"Hands to landing stations! Hands to landing stations!" a clamorous voice brayed over the blower. "All hands to landing stations!"
Brim glimpsed an unmistakable cityscape as he raced past a viewport. At the same moment a Helmsman ten decks overhead activated the big ship's lift modifiers and skewed her gravity gradient forward. Brim understood all too well what was about to result, but there was nothing he could do save brace for the inevitable, which followed immediately. A mighty gravitron flux, racing like an invisible piston through the corridor, sent him sprawling along the metal deck, then dashing his head into a bulkhead in a sudden storm of swirling lights. Abruptly, everything went black.
He awoke to someone tugging painfully on his arm—an IGL officer? His eyes were too blurred to be sure.
"Wake up, you xaxtdamned lazy beggar," the wobbly apparition demanded in a deep voice. "Thank your lucky stars that little evening nap of yours didn't get you killed when we made landfall! Now off to your duty post on the double—understand?"
Still bewildered from the terrific blow, Brim dumbly struggled to his feet and floundered along the hallway, holding his aching head with both hands. It felt as if his brains had been pounded by a meteor.
"And Menial," the man called after him, "try to be a little cleaner about yourself in the future. You smell like a sack of garbage!"
Brim clamped his mouth shut and stumbled along the hall. He had, he reminded himself for the ten thousandth time, signed up for the job of his own free will. And in truth, the constant baggage organizing that occupied much of his first two days out was good, honest work. In fact, he found it almost enjoyable. But when all the million and one traveling cases were at last sorted and properly stowed, the officers wasted little time in appointing him to the ship's monster galley as a Slops Mate. After that, he spent nearly every waking metacycle contemplating garbage of every species, vintage, and stench—often while he was knee deep in it. The word intolerable couldn't even half describe the remainder of his passage.
And now, it was reasonably clear why there was always a shortage of Slops Mates. The poor devils either slipped on the rancid grease that perpetually coated the slops ramp, thereby joining the very garbage they were processing, or they were simply dashed to flinderation when they couldn't reach safety during takeoffs or landings.
He frowned as he passed another viewport. Outside, past the colossal overhang of Prosperous's hull, he could see the winking early-evening lights of Atalanta—a city he had once helped save. His eyes followed the great upsweep of City Mount Hill as it became one with the darkening sky. And even in the failing light, after a lapse of more than two years, scars from the great battle waged above the city were easily visible, as were countless construction sites. Everywhere he looked, builders' derricks intruded on the skyline.
Brim nodded to himself. There was no putting it off any longer. With all that construction, there simply had to be job openings. A lot of them. And no matter what sort of work they called for, the worst would—by definition—be a lot more desirable than cleaning garbage chutes. He shrugged. There was really no decision. He'd made up his mind the first day he pulled slops duty.
Glancing over his shoulder, he checked to make certain the corridor was empty, then turned and continued on his original course to the menials' compartment. A plan was already beginning to form in his mind—one that had served him well in the Great War when he was trapped aboard a Leaguer ship.
The grimy chamber where Brim slept was nearly empty when he arrived, but even though most of the hard-used menials who bunked there were now at their stations, it still reeked of overworked, underwashed bodies. Quickly stripping to the skin, he donned the shabby clothing he'd worn the day of his departure. Over this, he pulled the only clean set of IGL work togs he possessed. Then, rumpling his privacy blanket as if he had merely relinquished the recliner to report for duty, he hurried off toward the baggage holds.
On his way, he made one hasty stop, in a compartment marked baggage supervisors only. Boldly entering the restricted office unit, he strode past four IGL officers—three women and a man—seated in front of a situation terminal that was clearly tuned to one of Atalanta's seamier broadcast stations. None so much as bothered to look up as he made his way across the room to a rack of logic scribers: the same kind of portable writing board carried by everyone in the Universe who ever took an inventory or made a survey. Selecting a battered-looking veteran of what must have been hundreds of transgalactic journeys, he quickly erased its contents, then exited the room—again without eliciting any reaction from its "legal" occupants—and continued along the corridor at a trot.
When he arrived at the hatch to baggage hold number four, his assigned duty station, Brim carefully peered around the coaming, waited until the deck was clear of IGL supervisors, then stole into the maze of lofty chutes that held traveling cases to be unloaded. Selecting a large, expensive-looking grip at random, he hefted it to the floor and activated its "follower" unit, recording the registration number on a "Personal Delivery" form that he'd called up from his scriber's memory. Then, with the grip bobbing along at his heels, he signed the scriber with a flourish— Peter Mason, a name he'd drawn from some distant recess of his mind—and strode out across the main floor of the baggage room as if the orders he'd just drawn up and authenticated were real.
Before he arrived at the heavily guarded personnel exit, Brim was interrogated by no less than five suspicious IGL officials. Presentation of the scriber alone was enough to get him past the first four—none of them even bothered to read it.
The fifth, however—a two-striper—was a different matter entirely. He not only took the scriber from Brim's hands, he read it carefully, frowning when he came to the signature section, clearly trying to remember someone on the IGL staff with the name of Mason. "Who is this Peter Mason, Menial?" he demanded, his narrow face wearing a look of haughty suspicion. He was a well-cared-for-man in his sixties, but his red hair was dark as any twenty-year-old's. He also wore a large CIGA ring encrusted with gaudy stones.
Brim felt his brow break out in perspiration while the officer studied his forged scriber. Could it be that Peter Mason was a real name? "I don't rightly know, sir," he said, deciding hastily to play on IGL's predilection for rank consciousness. "When I saw the four stripes on his cuff, I thought I'd better do what he said. He wanted this grip delivered in person to the terminal, an' I wasn't about to ask any questions...."
"Four stripes, you say?"
"Aye, sir," Brim affirmed, "I don't rightly know much about IGL ranks, but I sure didn't want to fool with the likes of him, if you get my drift, sir. He looked like a tough one, he did...."
"I see," the man said while a frown formed on his face. He considered for a moment more—in which Brim sternly reminded himself to breathe—then handed over the scriber. "Well, er, off you go, then, Menial," he ordered reluctantly, "and don't let me catch you loitering on your way back."
"Aye, sir," Brim said, knuckling his forehead and starting down the corridor at a run, the grip careening after him at full clip. "You won't find me wastin' time on this ship, ever—an' you can believe it, sir," he called over his shoulder. Then he scampered down a companionway taking the treads two at a time.