Ran wasn’t sure whether Holly spoke sharply because she felt pressured by the immediate circumstances, or whether she was simply curt in all dealings with her fellow crewmen. There were plenty of Staff Side officers who saved all their social skills for their duties toward the passengers.
She wasn’t a bad-looking woman, not that Ran cared much about looks—or the fact that she was probably a few years older than he was. Personality might not be everything with him, but it accounted for a good ninety percent of his interest.
Anyway, he didn’t mix business and pleasure. Women were always cheap, once you figured out what coin a particular lady wanted to be paid in. He liked women as well as any man in the universe did, but he wasn’t about to let his pecker get in the way of his duty.
The crew car was reeling back from an open hatch on top of the Empress of Earth. The transparent vehicles weren’t intended for use by large numbers; the twenty or so personnel aboard this one put it well beyond its listed capacity. The supporting girder of basket-woven monocrystal fibers swayed dangerously. It was unlikely to shear, but it might well jam, unable to extend or retract. If that happened, the car would bob in the polar winds until a maintenance crew reached it from a cherrypicker.
Lieutenant Holly glanced at the slowly-retracting car and stepped away from the access door. “We’d better keep out of the way,” she muttered. “It looks like the whole Cold Crew’s in the basket.”
The car grunched against the building before locking home. Because of the extra weight, it hit the support step and had to bounce to clear it. The access hatch opened. Men, heavyset and dark-haired, with enough features in common to have all been members of the same family, burst from the car like buckshot from a gun barrel. They crowded into the drop shaft without a word or a glance around the concourse.
Holly waited till the last of them were clear, then stepped into the car they had vacated. “Kephalonians,” she said. “Most of Trident’s Cold Crews come from there or Pyramus.”
“And Bifrost,” Ran said without expression as he followed her into the car.
“Right, and Bifrost,” Holly agreed. She smiled for the first time and stuck out her hand again. “My name’s Wanda, by the way.”
“Ran,” Ran said, glad for the change in atmosphere.
“They say that if you look into a Cold Crewman’s eyes, you can see all the way to Hell,” Wanda prattled on. There was nothing hostile in the comment. It was as if she were discussing schools offish in the Great Central Trench of Tblisi.
“I’ve heard that,” Ran said. There wasn’t enough emotion in his voice to make the words agreement.
Under the Second Officer’s control, the crew car began to travel toward the Empress of Earth again. “Me, even the Starlight Bar—the observation dome in our nose—is too close to being nowhere,” she continued. “I keep out of it except when I’ve just got to be there.”
“Yeah, I can understand that,” Ran said.
Normally, a sheet of First Class passengers would have been marching across the broad gangway extending from the terminal to the vessel. Today, the usual procedures were disrupted. A party of ten aides and bodyguards disembarked in a cluster around a tall man with a mane of preternaturally pale hair. A dozen other guards and officials, wearing clothes so formal that they might as well have been uniforms, advanced to meet him.
A slight woman in a tailored dress that flowed like beige fire stood at the terminal end of the gangplank.
Wanda Holly pointed down at the gathering. “That’s Minister Sven Bernsdorf,” she commented. “The Terran government sent him on a peace mission to Nevasa. He traveled out by the Brasil and then straight back with us. I hope that means good news.”
“It’s out of our hands, at any rate,” Ran said. He stared for a moment at the slight, blond woman waiting for the ambassador. A good lady. He hoped she’d be well, but that was out of his hands too.
Then the car locked itself onto the hatch coaming, and Third Officer Ran Colville prepared to go aboard the Empress of Earth for the first time. . . .