A really good look at the expensive outfits wasn't necessary; all she needed this time through was to get the style of uniform worn by servitors in this section. That knowledge in hand, she slipped back through the nearest crewer door and made her way down to the maids' quarters. With the work schedule and cabin assignment information she'd read off the computer, it was simple enough to locate an unoccupied room. One of the general passcodes got her inside, and she began her search.

There were, as she'd expected, several different types of uniforms for the different parts of the ship, and she had to raid a dozen rooms before she found a maid's uniform that was both the right style and the right size. Fifteen minutes later, having changed in a conveniently isolated emergencybattery room, she returned to the upper-class section.

No one gave her a second look as she slipped silently past wandering and chattering passengers; very few gave her even a first look. It was the perfect camouflage, particularly for someone like Chandris, who had played the role so many times before that she had the mental attitude and body language of a servant down cold. Even in operations a lot smaller than a spaceliner, she'd sometimes blended into the identity so well that other workers had totally missed the fact that she was a stranger. On a ship this size, assuming she was careful, they didn't have a hope of fingering her.

She reached one of the empty staterooms without incident and let herself in. The place wasn't as flatout luxurious, somehow, as she'd expected it to be, but it stomped the snot out of her own cramped cabin. More important to her plans at the moment was the fancy computer system built into the entertainment center, a system that should give her access to the ship's public library. Pulling out her pocket knife, she stepped over to it—

And stopped short. "Nurk," she muttered. She'd expected it to be a floating nexus-connect type like the hand-held job she'd used earlier. Instead, it was hard-wired in through the entertainment lines.