"Apology accepted," she said, her tone somehow managing to carry the message that it was her graciousness, not my worthiness, that was letting me off the hook for my unintended social gaffe. "Has my equipment been loaded aboard yet?"
"Equipment?" I asked, throwing a glance down the gangplank behind her. There was no other luggage there that I could see.
"It's not back there," she said, an edge of strained patience in her voice now.
"I have two Size Triple-F Monshten crates back at the loading ramp. Research equipment for my work on Parex. It's on the ticket."
I looked at my reader again. It was there, all right. "I didn't know, but I'll see to it right away," I promised, stepping back and gesturing her through the hatchway. "In the meantime, may I help you get settled?"
"I'll manage," she said, twitching the carrybag away as I reached for it.
"Where is my seat?"
"The passenger cabin is aft—back that way," I told her. "First hatchway on the left."
"I do know what 'aft' means, thank you," she said shortly, brushing past me and disappearing down the passageway.
I heard her carrybag scraping against the wall as she maneuvered her way down the narrow corridor. But she didn't call for assistance, so I just sealed the outer hatchway and headed straight up to the flight deck.
The cramped room was empty when I arrived, but a glance at the status board showed the cargo hatch was still open. That would be where my copilot would be.
Dropping into the pilot's seat, I keyed the intercom for the cargo bay. "Yo, Bilko," I called. "How's it going?"
"Coming along nicely," First Officer Will Hobson's voice replied. "Got all the power lifters aboard, and it looks like we'll have room for most of that gourmet food, too."
"Well, don't start figuring the profit per cubic meter yet," I warned. "Our passenger has a couple of Triple-F Monshtens on the way."
"She has what?" he demanded, and I could picture his jaw dropping. "What is she, a rock sculptor?"
"Close," I said. "She's a scholar."
"So what, she's shipping her lecture hall to Parex?"
"I haven't the foggiest what she's shipping," I told him. "You're welcome to ask her if you want."
He snorted, a noise that sounded like a bad connection somewhere in the circuit.
"No, thanks," he said. "I had my fill of the scholar class on Barsimeon."
"Let me guess. Card tournament?"
"Dice, actually. And man, those scholars are real poor losers. Wait a minute—here come her Monshtens now. Triple-F's, all right. Let's see... code imprint says it's Class-I electronics. Your basic off-the-shelf consumer stuff."
That did seem odd. "Maybe she's running a holotape business on the side," I suggested.
Bilko snorted again. "Or else she's bringing a podium sound system she could lecture in the Grand Canyon with," he said.
Days afterward, I would remember that line. Right then, though, it just sounded like Bilko's usual brand of smart-mouthing. "What she's got in her luggage is none of our business," I reminded him. "Just get it aboard and secured, all right?"
"If you insist," he said with a theatrical sigh.
"I insist," I said, keying off. Bilko, I had long ago concluded, was privately convinced he'd been switched at birth with some famous stage actor, and he seldom if ever passed up a chance to get in some practice in his might-have-been profession. Personally, I'd always considered those attempts to be a continual reminder of the great contribution the hypothetical baby-switcher's action had made to live theater.
I keyed the intercom to the engine room. "Rhonda?"
"Right here," Engineer Rhonda Blankenship's voice came. "We in pre-flight yet?"
"Just started," I told her. "Engines up and running?"
"Ticking like a fine Swiss clock," she reported. "Or like a mad Bolshevik's bomb. Take your pick."
"You're such a joy and comfort to have around," I growled. She'd been after me for years to get new engines or at least have the old ones extensively overhauled. "You might be interested to know we have a professional passenger aboard. A scholar."
"You're kidding," she said. "What in space is a scholar doing here?"
"Probably a study on the struggles of lower/working-class star transports," I told her. "No, actually, it's probably out of necessity. The Tower said she needed to get to Parex right away, and we were the only scheduled transport for the next nine days."
"What, all the liners running full today?"
"The liners don't take Monshten Triple-Fs as check-on luggage," I said. "And don't ask me what's in them, because I don't know."
"I wasn't going to," she assured me. "If they look at all interesting, Bilko will figure out a way into them."
"He'd better not even think it," I warned. As far as I knew, Bilko had never actually stolen anything from any of our cargoes, but one of these days that insatiable curiosity of his was going to skate him over the edge.
"If he asks, I'll tell him you said so," Rhonda promised.
"If he asks, it'll be a first," I growled. "You just concentrate on getting us into space without popping any more preburn sparkles than you have to, OK?
Sending a middle-aged scholar screaming to the lifepods wouldn't be good for business."
"At our end of the food chain, I doubt anyone would even notice," she said dryly. "But if you insist, OK."
I keyed off, and spent the next few minutes running various pre-flight checks.
And finding ways to stall off the inevitable moment when I'd have to head back and talk to our musicmaster, Jimmy Chamala, about the details of our jump to Parex.
It wasn't that I didn't like the kid. Not really. It was just that he was a kid, barely past his nineteenth birthday, and as such was inevitably full of the half-brained ideas and underbaked worldly wisdom that had irritated me even when I was a teenager myself. Add to that the fact that the musicmaster was the single most indispensable person aboard the Sergei Rock—and we all knew it—and you had a recipe for cocky arrogance that would practically find its own way to the oven.
To be fair, Jimmy tried. And to be even more fair, I probably didn't try hard enough. But even with him trying not to spout nonsense, and me trying not to point out what nonsense it was, we still had a knack for rubbing each other the wrong way.
Fortunately, by the time I finished the pre-flight—thereby running out of delaying tactics—Bilko called to say that the cargo was aboard and the hold secured. I called the Tower, found that our efficiency had gotten us bumped to three-down in the lift list, and gave the general strap-in order. Once we were in space, there would be plenty of time to go see Jimmy.
We lifted to orbit—without popping even a single preburn sparkle, amazingly enough—dropped the booster for the port tuggers to retrieve, and headed for deep space.
And now, unfortunately, it was time to go see Jimmy.
"Double-check that we're on the Parex vector," I told Bilko, maneuvering carefully past the banks of controls and status lights in the slightly disorienting effect of the false-grav. The fancier freighters with their variable-volume speakers and delimitation plates could handle some limited post-wrap steering, but we had to be already running in the direction we wanted to go. "I'll see if Jimmy's ready yet."
"Right-o," Bilko said, already busy at his board. "Be sure to remind him we're running heavy today. Probably need at least a Green, maybe even a Blue."
"Right."
I headed down the corridor past the passenger cabin, noting the closed hatchway and wondering if our esteemed scholar might be having a touch of mal de faux-g.