Keep them off the docks and out of our area. Do they need pictures of starving
colonists to take back with them? Bad press, Mr. Konstantin. Keep them out of
our way. Over.”
“They’re armed with government papers. Security Council. That kind of Company
team. They have rank to use and they’re demanding transport deeper Beyond.
Over.”
She chose a second obscenity and swallowed it. “Thank you, Mr. Konstantin. I’ll
capsule you my recommendations on procedures with the refugees; they’ve been
worked out in detail. You can, of course, ignore them, but I’d advise against
it. We can’t even guarantee you that what we’re disembarking on Pell isn’t
armed. We can’t get among them to find out. Armed troops can’t get in there, you
understand? That’s what we’re giving you. I’d advise you keep the Company boys
out of our docking area entirely before we have hostages to deal with. Copy? End
transmission.”
“We copy. Thank you, captain. End transmission.”
She slumped in place, glared at the screens and shot an order to com to capsule
the instructions to station command.
Company men. And refugees from lost stations. Information kept coming steadily
from stricken Hansford, with a calm on the part of its crew she admired.
Strictly procedures. They were dying over there. Crew was sealed into command
and armed, refusing to abandon ship, refusing to let a rider take Hansford in
tow. It was their ship. They stayed by it and did what they could for those
aboard, by remote. They had no thanks from the passengers, who were tearing the
ship apart—or had been doing so, until the air fouled and the systems began to
break down.
Four hours.
ii
Norway. Russell’s had met disaster, and Mariner. Rumor ran through the station
corridors, aboil with the confusion and anger of residents and companies that
had been turned out with all their property. Volunteers and native workers aided
in the evacuation; dock crews used the loading machinery to move personal
belongings out of the area selected for quarantine, tagging items and trying not
to confuse them or allow pilferage. Com echoed with announcements.
“Residents of yellow one through one nineteen are asked to send a representative
to the emergency housing desk. There is a lost child at the aid station, May
Terner. Will a relative please come at once to the aid station?… Latest
estimates from station central indicate housing available in guest residency,
one thousand units. All nonresidents are being removed in favor of permanent
station residents, priority to be determined by lottery. Apartments available by
condensation of occupied units: ninety-two. Compartments available for emergency
conversion to residential space, two thousand, including public meeting areas
and some mainday/alterday rotation of occupancy. The station council urges any
person with personal arrangements possible through lodging with relatives or
friends to secure same and to key this information to comp at the earliest
possible; housing on private initiative will be compensated to the home resident
at a rate equivalent to per capita expense for other housing. We are five
hundred units deficient and this will require barracks-style housing for
on-station residency, or transfer on a temporary basis for Downbelow residency,
unless this deficiency can be made up by volunteering of housing or willingness
of individuals to share assigned living space. Plans are to be considered
immediately for residential use of section blue, which should free five hundred
units within the next one hundred eighty days… Thank you… Will a security team
please report to eight yellow?…”
It was a nightmare. Damon Konstantin stared at the flow of printout and
intermittently paced the matted floors of dock command blue sector, above the
area of the docks where techs tried to cope with the logistics of evacuation.
Two hours left. He could see from the series of windows the chaos all along the
docks where personal belongings had been piled under police guard. Everyone and
every installation in yellow and orange sectors’ ninth through fifth levels had
been displaced: dockside shops, homes, four thousand people crowded elsewhere.
The influx spilled past blue, around the rim to green and white, the big
main-residence sectors. Crowds milled about, bewildered and distraught. They
understood the need: they moved—everyone on station was subject to such