The flies in the ointment.

A long time ago the dying ruler of a little interstellar kingdom produced a Old-Earth bureaucrat named Hobart Floyt the surprised inheritor of an interstellar spaceship. Which was amazing, for in those days, when Mankind was again expanding in to the galaxy, an exclusive spaceship was a permit to gold coin credits. There were just a couple of minor problems. The dead ruler never informed Floyt where to find the dispatch, the bureaucrats of Globe wanted the ship for themselves, and someone kept wanting to murder Floyt and his friend Alacrity Fitzhugh….