Rimrunners by C. J. Cherryh Page A

a moment, but he grabbed her by the collar and hauled her to
    her feet. "Come on, come on," he said. "We got a narrow window here."
    "I'm walking," she protested, trying to, on the narrow plastic mat along the
    edge of the burn-deck—doors to the right, the main-deck a wall at their left,
    lights on the right-hand wall. The hard push they were under kept buckling her
    knees and making her vision come and go. Well more than one, maybe most of two
    G's, she thought. That was most of the problem with her head and her legs. Or
    the bashing against the wall had rattled her brain more than she'd thought.
    "God—"
    Black skeins of webbing hung in front of them, around the curve. Crew
    safety-area, hammocks up and down it, empty black-mesh bundles strung vertically
    along the left-hand wall. She limped ahead, walking more on her own now, just
    sore from the G-stress and the cold, through the safety-area, curtain of
    hammocks giving way into a rec-hall, crew members sitting on a low
    main-deck/burn-deck bench along the wall, where the walkway mat spread out wide,
    clear up to the swing-section galley. Sandwiches and drinks. Food-smell hit her
    stomach hard, she wasn't sure whether it was good or bad.
    A handful of crew stood up to look at her, not in any wise friendly.
    "This is Yeager," the man holding her said, and turned her loose and said, "Good
    luck, Yeager."
    She stood there, just managed to stay on her feet for a few breaths, dizzy in
    the G-stress, dizzy in the sudden realization they were turning her loose, that
    they had bought the story, everything—
    She had a chance, then—fair chance, exactly that, exactly the way you got when
    you got swept up into the Fleet, volunteer or otherwise. You were the new skut
    in the 'decks, you got the rough side of things, and you learned the way to live
    or you died, end of it, right there.
    Good luck, Yeager.
    "What ship?" a woman asked from the bench, while she stood there in front of
    everybody, maybe thirty, forty crew, varied as the Fleet was varied, a dozen
    shades, most of them looking at her as if she was on the menu.
    "Ernestine."
    "Why'd you leave her?"
    "I was a hire-on. They got a mechanical, couldn't take me further."
    "You any good?" a man asked, one of the ones standing.
    "Damn good."
    Any way you want to take it, man.
    Long silence, then. While her knees shook. She set her jaw and stared at them
    with sweat cold on her face.
    "You about missed board-call," a second man said.
    "Had a problem."
    Another long pause. "Makings on the counter," another man said, from further
    down the bench, and made an offhand gesture toward the galley. "You want
    anything you better get it now."
    "Thanks," she said.
    Permission to help herself, then. Handcuffs and all. She walked on to the
    counter, did an instant soup out of the hot-water tap, got a packet of crackers;
    she came and sat down at the end of the bench where there was a little room, and
    drank her soup, deciding finally she was hungry and that food was what her upset
    stomach needed. Her hands were still shaking. The salt stung where her teeth had
    cracked shut on the inside of her cheek. The man next to her seemed less than
    glad of her being there; he was no temptation to conversation, which was all
    right, she had no interest in talking right now: the soup was uncertain enough
    on her stomach; and she phased out, staring at the detail of the tiles, not
    interested in advance planning at all. Her situation could be hell and away
    worse. And all the planning she could do now had the shape of memories she had
    just as soon keep far, far to the back of her mind.
    A fool kid had volunteered herself onto Africa's deck, volunteered because
    Africa was going to take what they wanted from that refinery ship at Pan-paris,
    anyway, which was always the young ones, and that was her. Better choose, she
    had thought then, because that way you were a volunteer and that was points on
    your record; and because she hated her life and hated