“Oh!” I glanced at my finger. “Yes, we should have grounded by now. Pete, they are searching for me!”
“I think so. But there was no point in waking you until the lights came on. By now they have had about four hours to make certain that you are not on the deck above with the first-class excursionists. They will have mustered the migrants as well. So, if you are hereÄ and not simply hiding out in the ship properÄyou have to be in this cargo hold. That’s an oversimplification as there are all sorts of ways to play hide-and-seek in a space as big as this boat. But they’ll watch the two bottlenecks, the cargo door on this level and the passenger door on the level above. Friday, if they use enough peopleÄand they willÄand if those jimmylegs are equipped with nets and sticky ropes and tanglefootÄand they will beÄthey will catch you without hurting you as you come out of this boat.”
“Oh.” I thought about it. “Pete . . . if it comes to that, there will be some dead and wounded first. I may wind up dead myselfÄbut they’ll pay a high price for my carcass. Thanks for alerting me.”
“They may not do it quite that way. They may make it very obvious that the doors are being watched in order to cause you to hang back. So they get the migrants outÄI suppose you know that they go out the cargo door?”
“I didn’t.”
“They do. Get them out and checked offÄthen close the big door and shoot this place full of sleepy gas. Or tear gas and force you to come out wiping your eyes and tossing your cookies.”
“Brrr! Pete, are they really equipped in the ship with those gases? I wondered.”
“Those and worse. Look, the skipper of this ship operates many light-years from law and order and he has only a handful of people he can depend on in a crunch. In fourth class this ship carries, almost every trip, a gang of desperate criminals. Of course he is equipped to gas every compartment, selectively. But, Friday, you won’t be here when they use the gas.”
“Huh? Keep talking.”
“The migrants walk down the center aisle of this hold. Almost three hundred of them this trip; they’ll be packed into their compartment tighter than is safe. So many of them this trip that I am assuming that they can’t possibly all know each other in the short time they’ve had to get acquainted. We’ll use that. Plus a very, very old method, Friday; the one Ulysses used on Polyphemus. .
Pete and I were hanging back in an almost dark corner formed by the high end of the generator and a something in a big crate. The light changed, and we heard a murmur of many voices. “They’re coming,” Pete whispered. “Remember, your best bet is someone who has too much to carry. There’ll be plenty of those. Our clothes are okayÄwe don’t look first class. But we must have something to carry. Migrants are always loaded down; I got the straight word on that.”
“I’m going to try to carry some woman’s baby,” I told him.
“Perfect, if you can swing it. Hush, here they come.”
They were indeed loaded downÄbecause of what seems to me a rather chinchy company policy: A migrant can take on his ticket anything he can stuff into those broom closets they call staterooms in third classÄas long as he can carry it off the ship unassisted; that’s the company’s definition of “hand luggage.” But anything he has to have placed in the hold he pays freight charges on. I know that the company has to show a profitÄbut I don’t have to like this policy. However, today we were going to try to turn it to our advantage.
As they passed us most of them never glanced our way and the rest seemed uninterested. They looked tired and preoccupied and I suppose they were, both. There were lots of babies and most of them were crying. The first couple of dozen in the column were strung out with those in front hurrying. Then the line moved more slowlyÄmore babies, more luggageÄand clumped together. It was coming time to pretend to be a “sheep.”