Let's Read: Traveller, 1977 Edition, Starships, page 8

I'm back after a brief hiatus; hopefully, I didn't lose too many readers in the meantime. Back to the game at hand:

We continue with passenger transport as a way to make money as a starship captain. Passengers pay a pretty penny for the privilege of hopping on board; 10,000 Credits for a high passage, 8,000 for middle, and 1,000 for low. Distance to the port doesn't matter; it's just how you're traveling. The wording in this passage is a bit ambiguous; I'm not sure if I'm reading that last part correctly.

And then the next paragraph clarifies it. Distance doesn't matter, indeed. So, no matter how many jumps it takes to get to the destination, the passengers pay the same amount. Well, that sucks if you have to make multiple jumps, because it costs more than 10 grand to refuel on a bunch of jumps.

Now we get into mail; FedEx on the Final Frontier. It's actually profitable to carry mail; 25,000 Credits per ton of postal cargo. But you can only carry five tons; can't have starship captains actually making profit, now, can we? And those five tons have to be dedicated to postal service all the time; you can't put postal in there once, then grab a cargo of gold-pressed latinum in its place. Oh, and the ship has to be armed and manned to be a postal runner. I guess there are bandits and Indians on the postal trails in space, too.

Of course, private mail can be carried as well; it doesn't pay much, but it can lead to other adventures and contacts, which is never a bad thing. Private mail is usually handled clandestinely, and it might not be the captain who gets asked to carry it; any crew member might get the call. There's lots of adventure potential in that idea; secret messages carried by crew who don't even dare tell the captain what they're up to? Goody, goody...

Cargo, of any kind, is delivered in the same way it's picked up: If you loaded up in orbit, you drop off in orbit. Planetary pick-up means planetary delivery. It makes sense. And shuttles can be used to get from orbit to the surface and vice versa. These would be local shuttles, not shuttles carried on board the ship; you pay a fee to travel on them, 1% of the normal freight or passenger cost. I assume the passengers pay the shuttle fee themselves.

Well, we're moving right along, aren't we? Next up...I'm not sure until I turn the page. But I shall return, hopefully tomorrow.

On the writing front...well, the frantic pace of getting ready for a move has thrown off my writing schedule very heavily, and there is no book release in August. I am sad. And I don't know how much time I'll have to write in September, what with us still getting ready to move. But I'll keep at it as best I can. In the meantime, I still have other books you can read. For you sci-fi fans, it's Bard Conley's Adventures Through the Solar System. Check it out, and enjoy.