Knox pushed his pile of crates through the spaceport. Not that it took much strength. His wife, Ximena, also the ship’s mechanic, had rigged some hover brackets that fit on the four corners of the crates. A hundred-centimeter air gap sat as a cushion between the bottom crate and the floor. A child could have pushed these crates, even though they weighed over a ton.
But a child couldn’t have protected the shipment from theft, not on the rough spaceport landing dock. All around the dock, captains barked orders, mechbots buzzed from one repair to the next, human mechanics powered up loud machines, and hired hands cussed back and forth. Plasma pistols armed hips, and knives hid inside clothing. But as overwhelming as the raucous was, the smell overpowered even that. Machine lubricant, soured
