistant to the shuttle gate, when you’re ready to depart.”

“Thank you, I’d appreciate that,” Ocampo said. “I’ll have Vera tell you when we’re ready. Until then, gentlemen.” He nodded and wandered off with his punch, Vera following behind.

“Very diplomatic,” Wilson said to me, once he was gone.

“You jumped out of an exploding space station?” I said to him, changing the subject.

“It wasn’t exploding that much when I jumped,” Wilson said.

“And you got out in an escape pod just in time,” I said to Hart. “I’m clearly in the wrong line of space travel for excitement.”

“Trust me,” Wilson said. “You don’t want that much excitement.”

*   *   *

The Chandler, as advertised, was not exciting.

But it’s not supposed to be. I said before that the Chandler had blocked out a triangle run. That means that you have three destinations, all of which want something that’s made and exported on the previous planet. So, for example, Huckleberry is a colony that’s largely agrarian—a large percentage of the land mass there is in a temperate zone that’s great for human crops. We take things like wheat, corn, and gaalfruit and a few other crops and take them to Erie. Erie colonists pay a premium for Huckleberry agricultural products, because, I don’t know, I think they think they’re healthier or something. Whatever reason, they want ’em so we take them there. In return we load up on all sorts of rare earth metals, which Erie has lots of.