one of the incoming freighters. They knew that now for certain. She had hoped,
when they had gotten the first news of the arrival; and feared, because there
was damage reported on those ships out there, moving at freighters’ slow pace,
jammed with passengers they were never designed to handle, in the series of
small jumps a freighter’s limited range made necessary. It added up to days and
days in realspace as far as they had come in, and living hell on those vessels.
There was some rumor they had not had sufficient drugs to get them through jump,
that some had made it without. He tried to imagine it—reckoned Elene’s worry.
Estelle’s absence from that convoy was good news and bad. Likely she had shied
off her declared course, catching wind of trouble, and gone elsewhere in a
hurry… still cause for anxiety, with the war heating up out on the edge. A
station… gone, blown. Russell’s, evacuating personnel. The safe edge was
suddenly much too close, much too fast.
“It’s likely,” he said, wishing that he could save the news for another day, but
she had to know, “that we’ll be moved to blue, into maybe cramped quarters. The
clean-clearance personnel are the ones that can be transferred to that section.
Well have to be among the ones to go.”
She shrugged. “That’s all right. It’s arranged?”
“It will be.”
A second time she shrugged; they lost their home and she shrugged, staring at
the windows onto the docks below, and the crowds, and the merchanter ships.
“It’s not coming here,” he insisted, trying to believe it, for Pell was his
home, in a way no merchanter was likely to understand. Konstantins had built
this place, from the days of its beginning. “Whatever the Company losses—not
Pell.”
And a moment later, moved by conscience if not by courage: “I’ve got to get over
there, onto the quarantine docks.”
iii
Norway eased in ahead of the others, with the hubbed, unsightly torus of Pell a
gleaming sprawl in her vid screens. The riders were fanned out, fending off the
freighters for the moment. The merchanter crews in command of those refugee
ships wisely held the line, giving her no trouble. The pale crescent of Pell’s
World… Downbelow, in Pell’s matter-of-fact nomenclature… hung beyond the
station, swirled with storms. They matched up with Pell Station’s signal,
drawing even with the flashing lights on the area designated for their docking.
The cone which would receive their nose probe glowed blue with the come-aheads.
section orange, the distorted letters read on vid, beside a tangle of solar
vanes and panels. Signy punched in scan, saw things where they ought to be on
Pell’s borrowed image. Constant chatter flowed from Pell central and the ship
channels, keeping a dozen techs busy at com.
They entered final approach, lost gee gently as Norway’s rotating inner
cylinder, slung gutwise in its frame, slowed and locked to docking position, all
personnel decks on the star tion’s up and down. They felt other stresses
magnified for a time, a series of reorientations. The cone loomed, easy dock,
and they met the grapple, a dragging confirmation of the last slam of gee—opened
accesses for Pell dock crews, stable now, and solidly part of Pell’s rotation.
“I’m getting an all-quiet on dockside,” Graff said. “The stationmaster’s police
are all over the place.”
“Message,” com said. “Pell stationmaster to Norway: request military cooperation
with desks set up to facilitate processing as per your instructions. All
procedures are as you requested, with the stationmaster’s compliments, captain.”
“Reply: Hansford coming in immediately with crisis in lifesupport and possible
riot conditions. Stay back of our lines. Endit.—Graff, take over operations. Di,
get me those troops out on that dock doubletime.”
She left matters there, rose and strode back through the narrow bowed aisles of
the bridge to the small compartment which served her as office and oftentimes
sleeping quarters. She opened the locker there and slipped on a jacket, slipped
a pistol into her pocket. It was not a uniform. No one in the Fleet, perhaps,
possessed a full-regulation uniform. Supply had been that bad, that long. Her
captain’s circle on her collar was her only distinction from a merchanter. The