Starliner(49)

"—you were going to be alone anyway, you didn't want to do it in a lounge with a thousand people watching you," Franz said, completing her sentence and her thought perfectly.

"Yes," she said, meeting the young man's eyes. "That's how I felt."

"Ah—"Franz said. He looked away, then back. "Ah—I was planning to get something to drink. Ah—coffee, perhaps, or . . . ?"

"I've thought of seeing the Aviary Lounge," Oanh said, smiling shyly. "If you'd like that, I . . . ?"

Franz offered his arm. "Let's do it now," he said. His face wore a lithe, active expression, a complete change from the cold gloom with which he'd been staring at the altarpiece.

"You know how to find it, then?" Oanh asked. "The ship is so big, I'm afraid I'll get lost every time I leave father's suite."

The woolen carpet was only a meter wide, so their outside heels clicked on the boards until they passed through the archway. The corridor floors of the Empress of Earth were of varied appearance, but all were of a synthetic which deadened noise as well as cushioning footsteps.

Franz laughed cheerfully. "We'll find it," he said. "We'll have an adventure, just the two of us."

Oanh joined his laughter. It occurred to her that this was the first time in . . . weeks, certainly—and probably longer—that she'd felt cheerful.

* * *

"You," called a passenger in one of the alcoves of the gallery connecting the Embarkation Hall with the Social Hall. "Boy!"

Babanguida turned with a neutral smile and walked toward the alcove. Four men sat around a small table, three of them on chairs and the fourth, the obvious leader, alone in splendor on the curved banquette. They'd come aboard on Biscay, but they were Grantholm nationals.

The hologram covering the wall behind them showed a mountain valley on Grantholm, overlooked from a crag by a strikingly handsome couple. The passengers themselves were windcut in a pattern that outlined the respirators and goggles they normally wore. Their knuckles were scarred, and in all they looked harder than the idealized rocks in the hologram.

They had drinks. The steward who fetched them from the service bar at the end of the gallery stood several meters away from the alcove, watching from the corners of his eyes. His attitude toward the Grantholmers was that of a cat eying a large dog through a screen door.

"Yes sir?" said Babanguida to the man who faced him from the banquette. The passenger was as tall as Babanguida but much broader in proportion. He looked to be in his forties, with a flaring black beard and black hair except for the white flash where a knife scar trailed up his cheek into the temple.

He grinned at Babanguida and said, "Don't worry, boy, you're not in trouble yet. My name's von Pohlitz, Gerd von Pohlitz. Maybe you've heard of me?"

Babanguida had. Von Pohlitz was on the watch list Bridge generated when it ran the names of new passengers through the data banks Trident Starlines shared with other major shipping companies. Von Pohlitz had been involved in several incidents with dark-skinned or oriental members of starliners' service crews.

"Very glad to have you aboard the Empress, Captain von Pohlitz," Babanguida said smoothly. "Can I help you with something?"

The other three Grantholmers were physically of a piece with their leader, but they lacked the force of personality that glared from von Pohlitz like heat through the open door of a blast furnace. They looked at Babanguida with expressions mingled of disdain and distaste.

"You're Staff Side, aren't you, boy?" von Pohlitz demanded. "That's what the white uniform means, right?"

The Grantholmers were dressed in business suits they'd obviously bought in the Empress's Mall when they boarded. There wasn't much call for First Class dress on Biscay. In place of the normal cummerbund, von Pohlitz wore a scarf of stained yellow silk across his belly.

Anything could have caused the three small perforations in the silk. Given the way the Grantholmer flaunted them, Babanguida assumed they were bullet holes.

"Yes sir," Babanguida said. "That's right."

"Don't think I look down on you for that," von Pohlitz chuckled. "That's what we all are here, aren't we, boys?"

His companions nodded and grunted assent. One of them noticed his glass was empty and whistled at the steward.

"The engineers lay out the job, that's fine," their leader continued. "But then it's up to me and the boys to see that the wogs get to work instead of sitting on their hands. Staff Side, see?"

"Yes sir, I can see that," Babanguida said calmly.

A few commands to Bridge would cause the entertainment center in von Pohlitz's cabin to put out a low-frequency hum, sensed though inaudible. Von Pohlitz and his roommate, another Grantholmer, would probably go berserk after a few hours of that. There'd be evidence in the data banks if anybody thought to check, though. . . .