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gotten off at Pell; they had not come off the ship. No one of those critical enough to be taken to station hospital matched their descriptions. They could not be impressed by Mallory: Jen had no skills Mallory would need, and Romy—somewhere the records were wrong. He had believed the passenger list, had had to believe it, because there were too many of them that ship’s com could pass direct messages. They had voyaged in silence. Jen and Romy had not gotten off Lila. Had never been there.
    “They were wrong to throw them out in space,” the woman nearest him moaned.   “They didn’t identify them. He’s gone, he’s gone, he must have been on the Hansford”.
    Another man was at the desk again, attempting to check, insisting that Mallory’s id of impressed civilians was a lie; and the operator was patiently running another search, comparing descriptions, negative again.   “He was there,” the man shouted at the operator. “He was on the list and he didn’t get off, and he was there.” The man was crying. Kressich sat numb.   On Griffin, they had read out the passenger list and asked for id’s. Few had had them. People had answered to names which could not possibly be theirs. Some answered to two, to get the rations, if they were not caught at it. He had been afraid then, with a deep and sickly fear; but a lot of people were on the wrong ships, and one of them had then realized the situation on Hansford. He had been sure they were aboard.
    Unless they had gotten worried and gotten off to go look for him. Unless they had done something so miserably, horribly stupid, out of fear, for love.   Tears started down his face. It was not the likes of Jen and Romy who could have gotten onto Hansford, who could have forced their way among men armed with guns and knives and lengths of pipe. He did not reckon them among the dead of that ship. It was rather that they were still on Russell’s Station, where Union ruled now. And he was here; and there was no way back.
    He rose finally, and accepted it He was the first to leave. He went to the quarters which were assigned him, the barracks for single men, who were many of them young, and probably many of them under false id’s, and not the techs and other personnel they were supposed to be. He found a cot unoccupied and gathered up the kit the supervisor provided each man. He bathed a second time… no bathing seemed enough… and walked back among the rows of sleeping, exhausted men, and lay down.
    There was mindwipe for those prisoners who had been high enough to be valuable and opinionated. Jen, he thought, O Jen, and their son, if he were alive… to be reared by a shadow of Jen, who thought the approved thoughts and disputed nothing, liable to Adjustment because she had been his wife. It was not even certain that they would let her keep Romy. There were state nurseries, which turned out Union’s soldiers and workers.
    He thought of suicide. Some had chosen that rather than board the ships for some strange place, a station which was not theirs. That solution was not in his nature. He lay still and stared at the metal ceiling, in the near dark, and survived, which he had done so far, middle-aged and alone and utterly empty.
     
     

Chapter Four
    « ^ »
    Pell: 5/3/52
    The tension set in at the beginning of mainday, the first numb stirrings-forth by the refugees to the emergency kitchens set up on the dock, the first tentative efforts of those with papers and those without to meet with station representatives at the desks and to establish rights of residency, the first awakening to the realities of quarantine.
    “We should have pulled out last shift,” Graff said, reviewing dawn’s messages, “while it was all still quiet.”
    “Would now,” Signy said, “but we can’t risk Pell. If they can’t hold it down, we have to. Call station council and tell them I’m ready to meet with them now.   I’ll go to them. It’s safer than bringing them out on the