Engineman by Eric Brown Page A

at the Swede, who was watching her still - then ripped off the tag and handed it to the woman.
    "Here," she said, "you might as well have this."
    She hurried through the identity check.
    A hover-coach carried them in a long arc across the tarmac to the interface, where it idled in a convoy of wheeled vehicles and hover-trucks passing though the 'face, ball-lightning sparking off their outlines as they made the transition. The coach edged slowly forward.
    Ella watched the passengers seated before her pass though the advancing membrane of the interface. She awaited her turn with the kind of trepidation she had once experienced when awaiting surgery - the awareness that what was about to happen might go wrong, would be painful, but at the same time was necessary. Not many people had actually perished travelling this way, at least not since the early days, but it was the physical sensation of the process that scared Ella, rather than the danger of an accident. She tried to recall the sensation from the last time she'd interfaced, but she found the recollection of pain impossible - which in a way made the anticipation all the harder to bear. All she knew was that it hurt.
    The man in the seat before her braced himself at the approach of the hazy membrane that hung between A-Long-Way-From-Home and Sanctuary. Silver lights outlined him briefly, and then he was on the other side. Ella took a deep breath as the interface hit her. The pain was intense, but mercifully fleeting - though in retrospect it seemed to go on forever. Cruel, invisible hands reached into her body and squeezed her vital organs. Nausea swept through her in a hot wave and she gasped.
    Then she was on Carey's Sanctuary, and the pain was a thing of the past.
    The portal deactivated with a swift rushing sound like a thousand birds taking flight. The sunlight that had poured through the interface was suddenly extinguished, and the blue light of the deactivated 'face washed over the coach as it crossed the spaceport towards the terminal building. A fine rain misted from the overcast sky.
    The terminal was low and shabby. The courier who led them from the coach and into the building was garbed in the green uniform and the black beret of the Danzig Organisation. "All travellers onwards to Mephisto and Jet, continue through to lounge two. Passengers bound for Hennessy's Reach, please take a seat and wait here."
    The majority of travellers continued through to the second lounge. Five others, besides Ella, seated themselves before the rain-spattered viewscreen: three low-ranking soldiers in uniform, an officer with a peaked cap and over-the-top epaulettes, and a businessman with a briefcase. Ella took a seat well away from them, conscious of being the only woman and casual traveller, and stared out at the bleak scene of the 'port.
    Two minutes later the 'face activated, and before she had time to hope that the first world onto which it opened would be the Reach, she recognised the familiar sky-scape of the Rim world. Framed in the exact centre of the portal was the apex of the fiery red giant, like a plasma graphic committed by an incurable romantic. Before the giant primary was an expanse of dark sea, the great Mérida ocean which covered a quarter of the planet's surface. In the foreground was the 'port, a collection of functional terminal buildings and control towers. Ella found herself staring at the low arc of the red giant, at the great loops and geysers of flame erupting from its circumference in majestic slow motion. She recalled her last summer on the Reach, a certain friendship prematurely ended, and experienced a sour-sweet pang of sadness.
    A long convoy of armoured vehicles trundled across the rain-swept tarmac and approached the interface. Before she could remind herself of the repression represented by such a show of force, something elemental within her thrilled to the power, uniformity and synchronised precision of the military convoy. The vehicles rumbled