Starliner(17)

"Thank you, sir," Ran said as he returned the wafer. "I'll check the other gentlemen's tickets, now."

"This is our room!" Sadek said in a shrill, forceful voice. "We will not move."

He, his wife, and three of the children stared at Ran as if they expected the white-uniformed ship's officer to draw a long knife at any moment and begin to butcher them. The infant on the mother's breast looked up, hid his/her face with a happy gurgle, and peeked out again.

Ran winked, drawing another gurgle.

Ran left the door in the up, open, position as he stepped back into the corridor. "Mr. Wade, Mr. Belgeddes," he said, "might I—"

He paused, because Wade was already extending his hand with the two ticket chips in it

"Of course, of course, my boy," Wade said. "By the book, just as it should be. I've been an officer myself, you know—at least a dozen times, if you count all the penny-ante rebellions that somebody decided to make me a general."

"That's right," said Belgeddes as Ran fed a ticket into the reader. "Dickie here, he never could keep out of trouble."

The ticket was Belgeddes' own, and it was perfectly in order: Cabin 8241, round-trip, Port Northern at both termini. Issued through Trident's home office in Halifax on the first of the previous month. Eleven days earlier than the Sadek family's ticket.

Before he spoke, because it was a lot easier to check now than clean up the mess later, Ran switched Belgeddes' ticket for Wade's in the reader. The ticket data were identical save for the name and retinal print of the passenger.

Pity. It'd have been a hair easier if the proper cabin-holders were the people holding the cabin at present . . . but if they were all easy, Trident Starlines wouldn't need people like Ran Colville to back up the Empress's stewards.

Ran aimed his transceiver link toward the IR head above the doorjamb. The Sadek family stared at him: the husband stiff, as though he faced a firing squad; the wife fierce, the children obviously frightened . . . and the infant gurgled again.

"Colville to Bridge," Ran said. "Project a First Class occupancy plan through my reader."

"Do you remember on Matson's Home, how the government made me a colonel after the rebels ambushed the sight-seeing train and I potted a few of them just to keep us from being shot?" Wade said. "Heaven knows, I didn't care anything about their politics."

The Empress's controlling artificial intelligence obediently shunted data through deck-conduction radio to Ran's hologram projector. The lens system couldn't handle a double spread, so it switched rapidly between the A and B levels.

All the cabins in both arrays were coded red, occupied.

"Oh, for pity's sake!" Ran snapped. "Bridge, give me a list of empty cabins. The whole ship isn't full."

"Be fair, Dickie," Belgeddes was saying. The two men were clearly playing out a well-practiced skit. "The general was going to make you a captain until he threw his arms around you and you knocked him down because you weren't sure of just what he had in mind. Then he made you a colonel."

"The whole ship is not full," the AI replied tartly. "All the First Class cabins are occupied, however—as the plan I projected at your request clearly shows."

"Why on earth are—"Ran began; and stopped himself, because it was the wrong thing to worry about when he had a real problem to solve.

The artificial intelligence answered the half-spoken question anyway. "A Szgranian noblewoman has taken a block of sixty-four cabins and the Wu-Ti Suite, for herself and her entourage," it said. A long row on A Deck, starboard outboard—the rank of cabins directly beneath 8241, in fact—glowed yellow, then returned to red highlighting.

"All right," Ran said, "tell me what is open."

Cabin Class was a ring of accommodations amidships. They were designed for multiple occupancy by strangers, with two pairs of bunk beds in each room and relatively spartan facilities otherwise. There were only 204 places in Cabin. The real purpose of the class was to provide a physical separation of First Class and the packed mass of Third Class passengers further aft. Some people who could afford First preferred Cabin, however, because the very small number of passengers traveling together fostered friendliness and camaraderie.

There were about a dozen empty bunks, scattered throughout the Cabin Class area.

"Right," Ran said. "Bridge, clear me compartments four-thirty-two and four-thirty-four. Assign them to the Sadek party, six persons, in place of the eight-two-four-one assignment made in error."

"Passengers already assigned aren't going to like moving," one of the stewards said, ostensibly to his fellow.