It was worth a try, anyway. Keeping close to the wall, trying to watch all the workers at once, she started forward.

"You, there—miss?"

Chandris's heart skipped a beat; but her face was all innocence as she turned around to face the man walking toward her. About forty, she estimated his age, with an open, unsuspicious kind of face.

"Yes?" she said.

"Sorry, miss, but passengers aren't allowed in here," he said. "This part of the ship is for crewers only."

"Oh," Chandris said, letting her face fall a little. Not the kind of man who'd accept a sexual advance, she decided, at least not from a sixteen-year-old girl. But he might fall for the right mix of kid sister and eager student. "I'm sorry," she said, face and voice in her newly acquired middle-class college student role. "I just thought that—well, you see, I'm going to be studying catalytic nuclear drive in college and—" she waved at the room with a self-conscious shrug—"well, I just wanted to see what it was like in here."

Dead center score. His eyes widened, just noticeably, and when he spoke there was a new admiration in his voice. "You're kidding. Really? Which college are you going to?"

"Ahanne University on Lorelei," she told him, watching his face closely. His forehead seemed on the edge of wrinkling—"At least to start with," she added before he could say anything. "I'm hoping to transfer somewhere else after a couple of years."

"I'd hope so," he said with a little snort. "Ahanne's starship engineering program isn't worth beansprouts. You'll want to do your last two years at either Lanslant University or else Dar Korrati on Balmoral."

"I tried to get into Dar Korrati," Chandris said. "But they said the only scholarships they had left were for transfer students with high enough grades." She gazed into his face for a split second, then looked down, letting her shoulders sag slightly. "It's kind of scary," she confessed.