Starliner(15)
His smile softened. "That's all, Ran. But particularly now, I thought it was important that you hear it. Go on about your business. I'm sure you have personal business to take care of before undocking."
"Thank you, sir," Colville said. He stood and saluted crisply.
He turned, then paused and looked back over his shoulder. "I—expect to make myself worthy of your trust, Commander."
"Hiram," corrected Kneale. "I expect you will too, Ran."
And that was god's truth. Because otherwise, Kneale would have seen to it that this hard-faced imposter was under the jail.
EARTH:
UNDOCKING
"Excuse me, Captain," said the beaming passenger just as Ran Colville's ear clip buzzed him. "I wonder if I might trouble you to stand by my wife for a picture? To show people back home that we were really here, you know."
The clip rattled again. Somebody sure thought it was an emergency.
The center of the Social Hall—the Empress's First Class lounge—was a huge expanse, almost the worst room in the ship for Ran to find a place in which to flex his communicator to part of the structure. The walls sported holographic images of the buildings surrounding the Roman Forum in the time of Augustus, and the designers hadn't needed to modify the scale greatly to fit the available space.
Ordinary radio communications didn't work within the mass of metal and electronics that was the Empress of Earth. On so large a ship, a public address blaring audio requests from tannoys in every compartment was, for both practical and esthetic reasons, possible only in general emergencies. For most purposes, messages were pulsed in recipient-coded packets from infra-red lenses in the vessel's moldings. These were picked up and converted to audio alarms by the clip each crewman wore behind one ear.
For actual communication, the crewman switched on the commo unit on his waistbelt and turned so that the unit had a line of sight to a ceiling transceiver. When the commo unit was on and properly positioned, the system provided full two-way communication between all portions of the vessel's interior.
About a hundred passengers sat in the lounge or stood, viewing the holographic murals with awkward nonchalance. They had arrived early and, with their luggage stowed in their cabins, had nothing very obvious to do. Most of them were new to interstellar travel—old hands at the business tended to arrive hours or less before undocking, perhaps having first called "their" steward to see that "their" cabin (or often suite) would be ready for them to slip into with the ease of putting on a favorite pair of shoes.
The furniture in the Social Hall mimicked the curves and color of the ivory stools of Roman senators, but common sense (or Trident officials) had prevented the designer from more than suggesting that thoroughly uncomfortable fashion. The chairs and couches had backs—which adjusted to users' posture. They were upholstered in red-purple silk, the true color of "imperial purple," though few of the Empress's passengers were going to make that connection.
Silk was neither more comfortable nor more lustrous than many of the synthetics that might have been used in its place, but First Class clients of the Empress of Earth could be expected to tell the difference. Thin silk cover cloths were laid over a synthetic base, edge-bonded, and replaced as soon as they showed signs of wear.
The used covers were a perk of the stewards. They were in demand among dockside whores in each of the Empress's ports of call.
"Of course . . ." Ran said professionally while his eyes searched his immediate surroundings and his brain dealt with three problems:
What was the emergency?
Where was the IR head serving this huge room?
How could he get shut of these lonesome passengers without offending them?
Some minds lock up when faced with simultaneous tasks. Others deal stolidly with one problem at a time, even though everything's going to hell in a handbasket outside their immediate narrow focus. Ran Colville treated batches synergistically. His responses weren't deep and they didn't even attempt to be "best"; but he was very fast, and fast got you a long way in a crisis.
"Right over here, madam," he said.
The IR head would be central, so he needed to move the passengers if his commo unit was to face the correct direction. He took the female passenger by the arm and swept her a short distance to the side where a cleaning robot industriously polished the floor.
In keeping with the decor, the robot was disguised as a meter-high column base, covered with contorted acanthus vines. Ran toggled off the mechanical switch and dropped the unit firmly to the deck. With the woman in the crook of his left arm, he said, "Lieutenant Colville. Go ahead."
The passengers beamed, and Bridge—in this case the central control AI buried somewhere deep in the Empress—spewed information through the ship's structure and up the flex to the commo pod, which broadcast it to Ran's ear clip microphone.