Judith wanted more of it
It didn’t seem like much, although it had cost a fortune to ship from
Terra to Centaurus. A box two metres high, it could have held any of a
number of “appliances”, as it was labeled. There were only a few
shipping labels in all, one marking the contents as fragile, one
indicating that it had its origin on Mars, another indicating that its
destination was Centaurus University, and another indicating that its
contents were, for customs purposes, “a home appliance,” indicating that
it was its quality that made it worth exporting.
That, in turn, had increased the customs excise; …