There are three puzzles in the Galaxy Today, all resolving to rules for the trading game.

The first clue involves the numbers on the front page. As a hint, if you read the initial letters of the headlines in the left column, you will see the word "numbers." There are a lot of numbers on the page and many of them are represented numerically, while some others are spelled out (as is more typical for this sort of publication). Turning the numeric numbers into letters and reading from top to bottom yields "Cargo beyond twelve will be jettisoned at random."

The second, and most obvious, clue is the crossword. It's mostly pretty straight-forward to solve, although a few of the clues require you to refer to the Handbook. When the crossword is complete, the three solution rows read "goods score two to five in this order vegetable animal mineral manufact."

The last clue is in the classifieds. The text at the bottom--"Marketplace Today makes profitable use of extra space."--is the hint. In each classified ad there is one word surrounded by two spaces instead of one. These words read "Any ship whose cargo includes more than seven megarads of omnicron radiation has the base value of its cargo cut in half."