In the Company of Others by Julie E. Czerneda

fancy remote display pads were sealed-over stitch marks on each wrist. Only low-maintenance gear had endured decades of use—that, or what new devices clever, desperate hands could cobble together. He made himself continue the checks, fighting the emotional overload. Malley’d talked some sense , he had to admit it now, if he couldn’t to Malley’s face—not right away, at least. No one would give him up; he had the choice of tailing it and keeping out of sight until the Earther ship left, or of attempting that long, impossible walk to the docks.
    Smith hadn’t realized what she’d asked of him, or if she had, she played some game he was safer clear of—Malley had the truth of that as well. How’d she think a ’sider could make it to the stern docking ring—the living, breathing heaven to the hell he crouched in now? Was she Earther-blind to the difference when she’d been escorted down to Sammie’s? Surely she’d noticed how the press of people in the corridors increased with every level. Hadn’t she seen for herself the change to a population whose reflex was to crouch to one side to allow others through, and whose eyes never met in more than a courteous slide past, granting one another the only room they could?
    Not the Earther , Pardell thought bitterly. Not with her troops and her Station puppet to clear the way down.
    And without that kind of escort, no way up. No way for him to cross the checkpoints without being counted and discovered. No hidden shortcuts or byways that hadn’t been found and welded shut by now. Station Admin tolerated his kind only as long as they stayed invisible.
    He didn’t have the air to waste debating the extent of Smith’s craziness with himself, Pardell judged, tipping his head to view the display within his helmet. Turning his wrist light back on, he followed its thin wispy beam, playing it over iced black walls until it reflected from faded lettering. Air lock S17. Pardell gave the inner door a gentle pull to test for vacuum. When it shifted grudgingly in his hands, he swung it wide with a practiced heave. There had been an entire series of ’locks in this section, a set for each docked ship: passenger hookups, emerg ’locks, service gates, the huge cargo passages. Since the destruction, they were all supposedly inoperable, either damaged so they couldn’t open—as children, Pardell and his friends used to scare one another with made-up stories about ghosts, trapped inside—or sealed when the ring was abandoned, to protect station integrity.
    Air lock S17 showed traces of its seal: shiny, congealed lumps the cutting torch had failed to melt free clung to the doorframe here and there, looking like some blighted growth on the metal. It was, naturally enough, a capital crime to be caught breaking a station engineer’s seal. Naturally enough, no one bothered to check down here as long as the ring stayed airtight and powered down. S17 had been an emerg ’lock; as such, it was barely large enough to hold three in suits. Cramped quarters, but with a bonus: emerg ’locks had dual systems designed to keep them functional in power failures.
    Or in a failure to provide power , Pardell grumbled to himself, stepping over the sill and reaching back for the inner door. From this side, the door’s scars and blisters were ample evidence entry had been forced from outside the station, not in. Before his time. The mechanism hadn’t been harmed, and he braced both feet against the sill to use his body’s mass to haul the door shut. The oversized mags didn’t help. It took three tries this time, and Pardell felt himself heating up, a maddening bead of moisture winding its slow path down the side of his face. The suit’s faltering conditioning system had the contrary habit of allowing his toes to approach frostbite when he needed warmth, then, without warning, kicking in to hoard every iota