Starliner(27)

He gave the other men a finger-to-brow salute. "Be seeing you later, I'm sure, chaps."

"One lies and the other swears to it," Dewhurst said when Wade and his companion had left the bar.

"Yes . . . ." agreed Da Silva judiciously. "But I think that story was worth the price of a few drinks, do you not?"

"The funny thing is . . ." Reed said.

The others waited for him to pick up where his voice had trailed off.

"Yes?" Dewhurst prodded.

Reed shook himself and punched in a refill for his gin. "I've lived on Ain for fifteen years," he said. "But you know, he had me believing that for a moment?"

* * *

Ran Colville had programmed the three walls of his office alcove to show a Terran country scene. A road of yellow gravel, crushed chalk from the Cretaceous Sea of North America, wound over a hill. The side ditches were bright with Black-eyed Susans and the rich blue of chicory flowers.

Ran didn't talk about his background so that he wouldn't have to lie. He didn't mind easing others into their own false assumptions, however.

He'd attached his transceiver to the alcove terminal while he took a hypnotic crash course on Szgranian language and customs. Shards of light coalesced behind his eyes, then fanned outward into an external reality which was disconcertingly flatter than the roil of images still churning within his mind.

The terminal chirped again.

"Go ahead," Ran muttered. The effort of speaking brought vertigo. He was supposed to be off duty . . . .

"Sir," said a voice. In Ran's present state, it took him a moment to recognize it as Babanguida's. "There's something funny going on. I passed six guys in Corridor Twelve with a float full of equipment—electronics. Not our people or the company's either. They unlocked the hatch into officers' country—"

"Unlocked it?" Ran said. He shook his head to clear it and found right away that had been a bad idea.

Because of the disorientation it caused, many people refused to use a hypnogogue. Virtually all the knowledge that fitted Ran for his present position came out of one, though. His father had brought home a teaching unit and a university data base of software . . . from Hobilo, loot gathered when Chick Colville served there as a mercenary.

The elder Colville had never touched the hypnogogue, except to demonstrate it to his son. But on the long nights of Bifrost's winter, the unit had hammered Ran Colville through a template of civilized knowledge.

"That's right," Babanguida replied. "I know I'm off duty, but I asked them what they were doing and they told me to stuff it. I, ah, couldn't follow them through the hatch."

Balls. Babanguida had chips to every door in the Empress of Earth or Ran was badly mistaken. The rating had quite reasonably figured this was a good problem to pass off.

It was nice to know that Babanguida hadn't simply ignored the oddity, though. Lots of people would have done just that.

"Right," Ran said aloud, wishing that he felt all right "How'd they come aboard, do you know?"

"By the main gangway," Babanguida said. "Cooper was on duty. He says he checked their passes and they were fine, so what's the big deal. Cooper!"

"And didn't inform Ms. Holly?" Ran said. He was too fuzzy to have remembered whose shift this was, but Cooper was on Wanda's watch.

"That's a negative," Babanguida agreed. "You know Cooper. He figures any day he doesn't put his pants on back to front, it's a win."

"Roger, I'll handle it from here," Ran said. "Over. Bridge, give me a time plan of hatches opening from Corridor Twelve into officers' country and doors in officers' country. Starting ten minutes back."

He closed and rubbed his eyes for a moment That helped a little, but he continued to have flashbacks of still-faced Szgranians dancing while their arms swayed together like the limbs of mating spiders. Ran sighed and got to work again.

The Empress of Earth had visual monitors only in the Third Class spaces. There were times that a full-ship system would have been useful—this was one of them—but neither passengers nor the vessel's officers would have stood for it. For that matter, records of who went to which cabin with whom were an incitement to blackmail by entrepreneurial crewmen, which wasn't the sort of thing Trident Starlines needed either.

Ran's terminal now displayed an alternative. Corridor Twelve was one of those running the full length of the vessel. Going forward from the Embarkation Hall, it passed through First Class and then, through separate locked hatches, gave access to the crew and officer accommodations.

A pair of engineering officers had entered or left their cabins recently, but that was several minutes before the most recent use of the Corridor Twelve hatch. The only cabin opened after that point was Commander Kneale's, two doors down from Ran's own.