So far she hadn’t seen any faces she knew. And she was happy about that. She didn’t want anyone recognizing her before she reached the broker’s office and shed the crystal.

She stared out the window by her seat, past the ghost images of the other riders reflected in the glass, watching the pewter glitter of the translucent tube walls slip quickly by. Though you could see nothing worth looking at, she was glad of the windows, being uncomfortable hurtling along in a capsule she didn’t control without access to the outside, however illusory such access might be.

After a short while, though, she used the mirroring effect to study the other riders. Innocuous as they looked, this was Marrat’s Market and any of them could be predators or scam artists.

The shuttle had twenty rows of seats, four seats in each row with a narrow central aisle passing between the middle pair. She was sitting on the left side in the first row, and there was no one in the seat beside her. The rest of the capsule was about half full. The others riding with her seemed to be shift workers heading for their jobs, some sleepy, dozing in their seats, some staring at nothing, a few busy with notepads; they were mostly an assortment from the Cousin worlds, though there was also a pair of Tocher femmes chattering in Tochri gutturals and a lanky Lommertoerkan male immersed in whatever it was he was reading off his sheet screen.

A small wiry man sputtered awake, met her eyes in the window mirror before she had time to blank her gaze. He took this for an invitation, grinned at her, and moved up to the seat beside her. “Haven’t seen you before. Me, I’m Exi Exinta, I work at the Nut Tree, it’s a food place over on the Barter Strip. Lots of people who work the AgentNode eat there. Be seeing you?”

She gave him a bovine look, blinking slowly as if she had to take time to process the words. “All right,”.she said finally. Then she turned away to stare out the window again.