Read April 5: A Depth of Understanding for Free Online

an aluminum plate, riveted to the bulkhead, with the model / date / build all stamped in the blanks. The numbers were placed carefully, but still crooked enough you could tell they'd been done with a hand held stamp and hammer, not a machine engraver.
    The vessel was two years older than April. In space ships that was ancient. There was a clean spot on the bulkhead where an older intercom to the flight crew had been removed. The greenish phosphate covering was worn away next to it, where a thousand times a hand had braced there to press the call bar and the holes were filled in by putting new rivets in them. Above that patch was a new intercom with a twenty five centimeter screen and no switches or visible speaker grill, just the tiny circle of a camera lens and an audio jack. It displayed a virtual call button in one corner. The crew left it defaulted to off, not sharing a view of the flight stations.
    There were shiny spots where the anodizing was worn off around the hatch collar, because a hand or a foot always went to one spot coming through the hatch. Recessed in the hatch ribbing was a small stick on white board, with dates and initials for the last time the seal was replaced, or the hinges lubricated and checked for free play.
    About a year ago C.J. had written: Last service – retiring and then after initialing it drew not a smiley face, but a little devil with horns. The three entries after that in a different hand were attributed to D.M. and the center one had a few Japanese characters. April assumed there were more permanent records somewhere, but it was interesting.
    The acceleration couch she returned to had seen better days too. The cushion edge where you slid on and off was slumped and didn't spring back to its full shape. The plastic caps to the arm rests had the texture worn off until it was shiny. Nothing was unserviceable and nothing was dirty, but at a glance you knew it wasn't new, like looking in the door of a ten year old ground car. It also lacked any trace of the distinctive smell of a new ground car or spaceship.
    A group of three men were at the lock, so April sat back in her seat to clear the narrow aisle. It felt weird now, to not have the frame of a Singh acceleration compensator close overhead when on the couch. That made her wonder if Jeff had a timeline to sell them for commercial shuttles. She'd have to ask him.
    The first fellow in the lock was young with close cut hair and dark spex. He was dressed in belted Khaki pants and a golf shirt. He wore Earthie style cross-trainer shoes, rather than the lighter more flexible versions station dwellers would favor. You couldn't see his eye movements, but from how he held his head he was scanning the passenger compartment to the back corners. The fellow behind him was older and not typical. He was skinny with long hair formed in a loose braid with loose bits sticking out all messy. He had bare arms, heavily frowned upon in North America now as well as Tonga and they were covered in bright tattoos, which made them a double social error. The man behind him was a clone of the first.
    "Excuse me, would you please clear this front row? He said to April and Gunny. "I'd like to put my man right by the lock and sit beside him for security purposes."
    "That's why she's in that seat," Gunny informed him. "I'm her security."
    The fellow's mouth scowled, but made a silent sign to the rearmost and they turned and went back outside.
    "Wow, does that mean they aren’t going to fly if he can't sit here?" April asked.
    "Nah, they are going to go ask the carrier to assign seats and force us in the back corner. I'm pretty sure 'first come first served' is a hard set company policy. They will offer to sell them tickets for a later lift if they want to line up early and have the first choice of seats."
    Sure enough, ten minutes later they came back in, carefully didn't look at Gunny and went to the rear of the side opposite, putting their charge in the rear port seat.