The others returned with the tickets within an hour, but they stayed at the Club table until only half an hour remained to boarding. Alexieva glanced nervously at the nearest chronodisplay—not for the first time, and Heikki sighed.
“There’s a priority tube from this level to the Station Axis.”
The surveyor flushed, and Nkosi said easily, “She is right, though, Heikki. We should be on our way.”
Heikki nodded, and pushed herself to her feet. Djuro touched the key that would route the table’s final bill to the accounting programs—Heikki had already, after only an instant’s hesitation, routed the charges to the company membership—and gestured for the others to precede him.
The priority tube was as crowded as ever, but there were, for once, enough free jitneys cruising the broad traffic lanes. Heikki lifted her hand in signal, and Nkosi, less inhibited, gave a piercing whistle. One of the signals attracted a computer’s attention, and a passing jitney slowed inquiringly. Heikki held up two fingers, and the jitney slid neatly up to the platform. A moment later, a second joined it.
“Alex and I will take this one,” Nkosi announced, and pulled the surveyor into the crook of his arm. She made no protest, though her rather grim expression did not change.
“Why am I not surprised?” Heikki muttered, and reached to pop the other jitney’s door. “All right,” she said, more loudly. “We’ll meet you at the station, then.”
The jitney slowed as they approached the Station Axis. Heikki glanced past Djuro, through the righthand window, and saw the fluted pillars that marked the entrance to the station itself. Between and behind them, she could just make out the broad dull grey band that was the edge of the airtight hatch that would seal off the area should the outer skin ever be breached. She shivered a little, remembering the stories she had read all her life about the disaster of EP1. When the fifth PDE had failed, its crystal apparently shattering, the collapsing warp had triggered a wildfire reaction in the generators that had blown a hole through the shell and sent a plasma plume racing the length of the axis. There had been some survivors, even so, sheltered in the cars of the train that had been ready for the second and third tracks, and in the panic someone had tried to reopen the hatches that had sealed automatically. The mechanism, already damaged, had opened just far enough to breach the tube’s integrity, and then the outer door had collapsed as well. The same scenario had been repeated throughout the station, despite attempts to preserve discipline; in the end, only the docks and the two most distant pods had survived undamaged. EPl’s economic development had been set back fifty years, shifting power permanently into the Loop’s Northern Extension, and consolidating EP4’s position as the richest of all the points. Heikki smiled rather bitterly to herself. If anyone should put up a memorial to the disaster, it was EP4. Still, despite the loss of life and property, EP1 had, in the end, been very lucky: the new station at the other end of the warp, the one that would have been EP15, had been completely destroyed. Scientists were still arguing whether it was the chain reaction destruction of the station’s crystal, and the resultant the plasma plume, coupled perhaps with faulty safety equipment, or some as-yet-unidentified property of the warp itself that had destroyed the station, but there was no denying the fact of that destruction, FTLships still occasionally translated back into normal space near the site of the abortive station, and brought back photographs of the exploded spheres, their broken edges curling like the petals of a flower, that were slowly compressing into a new planet for that distant sun.
It was not a pleasant thought, and Heikki shook herself unobtrusively as she reached to pop the door. Fortunately, neither of the others had noticed her momentary preoccupation, and she swung herself out of the jitney with her usual grace. Nkosi’s jitney drew up to the platform behind them, and the pilot levered himself out, then turned back to help Alexieva from the compartment. Heikki lifted a hand in greeting, and glanced back to collect the others.
“Which track, Sten?”
Djuro held up three fingers. Heikki nodded her acknowledgement, and started for the entrance, the others trailing behind.
The station itself was crowded, and there was the usual confusion at the gates while travellers sorted out their tickets and their destinations. Heikki bit back a curse, and gestured with her free hand for Djuro, who held the tickets and had an unfailing eye for the fastest-moving gate, to go ahead of them. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nkosi put his arm around Alexieva’s waist and pull her close. They negotiated the crowd without difficulty, and were checked only briefly at the gate. The attendant on duty in the overseer’s box didn’t even glance down while the computer scanned their tickets and then opened the padded barrier. They swept through in a group, and the barrier thudded closed again just in time to cut off a skinny girl in bright metallic facepaint. She gave them a cheerful leer, and swung away.
Alexieva frowned, staring after her. “Does that happen often?” she asked.
“Often enough,” Nkosi answered, already turning toward the tunnel-like entrances to the platforms themselves, but the surveyor hung back, staring at the place where the skinny girl had become lost in the crowd.
“But what if she gets through? Does somebody lose their ticket?”
“Sometimes,” Nkosi answered briskly, “but more often not. They—the free riders—always pick on people who don’t know the Loop, so the railroad is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
“It can make you miss your train,” Heikki said dryly. “I think we’d better hurry.”
“You are right,” Nkosi said, contritely, and swept Alexieva ahead of him toward the tunnels.
The sign above the righthand entrance was a steady yellow, the destinations and departure time spelled out in black against it: the string of capsules was at the platform, but passengers were not yet allowed aboard. Heikki led the way through the final arch, past the green-glowing security eyes, and then out onto the platform itself. The capsules lay comfortably in the gravity field, rocking only as the moving air hit them. Heikki glanced at the wall board, reconfirming the standard symbols, and then moved along the platform until she found the section of the train that was marked with the familiar symbols that meant the cars would not be unsealed until they reached EP7. One capsule would hold them all, and she led them past several groups of travellers until she found an unclaimed car.
“We seem to be early,” Nkosi said, with a grin.
“Better that than late,” Heikki retorted, and the big man laughed.
“True enough. Shall I fetch supplies for the trip?”
Heikki glanced at the chronodisplay in her lens—fifteen minutes still to boarding—and then manipulated the bezel to find the schedule she had downloaded to the lens’ memory. The entire trip would take several hours, what with the intermediate stops and transfers, and she wished she had thought to download the files from her newsservice. “Go ahead,” she said aloud. “Would you get me a copy of the lastest techfax, if it’s in?”
“Of course,” Nkosi answered, and looked at the others. “May I fetch anything for the rest of you?”
“Piperaad,” Djuro said, naming a favorite snack. Nkosi nodded, and headed off to intercept the slow-moving sales van that was making its way along the length of the platform.
The others stood for a moment in silence, idly watching the pilot’s progress, and then Alexieva cleared her throat. “I was wondering,” she said reluctantly. “About that girl. If she’d gotten onto the platform, how would she have gotten on the train? Don’t they check the tickets again?”