transfers of residence, for repairs, for reorganizations… but never on this kind
of notice and never on this scale, and never without knowing where they were to
be assigned. Plans were cancelled, four thousand lives upset. Merchanters of the
two score freighters which happened to be in dock had been rudely ousted from
sleepover accommodations and security did not want them on the docks or near the
ships. His wife, Elene, was down there in a knot of them, a slim figure in pale
green. Liaison with the merchanters… that was Elene’s job, and he was at her
office fretting about it. He nervously watched the manner of the merchanters,
which was angry, and meditated sending station police down there for Elene’s
protection; but Elene seemed to be matching them shout for shout, all lost in
the soundproofing and the general buzz of voices and machine noise which faintly
penetrated the elevated command post. Suddenly there were shrugs, and hands
offered all round, as if there had been no quarrel at all. Some matter was
either settled or postponed, and, Elene walked away and the merchanters strode
off trough the dispossessed crowds, though with shakes of their heads and no
happiness evident. Elene had disappeared beneath the slanted windows… to the
lift, to come up here, Damon hoped. Off in green section his own office was
dealing with an angry-resident protest; and there was the Company delegation
fretting in station central making demands of its own on his father.
“Will a medical team please report to section eight yellow?” com asked silkily.
Someone was in trouble, off in the evacuated sections.
The lift doors opened into the command center. Elene joined him, her face still
flushed from argument
“Central’s gone stark mad,” she said. “The merchanters were moved out of hospice
and told they had to lodge on their ships; and now they’ve got station police
between them and their ships. They’re wanting to cast off from station. They
don’t want their ships mobbed in some sudden evacuation. Read it that they’d
just as soon be out of Pell’s vicinity entirely at the moment. Mallory’s been
known to recruit merchanters at gunpoint.”
“What did you tell them?”
“To stand fast and figure there are going to be some contracts handed out for
supplies to take care of this influx; but they won’t go to any ship that bolts
the dock, or that tangles with our police. And that has the lid on them, at
least for a while.”
Elene was afraid. It was clear behind the brittle, busy calm. They were all
afraid. He slipped his arm about her; hers fitted his waist and she leaned
there, saying nothing. Merchanter, Elene Quen, off the freighter Estelle, which
had gone its way to Russell’s, and to Mariner. She had missed that run for him,
to consider tying herself to a station for good, for his sake; and now she ended
up trying to reason with angry crews who were probably right and sensible in her
eyes, with the military in their laps. He viewed matters in a cold, quiet panic,
stationer’s fashion. Things which went wrong onstation went wrong sitting still,
by quadrants and by sections, and there was a certain fatalism bred of it: if
one was in a safe zone, one stayed there; if one had a job which could help, one
did it; and if it was one’s own area in trouble, one still sat fixed—it was the
only heroism possible. A station could not shoot, could not run, could only
suffer damage and repair it if there was time. Merchanters had other
philosophies and different reflexes in time of trouble.
“It’s all right,” he said, tightening his arm briefly. He felt her answering
pressure. “It’s not coming here. They’re just putting civilians far behind the
lines. They’ll stay here till the crisis is over and then go back. If not, we’ve
had big influxes before, when they shut down the last of the Hinder Stars. We
added sections. We’ll do it again. We just get larger.”
Elene said nothing. There were dire rumors drifting through com and down the
corridors regarding the extent of the disaster at Mariner, and Estelle was not