Ran whirled around, trying to find a sightline for his commo unit which leaves didn’t block. Wanda, more experienced with the layout of the Empress of Earth, had already knelt on the parquetry.
“Go ahead,” Ran snapped, letting Bridge’s voice analyzer identify him without further delay.
A couple lurched through a shield of spike-leafed vegetation from which a Hobilo carnivore leered. The woman was slim and attractive, but at least twenty years older than her teenaged companion. His fly was undone because in haste he had caught his shirttail in the pressure seal.
“This is an emergency,” Bridge said needlessly. “Unknown persons have entered the vessel through the engineering hatch. All crew members must act to prevent injury to the vessel’s passengers. Await further orders. Out.”
The mildly concerned synthesized tones undercut the import of the words. Instead of gently urging the listener, the smooth voice introduced a level of cognitive dissonance which increased the terror of broken routine.
“The hell with that!” said Wanda Holly as Ran looked up from the message he’d heard a moment after she’d received it. “Can’t we stop them?”
More couples were drifting out of the foliage. The officers’ white uniforms drew their eyes like needles to lodestone.
“It’s all right, ladies and gentlemen,” Ran said loudly. The tannoys continued to drone their message, increasing nervousness by repetition without any real information. “Some people from Grantholm want to redirect the ship. There’s no physical danger whatever, so long as you keep out of their way.”
“Go to your cabins at once,” Wanda added with calm certainty. “We’ll let you know what the situation is as soon as we can, certainly within an hour. But right now, you’ve got to get out of the way.”
“But—” said at least five passengers simultaneously.
“Move it!” Ran snapped. He made shooing motions with his hands. “This is as real as lifeboat drill, it’s just not as uncomfortable.”
Wanda unexpectedly unsealed her tunic. She wore a translucent bodysock beneath it, Ran noted with surprise.
“Sir, madam?” the Second Officer said to a couple surprised from the semblance of a Calicheman riverbank. The screen of dense-trunked trees grew from a common root system. Behind it, beasts the size of hippopotami sported. “Mr. Colville and I need your jackets at once.”
She glanced over at Ran. “This isn’t any time to stick out like sore thumbs, whatever we want to do.”
The two passengers addressed obeyed the sharp command without objecting or even speaking, though the man’s mouth opened and closed like that of a carp gulping air. The dozen or so other passengers acted as though a flag had dropped. Their shift toward the door to the corridor became a dead run within three steps.
The man who gave Ran his jacket of pink and puce velour reached for the uniform tunic in exchange. Ran set his hand over the passenger’s.
“You don’t want this either,” Ran said. His voice quivered like the wire of a cheese-cutter.
The passenger jerked away and rushed out of the room, hand in hand with his companion. They didn’t look back.
Ran tossed his white tunic into an alcove. Wanda slipped a small pistol from the sidepocket of her own garment to that of her borrowed one, then hid the uniform with Ran’s.
He knelt as the Second Officer had done before. “Colville to Kneale,” he said with the transceiver tight against the inlaid wood. “Over.”
“How do you know it’s Grantholmers?” Wanda demanded, backing into the shelter of the reeds as she looked toward the entrance to the Enchanted Forest Her right hand was in her pocket.
“Bridge, where the hell is the commander!” Ran shouted.
“Commander Kneale is not aboard the vessel,” Bridge said through the disk. “He vanished from his cabin when I sounded the alarm. Over.”
“It says he vanished!” Ran blurted to his companion. “You can’t vanish from a starship!”
What you could do was die. If a crewman in Grantholm pay had hidden bombs in the officers’ quarters to go off in concert with an external attack, for example.
Ran and Wanda saw understanding in each others’ sudden hardening of expression. Neither of them spoke the realization aloud.
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