Rimrunners

And: "What in hell's that?" Park said. "We ain't touched a port."

" Go immediately to the center aisle where you are. No talking. No delays to secure materials. If you're drinking or eating, hold it; if you're doing anything else, leave it. No talking, no discussion, no walking around. Move now't"

"Shit," NG muttered, and sent a twitch through Bet's nerves.

"Shut up," she hissed, scared for reasons she couldn't exactly pin anything on, except when NG took a notion to be an ass he could do it up in ribbons, and she didn't like that attitude. She took her beer and she took herself to the aisle, leaving everything the way the mofs said, all six of them standing out there. Musa went on sipping his beer, other people did, so she figured it must be all right, while the mof search squad came in and started at the other end of the quarters.

God, when they pulled a check in the troop-deck, you didn't sip any beers, you swallowed it to keep the ship move-ready, you threw everything loose into the mesh bag that hung by your bunk, you stood in that aisle at attention and you didn't thinkabout drinking any beers while the mofs were going through your stuff and writing down every frigging thing that wasn't inspection-ready, God helpyou if you had drugs or unregistered armament in your locker.

People did talk, under their breaths, shifted around a little to do it, where the mofs weren't right at hand, you could hear the little muttering under the ship-noise.

Then two more mofs walked in, Orsini andFitch together.

"Oh, God," somebody said.

She slid a glance toward NG, saw the set of his jaw, saw him take a deliberate slow drink of the beer he was holding and stare murder in Fitch's direction.

They just stood there, and talk died down entirely in the area.

Fitch was in his own morning rounds and Orsini was on duty during his rec-period, both, you could figure, because they were searching allthe bunks and all the stuff, what belonged to mainday as well as what belonged to alterday.

The search had started near the vid, four junior officers she'd never laid eyes on, but that could include a whole lot of the bridge crew, even those that were alterday. Bunks got turned up, the storages underneath inspected, everything got a general lookover, but it went pretty fast.

Hell of a time to start looking for drugs, Park was right. No sense to start searching now for what they could have brought aboard. Probably some damn thing had gone missing, maybe they'd lost a bottle or two out of the officers' mess, maybe the captain had lost his watch or something. Probably wasa stolen-goods check, if they werefinally headed into port, to make sure something didn't get carried offship and bartered for booze. That was probably what was going on.

But it sure as hell made you start tallying up what you had brought aboard and re-checking the regs in your mind to see if you had anything you weren't supposed to.

No prohibition on anything she had, she was sure of that: she'd read that list realcareful. And they were already past NG's bunk, thank God, with no problems evident.

The search got to them, they stood quietly, all six of them, while the mofs turned up McKenzie's bunk and then Park's and Figi's, and the guys' across the aisle, and worked all the way down to the bulkhead.

Up to the loft then.

Nothing I got's illegal. Please God.

She sipped her own beer, feeling odd about it, telling herself this ship was hell and away looser about a whole lot of things. But you couldn't help worrying—particularly when you knew you had enemies, and particularly when you'd had the message delivered that same day that some sum-bitch with bridge-level co

" Yeager," the intercom called out. " Come to your bunk area."

Oh, shit!

She took, a deep breath and started to excuse herself past, felt somebody pat her back, another take her arm.

One was Musa, the one who held her arm was NG. She looked at him and gave a shrug. "Probably the viewer," she said: at the moment she hoped to hell it was.

He let her go, she went and climbed the ladder, and somebody else was coming up after her, which she had a very clear idea was the two watch-officers. She didn't look over her shoulder, she walked on to where the four inspectors had gathered—where her bunk was standing on its side and they had the underneath storage open to view.

Their sniffer-box was going crazy, the red light was flashing, and a plastic packet of capsules was lying on top of her stuff, right there in front of God and everybody.

"This your bunk?" one asked.

"Yessir," she said. "But I didn't put that there."

About the time Orsini and Fitch showed up and the inspection crew said how they'd found it—of course—in her stowage, and she said, when Orsini asked her whether she had a prescription, "Nossir, but that's not mine."

"Whose is it?"

"Lindy Hughes', sir. He said he had something for my headache, said he'd leave it at my bunk."

"You consider going to the pharmacy, Yeager?"

"Didn't know it was prescription, sir, must've got it this morning, he had an accident, you know, figure he didn't think it was strong enough to worry over."

Orsini took the packet in his fingers. "Remains to be seen if this is prescription."

"Yessir."

"Find out where Hughes's been," Fitch said.

Wasn'ta presence-sniffer they had, then, just a basic job, no way to track where anybody was—more the pity.

"I'd like to point out, sir, if I was ru

"You want me to note that down, Yeager?"

"Yessir. I know the ways stuff gets past. And how it doesn't. Plain plastic bag isn't going to get past anybody."

"You want to tell us anything else?" Orsini asked.

"Don't mind to take a test, sir. Nothing in my system except the last trank dose."

Fitch picked up the viewer and shoved a fiche in. He was quiet a moment. Looking.

Then Fitch turned the viewer off and gave her a cold, measuring stare.

"Think you'd better come to Administrative, Yeager."

"Yessir," she said, and went where Fitch and Orsini indicated, back down the aisle, down the ladder, a couple of steps ahead of them.

There was a gossipy murmuring in the crew. It got quieter in her immediate vicinity.

She saw NG close up, saw him with a panicked look on his face—not waiting where he was supposed to be, not him, not Musa either, who had a firm grip on his arm. What NG

might do scared her, so she just gave him a straight I-don't-know-you stare and kept walking to the door, calmly as she could, because Fitch was there, Fitch was likely to pick up on any communication she made with anybody and write thatinto his report.

They got through to the door, they walked out into rec and general com started calling Lindy Hughes to report to Orsini's office.

That gave her a little satisfaction, at least. If she was going down, if this was going to start with little questions and get to the ones she didn't want asked—then it didn't matter as much who had done it as she just wanted to take a few shots that counted, and take out the ones that did matter.

They had her stop by infirmary and do the tests: she was real glad about that—

"Nothing but the last trank-down in my system," she told the med. "That's all you're going to find."

"Hope so," Fletcher said.

She was confident about that. She wasn't, about the interview in the office.