Franz clicked his heels and dipped his head in crisp acknowledgement. He did not appear to notice the man’s outstretched hand. “And I am Franz Streseman,” he said.
He strode off to the head of the monorail platform, from which slidewalks led around the concourse.
* * *
“Welcome to Trident Village,” murmured a disembodied voice speaking Universal as Lieutenant Wanda Holly walked through the authorized personnel only doorway. The badges Trident Starlines issued to emigrants when they paid their fares responded to UHF interrogation with the wearer’s birth language. The greeting could have been in any of a thousand tongues.
If Holly’s ID chip had not identified her as a Trident Starlines official, the voice would have added, “Please wait here until someone arrives to serve you.” The intruder would wait, because both blast-proof anteroom doors sealed at the moment of unauthorized entry.
The door to the operations room collapsed open as Wanda stepped toward it Danalesco, wearing coveralls with emigrant staff on the cuffs and supervisor in a red field on his shoulders, was alone in the room. He looked up from his console and called, “Yo, Wanda! Good to see you again. I thought you were done with us peons since you got your second stripe.”
Wanda Holly wore a gray, one-piece fatigue uniform with the double stripes of a senior lieutenant on the cuffs. The upper stripe was twice the width of the lower, indicating that she was on the Staff Side, passenger matters, rather than Ship Side, navigation and control. On public occasions, Staff officers wore gleaming white, while the Ship officers were in dark blue which was less likely to focus the attention of a passenger.
Around the Trident Starlines badge on her shoulder was the name of Wanda’s vessel in script: Empress of Earth.
“How’s it going, Danny?” she said. Her voice was pleasant, but she was checking the systems board as she spoke. A dozen segments were in the amber, about par for the course; but three were redlined, and she couldn’t have hidden her frown if she’d wanted to.
“Cholera,” Danalesco said apologetically. “Stage One passed them. We’ve sealed the affected dorm and the one on each side.
“Blacklisted the labor supplier?” Wanda said. Only detachment prevented her voice from showing disapproval.
“About three seconds after I sealed the dorms,” the emigrant specialist replied. “Why don’t you teach your grandmother to suck eggs, girl?”
She smiled. “Sorry, Danny,” she said. “I don’t want a cholera outbreak . . . and I particularly don’t want the client-side supervisor to refuse a shipment and leave me with four thousand runny assholes in Third Class till we get back to Earth.”
Wanda walked behind the console, shifting her viewpoint so that she could cover the panorama of Trident Village without interfering with the controls. It was Danalesco’s unit, after all, though the decision as to whether or not to load a passenger or any number of passengers was made by the vessel’s officers rather than members of the ground staff.
“Forty-two hundred and five,” said Danalesco. “No, I’m a liar—seven. Three births and a death,”
Wanda looked over sharply again. Danalesco spread his hands. “Hey, healthy twenty-three-year-old male, blew out an embolism. Not contagious, girl. Ease off.”
She shrugged and forced another smile. “This is the part that scares me, Danny. It’s like loading sardines. If there’s one bad fish here, four thousand are bad at the far end.”
“So send Kropatchek,” the supervisor said with a chuckle. “This is the Third Officer’s work, after all. And don’t worry about the cholera. Your full load had processed through to the output side before that lot was admitted.”
“Kropatchek quit us this voyage,” Wanda said as she eyed the screens. “He got an offer from Consolidated Voyagers and left us on Nevasa. He’s to be First Officer on one of their combination packets on the Earth-Wellspring-Nevasa Triangle.”
Trident Village was a huge operation; more accurately, two large operations. Would-be emigrants arrived at the input side, either individually or in batches of up to a thousand delivered by a labor contractor. They were housed in barrack blocks one stage better than prison accommodations while they were bathed and examined, and the strictly-limited volume of their baggage was checked and sterilized.