“Welcome to Tblisi, ladies and gentlemen!” Commander Kneale called from the opposite side of the Embarkation Hall. Though he shouted, his voice was barely audible over the tramp of feet surging forward on the resilient flooring.
The attempted hijacking had done even less physical damage to the passengers than it had to the structure of the ship. The psychic injuries were something else again.
Ran edged aside to let the rush of passengers pass. There would be no trouble, now that they had the freedom to leave what they thought of as a cage.
He pressed his back against a pilaster, looking at the suddenly jubilant crowd but thinking of—other times, and other places; and of the Cold.
“Do you think any of them will ever get back on a starliner, Ran?” Wanda asked from beside him.
He looked down at her and smiled, glad to return to the present “Sure,” he said. “Most of them have somewhere to return to, anyway. And they’ll forget. It’ll be an adventure, once they’ve been away for it for a couple days . . . and until it happens again.”
Passengers poured past them in a joyous torrent, humans and the leavening of alien faces. Wakambria, Rialvans—an individual Szgranian who must have been a courier, female and dressed in drab colors instead of glitter and weaponry. What did the aliens think of the human squabble which had almost cost them their schedule if not their very lives?
“You think it’s going to happen again?” Wanda asked softly.
Ran didn’t look at her. His eyes stared past the sea of heads and luggage bobbing down the ramp to solid ground. “Until the war ends,” he said. “Or something happens to the Empress. The company’s going to have to take her out of service. She’s too valuable a prize.”
The crush in the Embarkation Hall had passed, leaving only a few passengers fussing in the great room with unfastened bags or concern for something forgotten in their cabins. The scattered figures quivered like puddles in a spillway after the impoundment has emptied. Commander Kneale made his way toward Ran and Wanda, tossing affable greetings to the passengers whom he passed.
“I hope they take her out of service,” Wanda said softly. She too was staring toward the gangway but seeing memories. “Because . . . if I had to do what I did. Again. I don’t think that I could.”
Ran reached to his side without looking and took the Second Officer’s hand. They were on duty, and in public; and when that occurred to him, he still didn’t give a damn.
“You can do anything you have to, Wanda,” he said. “Anything. But that’s not a reason to do it.”
“Why don’t you two take the next forty-eight as leave?” Commander Kneale offered from a meter away. “I’m not disembarking myself because the repair crews are coming aboard, and—I think you’ve earned it.”
Ran looked at Wanda, then met his superior’s eyes. “Sir,” he said. “We need to talk, you and I.”
Kneale nodded calmly. “All right,” he said. “Do you want to do it now?”
Ran looked out toward the gangway and thought about the domed skyline of Bogomil beyond. “No sir,” he said, “Right now I want to get off the Empress. Almost as bad as the passengers did.”
Kneale nodded and smiled. His square, powerful hand swept smoothly toward the gangway. “Then go,” he said. “We’ll talk another time. You’ve earned that too, Mr. Colville.”
* * *
The sky was so clear and vast that Dewhurst’s wife didn’t even comment on the slight orange tint to the sunlight that would in normal circumstances have been her first public reaction to Tblisi. She spread her arms and cried, “Oh, what a terrible experience! I was sure that we were all going to be killed.”
“Now, now, Ms. Dewhurst,” Wade said. “It didn’t cost us anything but perhaps eight hours off our scheduled arrival, and surely the chance of a good story was worth that to all of us. Eh, Dewhurst?”
Dewhurst shook his head more in wonder than disagreement. “Adventures are things that happen to other people, Wade,” he said. “Personally, I think I like it that way. Anyway, I can’t claim that hiding in my cabin for several hours was much of an adventure, though I suppose—”