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By Root 1103 0

to run it for its public relations value. An organisation that made most of its profits from the ruthless exploitation of outer-world mining installations had found that a benign public service image closer to home was useful. The image and its benefits were precisely costed however. The result was a no-frills operation with minimum manning and nothing in the way of ID-linked surveillance. To promise elaborate control and rigorous enforcement with no intention of paying for either would be counterproductive. So for a fugitive, or for anyone trying to escape attention for whatever reason, the satellite was an ideal jumping-off point. It was known that if you could make it to the Hakai OTS you were more or less home free. Of course, home free was a long way from safe.

When he disembarked, Keefer found weightlessness was no more of a problem than it had been when he took the tests as a

youngster.

Other

passengers,

motion-sick

and

uncoordinated, were clinging to the soft plastic clutch rails and waiting miserably for attendants to show up. Keefer ignored them as he floated through the padded luminous tube that linked the spaceplane and the station. Once past he was aware suddenly of how vulnerable he would have been if any of them had been faking. Moaning and vomiting into a sick-set might not be original distraction strategies, but fighters had glanced away for less and lost.

„Hakai Space Services welcomes you to Hakai Transfer, the largest and busiest inter-world transfer facility anywhere,‟

chirruped the disembarkation register as it verified that his ID and ticket matched. It was a formality that the machine would have bypassed with no more than a minor deviation into the briefest of subroutines, but if it could be avoided Keefer preferred not to leave even that much of a trace. The register routinely debited his journey and went on: „For your convenience Mr Lung: times, destinations and the current booking status of all onward flights are displayed in the inner core, which is spun to one-ninth-G for your particular comfort. Travelators for the core are situated in the gold channel.‟

Keefer took the documents from the slot and shoved himself off in the direction indicated by the yellow arrows that glowed below the smooth surface plastic of the outer embarkation concourse.

Unlike the three much larger Big Wheel colonies, which turned on their central axes so that the outer rims provided artificial gravity for the settler populations, the Hakai station was deliberately not spun. More ships could dock more easily that way and, since passengers were only in transit, gravity was not a priority. Fully integrated pseudo-grav drive generators were prohibitively expensive and horrendously difficult to maintain. They were not even considered. There was a stabilising gyroscope in the central core, though, and Hakai‟s PR division had devised the usual added-value fraud by fitting out a small Class A waiting area there and claiming that was its function.

Powered hand-stirrups were available to tow privileged passengers to their exclusive gravity but Keefer had already decided not to use them. They looked as though they would limit his ability to react. Now he decided not to use the Class A waiting area either. He had been unsettled by his carelessness on disembarkation: he didn‟t believe that crap about being home free so why was he behaving as though he did? He thought he had the beginnings of a plan, but for the moment what he needed was to change direction. He grabbed at a rail and pulled himself on towards the wider and busier general access sector.

The GA reminded him of the Lunar Flight Concourse at

„Space Main, only smaller and with extra chaos in the vertical as transfer passengers struggled to cope with weightlessness.

He drifted through the throng to one of the automatic bank tellers ranged around the gently curving wall at various heights from the arbitrarily designated floor. Without using the ID he called up the immediate outward schedule.

There were two people he was sure could have sent that android against