Starliner(7)
"Yeah, well, this lot looks pretty good," the woman said. "The way it always does when it's on your shift, Danny."
"My pleasure," the supervisor replied, his tone underlining the truth of the words. "Know anything about the new guy? Somebody I've worked with in the past on other ships?"
Wanda removed her chip to shut the console down. "I don't think so, Danny," she said. "His name's Colville, Randall Colville. He's been with Trident for twelve years, which is something, but this is his first run from an Earth homeport."
Danalesco raised an eyebrow. "And they're putting him on the Empress?" he said.
Wanda laughed. "There's planets out there besides Earth, Danny," she said. "He spent a year and a half as First Officer on the Princess Trader out of Learoyd and Mithgarth, so he's got experience."
As Wanda opened her mouth to continue, her ear clip dinged a pure bell note. "Umph," she muttered, and attached the coil of hair-fine flex from the commo pod on her belt to a jack on the console. An artificial intelligence in Trident Starlines' central office clicked out orders in an emotionless female voice.
Wanda released the flex and stepped back. "Duty calls," she told Danalesco. "Colville's arrived in the terminal, and I'm to check him aboard the Empress."
"Good luck with him," the supervisor said.
Wanda crooked a grin at Danalesco. "Whatever that means," she said.
A passenger liner was taking off into the midnight sky. Its motors and those of the coupled tugs threw harsh shadows across the emigrants dancing on the concourse.
* * *
The terminal's top level was for crews and ground operations personnel alone. The floor was of a resilient, sound-deadening synthetic, practical but plain, save for the paths worn pale across it by decades of feet. There were elevators, slidewalks and communications booths, but Top Level had none of the frills and retail shops that packed the lower, passenger, concourses.
There was a great deal of open space, and there was an unmatched view of the Empress of Earth through the clear wall fronting the inner docks. Ran Colville walked along slowly, staring greedily at the vast bulk. He knew that he was attracting amused attention from the handful of uniformed personnel on the slidewalks, but he didn't particularly care.
The Empress of Earth wasn't beautiful, exactly, but she was magnificent. This was Ran's first look at her, and he was more concerned with that than with the image he projected to strangers he'd never see again.
Bulk freight was sometimes carried between the stars in nickel-iron asteroids, ballooned to colossal size by controlled fusion jets, but interstellar passenger liners were far and away the most massive constructions humans had ever designed to fly within an atmosphere. The Empress of Earth and the Brasil of Consolidated Voyagers, operating from Port Southern in Antarctica, were the largest of the starliners.
Though Trident and Consolidated were fiercely competitive across a wide variety of routes, there was a tacit agreement at the top of the commercial pyramid: the Empress of Earth and the Brasil sailed the same nine-planet route from Earth to Tblisi, but on inverted schedules. When one of the superships left Earth, the other was lifting off from Tblisi on her return voyage.
The Empress of Earth was a commercial venture, but she and her giant rival were also ships of state. The government of Federated Earth preferred not to interfere in the operations of private companies, but the greatest starliners in the known universe were representatives of Earth, like it or no. When the giant vessels were nearing completion three years before, quiet representations to the directors of Trident and Consolidated made it clear that the interests of humanity and civilization required that the ships be operated in tandem rather than in cut-throat competition. The government would see to those interests if the companies did not.
The companies quickly announced complementary schedules for their flagships. The decision benefited all concerned. Neither line had a vessel that could comfortably pair with their giant to create a balanced flow of trade instead of a series of indigestible pulses. Few members of the public even considered that there might have been another possibility . . . .
Wherever possible, the bureaucracy of Federated Earth worked on the principles of indirection and deniability. Nonetheless, the bureaucracy worked very well.
The Empress of Earth was a huge cylinder lying on its side. She was supported by the full-length outriggers she deployed when counter-thrust and air resistance had scrubbed off enough velocity in the upper atmosphere. On a solid surface, the lower curve of the hull didn't touch the ground. The thin soil of Biscay left yellow streaks meters high on the metal. These were steamed off during each landing on Calicheman, where a lake absorbed the raw power of starliners landing without tugs.