Chandris kept quiet, fighting back the awful temptation to turn around and pull the little puff-head's face off by the roots. One of the girls whispered something else, eliciting another mass giggle, and the conversation resumed where it had left off. With Chandris pointedly excluded.

She stayed in the room another half hour, pretending to arrange and rearrange her meager wardrobe in her locker and enduring the snide comments not quite directed her direction... and by the time she left, she had it down pat. All of it: every repetitious bit of slangy, every silly gesture, every bad joke, every word of gossip and school talk and clothes talk.

Everything that would let her pass herself off as one of them.

For a while she just wandered, poking around the edges of her section's public areas—dining rooms, lounges, recreation rooms and the like—and just generally getting a feel for the ship. The corridors themselves were pretty well deserted, most of the passengers who were out and about seated in the lounges getting a head start on their socializing. The delicate aromas of alcohol and other traditional reeks tugged at her, and more than once she was sorely tempted to join in and put off her exploring until morning. It wasn't like she was short on time—they'd told her when she bought the ticket that it would take the Xirrus six or seven days to get to Lorelei.

But she resisted the temptation. Long experience had taught her that mass confusion was the best cover for scoring tracks; and the day when twelve shuttles ungorged themselves of new passengers was probably going to be as confused as things got up here.