The woman behind the counter slid the card into a reader and glanced at the readout. “Anything to declare?” she asked in a bored voice.
“No,” said Lola. “A few gifts for my family.” The question, she knew, was routine and perfunctory. A few planets monitored the departure of indigenous artifacts, but on a station like Lorelei, where the entire economic base was gambling and tourism, the only things likely to be leaving were souvenirs. The occasional visitor might get lucky and leave with more money than he’d come with, but it didn’t happen often enough to be any threat to the station’s solvency.
“OK, you’re in stateroom twenty-three-A, on deck three,” said the woman, gesturing vaguely with her left hand. “Turn right at the head of the stairs, and there’ll be a steward there to show you the way. Need any help with the luggage?”
“We’ve got one big case we could use a hand with,” said Lola, pointing to the trunk Ernie had been wheeling along.
“Wait over there, and a spacecap will be along to help,” said the woman. “Have a nice voyage. Next?”
“What the hell are you doing?” whispered Ernie, as he took a position next to her. “This guy gets a notion we’re up to anything funny, and we’ll be up to our ass in trouble.”
“Relax,” she said. “This is the right way to do it, believe me.” She was right, she knew. Now the luggage handlers would remember them as one more pair of passengers with a heavy bag, one more tip, not as some pinchpennies who insisted on wrestling their own bag through tight passageways. A few more minutes and she could almost relax.