Nobody cared about the others.
Feldman's ticket was work-stamped for the _Navaho_, and nobody
questioned his identity. He suffered through the agony of acceleration
on the shuttle up to the orbital station, then was sick as acceleration
stopped. But he was able to control himself enough to follow other
crewmen down a hall of the station toward the _Navaho_. The big ships
never touched a planet, always docking at the stations.
A checker met the crew and reached for their badges. He barely glanced
at them, punched a mark for each on his checkoff sheet, and handed them
back. "Deckmen forward, tubemen to the rear," he ordered. "_Navaho_
blasts in fifteen minutes. Hey, you! You're tubes."
Feldman grunted. He should have expected it. Tubemen had the lowest lot
of all the crew. Between the killing work, the heat of the tubes, and
occasional doses of radiation, their lives weren't worth the metal value
of their tickets.
He began pulling himself clumsily along a shaft, dodging freight the
loaders were tossing from hand to hand. A bag hit his head, drawing
blood, and another caught him in the groin.
"Watch it, bo," a loader yelled at him. "You dent that bag and they'll
brig you. Cantcha see it's got a special courtesy stripe?"
It had a brilliant green stripe, he saw. It also had a name, printed in
block letters that shouted their identity before he could read the
words.
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