A pair of male passengers, Caucasians who looked to be about 70 years old, waited in the corridor as well. One of them was a trim, tall man who stood with military stiffness. His fellow was short, soft, bald, and seated on a cabin trunk. The plump man leaned against the corridor wall—a mural of a prairie in late summer, with the milkweed pods beginning to open—with his right ankle crossed over his left knee.
“Ah,” said the tall passenger as he noticed Ran. “Lieutenant, I believe? Very good to see you. I’m Richard Wade, this is my friend Tom Belgeddes—”
The shorter man grunted to his feet. “Charmed,” he said in a friendly tone. He sounded rather as if he meant something more than conventional pleasantry.
“—and there seems to be a bit of a problem with our cabin,” Wade continued without having paused for his friend to speak.
The cabin door was open. Another man popped his head out, then disappeared back inside.
“You’ll take it from here, sir?” a steward asked Ran.
“Stick around,” Ran replied. “There’s going to be some luggage to move in a little bit.”
He stood in the doorway. Wade and Belgeddes closed in to either side, making it look as though the Third Officer was the shock troop for their point of view—which was the last thing the situation called for. Ran stepped into the cabin and switched the door down behind him, closing the passengers out in the, corridor.
Luggage, much of it in the form of bales and packets instead of purpose-built cases, filled the center of the bed-sitting room. A family of six was positioned around the gear like the Huns at Chalons prepared to defend their leader on a pile of saddles.
“I am Parvashtisinga Sadek,” announced the man who’d looked into the corridor. “This is my cabin. See!”
He offered Ran his ticket, a data crystal etched on the outside with the company’s trident. The crystal was a wafer, 1-cm by 2. Its information could have been contained on a microscopic speck: the additional size was necessary for handling by life-forms rather than by computers.
Ran put the ticket in the palm-sized reader on his belt and projected the data in the form of a hologram that hung forty centimeters in front of his eyes. It was an Earth to Tellichery ticket, via the Empress of Earth in Cabin 8241, with everything in order. Five-person occupancy, which might be arguable, but a babe in arms would normally travel free. Date of issue was the twelfth of last month, three weeks before. The only unusual circumstance was that the ticket had been cut on Am al-Mahdi rather than either of the terminus worlds.
“Thank you, sir,” Ran said as he returned the wafer. “I’ll check the other gentlemen’s tickets, now.”
“This is our room!” Sadek said in a shrill, forceful voice. “We will not move.”
He, his wife, and three of the children stared at Ran as if they expected the white-uniformed ship’s officer to draw a long knife at any moment and begin to butcher them. The infant on the mother’s breast looked up, hid his/her face with a happy gurgle, and peeked out again.
Ran winked, drawing another gurgle.
Ran left the door in the up, open, position as he stepped back into the corridor. “Mr. Wade, Mr. Belgeddes,” he said, “might I—”
He paused, because Wade was already extending his hand with the two ticket chips in it
“Of course, of course, my boy,” Wade said. “By the book, just as it should be. I’ve been an officer myself, you know—at least a dozen times, if you count all the penny-ante rebellions that somebody decided to make me a general.”
“That’s right,” said Belgeddes as Ran fed a ticket into the reader. “Dickie here, he never could keep out of trouble.”
The ticket was Belgeddes’ own, and it was perfectly hi order: Cabin 8241, round-trip, Port Northern at both termini. Issued through Trident’s home office in Halifax on the first of the previous month. Eleven days earlier than the Sadek family’s ticket
Before he spoke, because it was a lot easier to check now than clean up the mess later, Ran switched Belgeddes’ ticket for Wade’s in the reader. The ticket data were identical save for the name and retinal print of the passenger.