The speaker blared. The countdown was beginning.
"Fifteen minutes!" rasped the mechanical voice. "Fifteen minutes to blast-off!"
She took a last look at the planet of her birth and squeezed into the lift. The few remaining passengers pushed in with her. A man in a red waistcoat was commiserating with the woman beside him.
"Don't let the officials get you down," he said. "We'll have to put up with them for the journey. But on New Eden, I hear, the conditions are so good they hardly need any regulations at all."
"It isn't that," sniffed his friend. "It's just that you gave it to me and I was hoping to wear it tonight."
"Perhaps I can buy you something in hydroponics. I had no idea they were so touchy or I'd have had the orchid fumigated."
Bridget felt the scorn of the official for the general public. "If you're going to New Eden, you ought to know we want to keep it that way."
The red waistcoat looked down at her.
"Oh, officialdom without stripes?" he said. "Or are you an old hand? Perhaps you can explain the deal before we get there."