She tried to think of a way to dodge that check, like maybe going down to Thule's few bars, finding Loki'screw, maybe sleeping over with somebody and maybe talking her way into an early boarding that might miss customs altogether, if Lokiwould cooperate—
But doing anything that might make Lokiback off taking her on, that scared her more than the check-out did.
Besides, getting in with the crew during liberty took money she didn't have, and a body was expected to stand her own bar-bill.
She had certainly fallen asleep with worse prospects on her mind, but solitude was a new affliction. Her mind kept going back to old shipmates on Africa, wondering if they were still alive, wondering whether the major was, and who Bieji Hager was sleeping with now.
Teo was dead. Blown to cold space. So was Joey Schmidt and Yung Kim and a thousand more, at least.
DamnMallory.
So here she was, taking a berth on a spook ship, one that might be on Mallory's orders to boot. So maybe it was fair pay to old debts, if they ended up saving her neck. She imagined Teo shaking his head about what she was doing, but Teo would say, Shit, Bet, dead don't count. And Teo would never blame her.
She tossed over onto her belly and tried to not to think, period, just tried to go away, just go nothing, nowhere, like when the G-stress was going to hit soon and the missiles were going to fly and if you were a skut in a carrier's between-decks, you just rode it out and let the tekkies keep the ship from getting hit.
Damn right.
Fourth day. She got up, stumbled across the clutter in the apartment and checked the public ops channel on Ritterman's vid to see when the board-call was posted. M/D 2100, it said. Fill 97% complete.
Thank God, thank God. Mary Goldwas in, now, Mary Goldhad made it into Thule's system during the night; and the vid said: Condition hold, which meant that Mary Goldwas taking a slow approach, lazing along and probably damn mad and desperate, figuring on a fast turn-around and instead finding out they could be weeks down on their schedule—the same way that Bryant's Star Station, next on Mary Gold'sroute, was going to find its essential supplies a month late; and so was everybody else down the line. A little schedule slip at a place like Pell, a huge, modern station—that was nothing. But herec
It was a question, what the reason was on that priority of Loki's, whether it was just using it, hell with the stations and the trouble it caused. Or whether there was an urgency about its getting outbound.
And urgency with that kind of ship meantc
She thought about Africa, she thought about the chance of finding herself on the wrong side of things in a firefight.
Of getting blown to hell with a spook, that was what would happen. By her own ship, her own old shipmates.
She shoved thoughts like that out of her mind, she had her breakfast of chips and sat and read, and checked the comp for messages.
Ads, all ads, like always. Not one call for Ritterman, nothing but those overdue tapes, in all the time she'd been here.
Popular man.
She got down to serious packing finally. She'd made herself wait for that, the way she always made herself wait for things she wanted too much. She had another bag of chips, she had a shower, she trimmed her hair, and finally she started putting her personal kit together, the last thing, the very last to go into the duffle.
The door buzzer sounded.
She stopped still. She stood there in the bathroom just breathing, that was all, afraid it was somebody with a key. So—so if it was, Rico could vouch for her, she'd been with Ritterman, she'd come in here when she knew she was shipping out—had her stuff in stowage here, hadn't seen Ritterman in days, never asked where he was, he'd always said just walk in—
Second push at the buzzer.
Third.
But they went away.
She let go her breath. And brought her little bag of personal things out into the living room and finished packing, watching the time.
The phone beeped.
God. She held her breath again until whoever it was gave up.
She stood there, thinking about how to move, where to move: fastwas the only way, fast and direct and if somebody was waiting outside in the hall or down by the lift, just to see who came out—
Oh, God, she'd given Rico's as an address for the Registry.
If somebody had asked for her at Rico's, if Rico had told them some woman with a black eye had gone off with Ritterman, they could be looking for her, instead of Ritterman—
And they were going to find Ritterman once they got in here.
She checked her pockets to be sure of the card, she grabbed up the duffle and she left, down the dingy metal hall, heart pounding, down to the lift.
Nobody. Thank God.
She ditched the card behind a loose base-moulding, there by the lift, a place where it was out of her possession if she got searched, and available if she needed it—she'd spotted that two days ago; she took the lift down to dockside, she walked out, she just kept all her movements normal. If they hadn't followed the trail as far as Lokiyet, if she could just get down the dock and get aboard, counting on Thule's usual inefficiency—
Crew came and went all the time till board-call, a body forgot things, somebody had to go back and check with the ship's purser: and a ship had no particular wish to have anybody but crew coming and going through its hatch, especially in a skuz place like this, so customs habitually reckoned a ship had a strong motive to police its own entries, and customs didn't watch that until the last moment, at least Thule didn't. There was just that log-off formality if they were taking passengers—
And ships didn't ordinarily let new-hires on till board-call, when there was crew aboard to keep track of them and make sure they behaved.
So it was 1600. She was five hours early.
She walked toward that berth and toward the lights, and she kept thinking all the while that, even if the station mofs were tracing her the long way around, and they had gotten to Rico's via Nan and Ely, and tracked her all the way to Ritterman, they knewshe was spacer, and they didn't need to go that far. She was on the Registry list, Nan and Ely couldn't cover that fact even if they would lie for her and even if Nan didn't tell half as much as she knew: once they were looking for her, the authorities needed only one functional neuron to think about that ship in port and to know where she was going to go.
Dammit, they couldn'tget you for having fingerprints in a damn restroom.
All right, she thought, approaching that ship-ramp, that dark skein of lines and gantry-braces and the maze of pump-housings and buttresses, all right, Bet Yeager, so something goes sour, no good breaking heads, there's enough of them to do what they like. If they grab you, you go with it, you do the innocent act, you get them to call Nan, that's what, Nan's got good sense— Nan might could nudge the situation on your behalf—
She walked up to the working area. She had her foot on the ramp when the voice yelled, "You there!" and she did a moment's flash between running up that ramp and risking a shot in the back and sanely realizing Loki'shatch was going to be shut up there, even if she got that far, no way they left it wide open to dockside cold.