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Crossing the green line, she fished out her dog tags and pulled them off one-handed as she reached the watch desk just the other side of the lock, smiled wearily at her several cousins of varying degree who sat that cheerless duty, and stuck the key-tag into the portable comp unit while Da
“Are we still on schedule?” she asked the cousin nearest.
“Last I heard,” the woman said. The bell goes in about forty-five minutes.”
“Huh.” She threw an involuntary glance at the desk clock and walked on through, burdenless, putting her dog tags to rights again, dodging past cousins with last-minute business in cargo, mostly maintenance who were taking wastage to the chute, and now and again someone with a personal bit of debris to jettison, a nuisance that should have been run through comp before now, but there was always someone trying to break through the line of incomers with something outgoing.
There was at least a reasonable quiet about the traffic toward the lift… a few others her seniors, a few her junior, with some of the other unposteds… people in a hurry in uncommonly narrow spaces, because the great cylinder that was Dublin’s body still sat in docking lock, and no one in dockside boots could take any corridors but the number ones. The rest remained dark, up the upcurve of the intersecting halls, waiting the undock and the start of rotation which would restore access to the whole circumference of the ship.
The pale green of outer corridors became Op Zone white, the dock smells which wafted in from the lock gave way to bitingly crisp air, tiles and corridors and lighting panels in pristine pallor that would show any smudge or streak—notoriously clean, because Dubliners in their youth spent hour on aching hour keeping the corridors that way. The lift, in the white zone, had a handful of cousins waiting for it; Allison nodded to the others and waited too —a glance and a hello to Deirdre, of her own year, another of her unit; got of a CATC man on Esperance liberty, so it ran. Deirdre had that knit-browed absentia of a four-day binge, a tendency to wince at noise. Allison folded her own arms and disdained to lean against the wall, being unposted exec, and not general crew, but her knees ached and her feet ached from walking, while she thought with longing of her own soft bunk, in her quarters topside.
“Good night?” someone asked. She blinked placidly at another unposted who had been with her in Tiger’s last night
“Yes,” she said, thinking about it for a moment, drew in a breath and favored Curran with a thoughtful glance. “What happened to yourself?”
Curran gri
“I’m back, she hand-signed past the noise, the gathering in the two lounges. Megan saw her and walked over, across the white line into the unposted lounge to talk to her. “I worried,” Megan said.
“Huh. I’m not about to miss the bell. Have a good stay?”
“Got some new tapes.”
“Nothing else?”
Her mother gri
“No question about clearance, is there?” She straightened her collar herself, minor irritance. “I thought that was settled.”
“Something about some papers on the cargo. Trans-Line protocols. Viking stationmaster is insisting we re-enter Union space via Viking; we make no promises, and the military’s backing us on it. The bell’s going on schedule, I’m betting.”
“I don’t see it’s Viking’s prerogative.”
“Balance of trade, they say. They’ll raise a fuss all the way to Council.”
She frowned—glanced about as a heavy hand came down on her shoulder; it was her mother’s half-brother Geoff, dark-bearded, brows knit. “Allie,” her uncle said, “you mind how you go on the docks.”
“He was safe,” Allison said.
“Huh,” Geoff said, and looked past her at Megan. “Mind this one, Meg. Did that fellow ask questions, Allie? Did you answer any?”
“He wasn’t curious and no, nothing he couldn’t get by asking anywhere. I asked the questions, Geoff, sir, and I was soberer than he was.”
“Stay to Names you know,” Megan said. “Nowadays particularly.”
“Ma’am,” Allison said under her breath. “Sir.” Drew breath and ducked past with a pat on the shoulder as her half-sister Co