Mercurian night settled black and thick over the Q City Spaceport. Tentative fingers of light flicked and probed the sky, and winked out. "Here she comes," somebody in the line ahead said. Shano coughed, his whole skeletal body jerking. Arthritic joints sent flashes of pain along his limbs. Here she comes, he thought, feeling neither glad nor sad. He coughed and slipped polarized goggles over his eyes. The spaceport emerged bathed in infra red. Hangars, cradles, freighter catapults and long runw