So might a lift full of baggage, a hani, and a panicked, muttering stsho. A mahe with a child in tow got on at Deck One, and rode down with them. The child bounced around the walls, grinning at its own cleverness, and managed to knock into both of them in the short time before the doors opened on the cold gray-ness of the docks. Perhaps the mahe meant to space its offspring. Perhaps the mahe hoped someone else would do it. Tiar clutched the bundles and dragged them past the overanxious doors, held them for the weak-limbed stsho, and snarled, “Move, kid!” in such a tone the mahe grabbed the brat out of their path.
The stsho was clearly impressed. Gtst pale eyes were very wide. Gtst murmured, “Kindly restrain the offspring. It is very annoying,” and followed her out.
For a stsho toward a stranger, that was amazing. She was impressed. Gtst had more fortitude than seemed evident. “Berth 10,” she said, and led off at a moderate stride, a moving obstruction on the docks, in the abundant foot traffic.
She looked back, just to be sure the stsho was still following. And gtst was, slogging along with gtst swinging, pendant baggage of small bundles, limping on lime-slippered feet.
“Go on, go on,” gtst panted, shaking gtst crest from gtst eyes. “We are in great danger. I shall seem not to know you. It will be a ruse. Please, keep walking!”
She walked. There were kif about. There were mahendo’sat. Not another hani, not another stsho. Of a sudden their dissociation seemed exceedingly naive and dangerous.
“Come on,” she said. “Hurry it! I don’t like this.”
She was ever so glad to see the Legacy’s number on the display board, and to see the first of the transports already arrived. The hold was open, the ramp gate was showing green for unlocked.
“We’re all right,” she panted, hoping for the sight of Tarras or Chihin. There was the stsho, valiantly (for a stsho) struggling after.
There were three kif, just standing, watching them.
She was never so glad to walk up the ramp and find the gate opening to her request. The stsho was gasping at the bottom of the incline, trying to gather up gtst baggage, the cords of which had tangled with gtst robes. One of the kif was headed toward them, with deliberation in its moves.
“Get up here!” she said, regretting the laws that meant the nearest gun they owned was in the locker in the airlock. “Now!”
Gtststumbled and limped gtst way up. The kif stopped, and for a moment looked straight at her, a stare that made the hair stand up on her nape as she shepherded the struggling stsho into the chill of the ramp.
“Oh, the cold!” it breathed.
“Kif,” she said. “Move!” She dropped the baggage in the rampway, on the Legacy’s side of the doors, and ran for the airlock and the locker. The stsho shrilled a protest at the desertion. She heard it attempting to run, wailing and gasping.
She hit the airlock controls, waited through the cycle and, inside, used her first and third claws in the sockets that opened the locker. She seized the gun inside, clicked the safety off, and scared ten years of life out of the stsho that came gasping and struggling through the airlock.
“I’m going back after the baggage,” she said. “You stay in the airlock.”
Gtstwailed, gtst gasped, gtst sobbed. “Let us through! Let us through! Oh, murder, oh, vilest murder on us …”
Gtstwas still wailing as Tiar walked back to get the baggage. The fragile tube was no place to start shooting; but her eye was toward the gates down there, that anyone with a key could open. And if a kif did, he was in dire trouble, by the gods, he was.
… it shall be the obligation of the ship’s captain to secure the item and to maintain its safety and its confidentiality from all unauthorized persons …
… the representative of the person issuing the contract shall be the final arbiter of the disposition of the object unless the person who has been the representative of the person issuing the contract shall be determined to be no longer in substance or in fact the same individual entrusted and declared by the contract to be the individual representing the person issuing the contract.