ignore it all as he fumbled his papers out of his pocket. “I talked with the
dockmaster’s office,” he said, offering them. His heart beat double time as it
did at such moments, while the crowd kept up the noise and commotion beyond the
barricade. The senior officer looked over the forged papers and stamped them
with a seal. “Your office is supposed to put my ship under seal,” Sandor went
on, trying not to look at the police who waited beyond, trying not to harass the
agents at their duty. “Got no cargo this trip. They fouled me up at Viking. I’m
bone tired and needing sleep. No crew, no passengers, no arms, no drugs except
ship’s use pharmaceuticals. I’m headed for the exchange office right now to get
some cash.”
“Carrying money?”
“Three thousand Union scrip aboard. Not on me. They promised me I could do the
exchange papers later. After sleep.”
“Items of value on your person?”
“None. Going to a sleepover. Going to get a station card.”
“We’ll locate you on the card when we want you.” The man looked up at him. It
was the same face customs folk gave him everywhere, hardly welcoming. Sandor
gave it back his best, earnest stare. The man handed the false papers back and
Sandor stuffed them into his inside breast pocket, started down the ramp.
The police moved in. “Captain Stevens,” one said.
He stopped, his heart jumping against his ribs.
“You’ll want to pick up a regulations sheet at the office,” the officer said.
“Our procedures are a little different here than Union-side.—Did they give you
trouble clearing Viking, then?”
He stared, simply blank.
“Lt. Perez,” the officer identified himself. “Alliance Security operations. Was
it an understandable scheduling error? Or otherwise?”
He shook his head, confused in the crowd noise that echoed in the distant
overhead. The question made no sense from a dock-side policeman. From Customs.
From whatever they were. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. I’m a marginer.
It happens sometimes. Somebody didn’t have their papers straight. Or some bigger
ship snatched it. I don’t know.”
The policeman nodded, once and slowly. It looked like dismissal. Sandor turned,
hastened on through the barrier and toward the milling crowd, afraid, trying not
to walk like a liberty-long drunk and trying to figure out why they chose his
section of the dock to gather and what it all was.
‘Hey, Captain,” someone yelled as he met the crowd, “why did you do it?”
He looked that way, saw no one in particular, cast about again as he pushed his
way through. Panic surged in him, wanting out, away from this place. Hands
touched him; a camera bobbed over the shoulders of the crowd and he stared into
the lens in one dim-witted moment of fright before ducking away from it
“What route?” someone asked him. “You find some new null-point, Captain?”
He shook his head. “Nothing like that. I just came through Wesson’s and
Tripoint.” He kept walking, terrified at the stationers who had come to stare at
him. Someone thrust a mike in his face.
“You know the whole station’s been following your com for five hours, Captain?
Did you know that?”
“No.” He stared helplessly, realizing—his face… his face recorded, made public,
with Lucy’s name and number. “I’m tired,” he said, but the microphone persisted,
thrust toward him.
“You’re Captain Edward Stevens, right? From Wyatt’s Star? What’s the tie with
Dublin? She, you said. Personal?”
“Right.” A small voice, a tremulous voice. His knees were shaking. “Excuse me.”
“How long have you been out?” The mike followed him, persistent “You have any
special trouble running solo, Captain?”
“A month or so. I don’t know. I haven’t comped it yet. No. I don’t know.”
“You’re meeting someone of Reilly’s Dublin, you said.”
“I didn’t say. It’s personal.” He hesitated, searched desperately for a way of
escape that would get him to the offices. Blue dock. That was where he had to
go. Stations were universal in that arrangement, if not in their interiors. He
was on green. It could not be far. He tried to recall the docks from years
ago—he had been eleven—with Ross and Mitri by him—