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arrive.”
    “We know.”
    “The family units are much larger and, honestly, far superior in terms of comfort and entertainment purposes. The general housing mods are pretty much your beds, some public showers and a cafeteria. There’s no comparison to family housing. To prison, maybe, but not to family housing. And signing you off on a corporate mod or a suite or anything like that is simply out of the question, so if that’s what you were hoping…”
    “General housing works just fine if we’re together.”
    Fisch tapped his stylus against the top of his reader and glanced at Nicci. “Miss Bierce?”
    Nicci stepped back, holding her case in front of her like a shield against his attention. “I…I guess. I don’t know. Amber?”
    “Please,” she said.
    “All right,” said Fisch, in that rising, sighing, I-wash-my-hands-of-this way that people use when they think you’re making, if not the biggest mistake of your life, at least the one people will be bringing up for the next ten years to embarrass you. “Scott, come over here, please. Gen-Pop hasn’t been boarded yet, so we’re just going to take two beds in the women’s dorm and bump them up to family housing, then put the Bierces in their place. See how I did that?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Fisch sighed. “Scott, for God’s sake, relax. Mr. Fisch will do just fine. Did you see what I did?”
    “Yes, um…yeah.”
    “Okay, it’s probably not going to be the last time, so do the best you can with it and try to remember that these people are not the enemy.”
    Scott ’s ears pinked. “Yes, sir. Mr. Fisch.”
    “Good. I’ll take over here for a bit. Why don’t you help these ladies with their cases and get them settled in their beds?”
    Pink deepened into red. “Um…sure. I could do that. I don’t mind.” He turned stiffly to Amber, hesitated, and then turned away and took Nicci’s things.
    She could have let it go. She should have let it go.
    Amber cleared her throat and held out her duffel bag.
    Scott did his best to stare her down, but Fisch was standing right there and now he was watching pretty closely too. He took the strap out of Amber’s outstretched hand and slung it over his shoulder with as much dignity as such a menial task allowed. He started walking, his boots clicking firmly along the grey stripe on the floor like it was a tightrope over lava.
    “He looks mad,” whispered Nicci, following close behind Amber as they moved out of the intake line, away from the rumbling, stuffy excitement of a thousand nervous families and into the largely empty corridor leading to the general housing mods. “I don’t think he likes you very much.”
    “He doesn’t have to like me,” Amber told her, talking low but making no real effort to be inaudible. She didn’t care if Crewman Everly Scott heard this or not. “There’s going to be fifty thousand people and an alien planet to entertain us where we’re going. We’re never going to see each other again.”
    Scott did not reply or give any indication that he’d even heard them. He brought them into the empty, echoing, half-lit elevator bay and over to the lift marked with an A. Between the gunmetal-grey paint and the stark stenciled lettering, everything looked very much like a military operation. Cold. Authoritative. Menacing.
    The lift was big enough for fifty people, according to the capacity rating posted above its utilitarian doors. The sound of three people breathing was very loud. They went up just one level and Nicci was clinging before the doors dinged open.
    The first two doors on the first left-hand hall were theirs. WA-0001 and WA-0003. They opened at a swipe of their keycards on what indeed appeared to be a broom closet: narrow enough to touch both walls at once while keeping her elbows bent, just deep enough to accommodate the Sleeper, with a door she had to duck through and a ceiling that did not allow for jump rope.
    Crewman Scott dropped Amber’s duffel and went inside to