Angelmass

It was a hand computer, all right. An expensive one, too, from the look of it. She turned it over—

"Nurk it," she muttered to herself. Stamped into the back of the casing was the Xirrus's logo. A

ship's computer, then, tied into the Xirrus's central nexus and hard-programmed only with ship's data and business. On the open market, worth just fractionally above zero.

For a moment she glared at the flat little plate, letting her a

It took her a minute to locate a wall power plate, and another minute to pry the back off the computer with her little pocket multi-knife. The computer's ID register... there it was. Snapping out two of the knife's blades and the specially insulated screwdriver, she eased one of the blades into the lowest voltage socket on the plate and brought the computer's ID register up to lightly touch the other blade. There was a small spark, hardly visible; carefully, she shifted the knife point to two other spots on the instrument, with similar results. She gave it a quick examination, then pulled the blade from the socket and folded the knife back up. Assuming she'd done it right, the computer would now still have full access to the ship's central nexus, but the nexus wouldn't be able to either identify the particular computer she was using or to keep any record of which files she pulled up.

It was a trick that for years she'd had to pay Trilling or someone else to do for her. One day he'd foolishly let her watch.

She replaced the back cover and keyed the computer on. First on her list of things to do was to pull up a set of the Xirrus's floorplans—a real set, including all the crew and equipment areas. She leafed through them, memorizing each with a glance, and by the time she was through she'd found half a dozen ways to get from one end of the ship to the other without anyone having a ghost's chance of spotting her.

Second on her list was to find a place to stay, preferably one that would be a step up from her present cabin and roommates. Hunting around a little, she found a passenger accommodations list, which after a little study yielded the information that there were sixteen empty cabins on the ship, three of them fancy staterooms in the upper-class section. A crewer roster was next, with particular attention given to which servitors were on duty at the moment and which cabins they were assigned to.

And finally came the triskiest part: coaxing the nexus to give her the general passcode for servitor entry into the passenger rooms.

It took awhile, but the people who'd set up the Xirrus's security hadn't been very bright. In the end, she got it.

And that was that. She could return the computer now, her tampering a cinch to be missed until long after she disappeared into the barrios of Lorelei. And in the meantime she could mingle with the people in the upper-class section whenever she liked, scoring whatever tracks she could. Preferably with people who wouldn't be stopping at Lorelei; if they didn't notice their losses until afterwards, it would take that much longer for them to howl the police onto her tail.

On idle impulse, she keyed the computer for the Xirrus's itinerary. Not that it really mattered; but the next stop after Lorelei was—

Seraph system.

She stared at the display, stomach suddenly fluttering. Seraph system. The place where angels came from.

She leaned against the wall, watching all her neat plans twisting themselves into skidly-talk with new possibilities. Angels. Things only politicians and rich people could get—she remembered a news story once that had talked about them, with a big security type from the Gabriel Corporation opening up a box and handing over a chain and pendant to a High Senator type, who turned around and put it around another High Senator type's neck. The chain had looked pretty classy, at least from the one close-up she'd seen, and she remembered trying to sit down and watch more. But then Trilling had started yelling about something, and she'd yelled back, and somehow she'd never gotten around to finding out more.

But the angels came from Seraph system—that much everyone knew. They were made out in space by something called Angelmass, and a whole bunch of little ships went out there every day to bring them back.

Little ships. With little crews...

Don't be stupid, she growled at herself. They'd been turning out angels for years. By now they must have filled in every single gap in their security.

But if they hadn't, and if she could somehow crack into the system...

She rubbed her finger over her lower lip, stomach acid swirling again with indecision. It might be a total waste of time, sure; but even if scoring an angel turned out to be a popped cord it might still be worth continuing on to Seraph just to throw Trilling that much farther off her trail. And it would be easy enough to do. With the stuff she'd already pulled out of the computer—

The thought stopped short. The computer, whose circuits she'd just scorched, secure in the knowledge that no one was likely to notice for the six or seven days till they got to Lorelei.

But if she continued on to Seraph, which the computer said would take another five or six days after that...

She smiled tightly. No one ever gets anywhere if they never take chances. Trilling had said that a lot, usually when puffing some particularly trisky job he wanted her to do. But even Trilling was right sometimes. And if she really could pull this off...

Abruptly, she got to her feet. First thing would be to get the computer back without being seen. Not necessarily to the same spot; people never remembered where they left things, and in a place like this they'd probably assume someone else had borrowed it.

And after that, it would be time to rearrange her accommodations. Before, getting access to the upper-class section had just been something she wanted to do. Now, it was something she needed to do.

Trilling had always said that her touchiness would never let her fit in with upper-class society. She was about to find out if that was true.

CHAPTER 3

Chandris's goal when putting her outfit together had been to try and end up with something that would look upper-class without costing money she didn't have. She'd been rather pleased with the results, or at least she had been until those puff-heads back in her lower-class cabin had started giggling.

A single pass by one of the upper-class lounges showed her why they'd giggled.

It was a humiliating moment, not to mention a dangerous one. Luckily, it was also very quickly over.

A really good look at the expensive outfits wasn't necessary; all she needed this time through was to get the style of uniform worn by servitors in this section. That knowledge in hand, she slipped back through the nearest crewer door and made her way down to the maids' quarters. With the work schedule and cabin assignment information she'd read off the computer, it was simple enough to locate an unoccupied room. One of the general passcodes got her inside, and she began her search.

There were, as she'd expected, several different types of uniforms for the different parts of the ship, and she had to raid a dozen rooms before she found a maid's uniform that was both the right style and the right size. Fifteen minutes later, having changed in a conveniently isolated emergencybattery room, she returned to the upper-class section.

No one gave her a second look as she slipped silently past wandering and chattering passengers; very few gave her even a first look. It was the perfect camouflage, particularly for someone like Chandris, who had played the role so many times before that she had the mental attitude and body language of a servant down cold. Even in operations a lot smaller than a spaceliner, she'd sometimes blended into the identity so well that other workers had totally missed the fact that she was a stranger. On a ship this size, assuming she was careful, they didn't have a hope of fingering her.