The Project Gutenberg EBook of Traders Risk, by Roger Dee

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Title: Traders Risk

Author: Roger Dee

Illustrator: Martin

Release Date: October 20, 2007 [EBook #23103]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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TRADERS RISK

By ROGER DEE

_Keeping this cargo meant death--to
jettison it meant to make flotsam
and jetsam of a world!_

Illustrated by MARTIN

The Ciriimian ship was passing in hyperdrive through a classic
three-body system, comprising in this case a fiercely white sun circled
by a fainter companion and a single planet that swung in precise
balance, when the Canthorian Zid broke out of its cage in the specimen
hold.

Of the ship's social quartet, Chafis One and Two were asleep at the
moment, dreaming wistful dreams of conical Ciriimian cities spearing up
to a soft and plum-colored sky. The Zid raged into their communal rest
cell, smashed them down from their gimbaled sleeping perches and, with
the ravening blood-hunger of its kind, devoured them before they could
wake enough to teleport to safety.

Chafis Three and Four, on psi shift in the forward control cubicle,
might have fallen as easily if the mental screamings of their fellows
had not warned them in time. As it was, they had barely time to teleport
themselves to the after hold, as far as possible from immediate danger,
and to consider the issue while the Zid lunged about the ship in search
of them with malignant cries and a great shrieking of claws on metal.

Their case was the more desperate because the Chafis were professional
freighters with little experience of emergency. Hauling a Zid from
Canthorian jungles to a Ciriimian zoo was a prosaic enough assignment so
long as the cage held, but with the raging brute swiftly smelling them
out, they were helpless to catch and restrain it.

When the Zid found them, they had no other course but to teleport back
to the control cubicle and wait until the beast should snuff them down
again. The Zid learned quickly, so quickly that it was soo