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THE VAST SKELETAL CYLINDER called The Yard rotated majestically, end-on to the Earth. Procurement Officer Richard Purves always imagined it like a cigarette about to be stubbed out on the planet. He’d long since lost the magic of space-travel and seeing massive numbers of ships lined up next to each other in one place did nothing for him. Not so his niece, Caroline. After much negotiation, she’d persuaded her mother and then her uncle to let her come. Lena’s wide eyes gleamed from deep in her spacesuit. For Richard, it was another day at the office, and he needed to find a suitable salvage hulk that could be recommissioned for the next chugging-about task required by the British Navy, a task that someone in procurement had been performing for his or her Majesty for six hundred-odd years. He didn’t suppose that the likelihood of finding a decent hulk to purchase in this particular shipyard was all that different either. He gazed down the row of abandoned freighters, mining vessels and leaky pleasure cruisers and sighed, misting his visor.
“Uncle Richard?”
Lena was a well behaved ten-year-old, but hell could she talk. Having no children of his own and no way to hand this one back till the shuttle touched down in Glasgow, today was becoming a lengthy affair. The tugging on his suit was not endearing her to him.
“Uncle Richard?”
“What?” Then because she’d jumped, “Sorry, you startled me. What were you saying?”
“I—was going to say, what about this pretty rainbow one?”
Lena indicated an unpromising-looking haulage vessel, unmarked, unloved and, well he’d think of other ‘uns’ later. It would just about fit the size specs he’d been given but it would blow his refit budget for now and the next three years. He drew in a breath.
“I like her!” said Lena, jumping, “can we pick her?”
And where the hell had she got rainbows from? Richard wondered how long ago it was that he’d had that kind of imagination. Had she seen hydraulic fluid or something else leaking he’d missed? He retraced his steps to the battered metallic hulk and peered under it, asking absently “How do you know it’s a her?”
“She told me.”
