Once the ship was docked, Fern linked our wrist comms; we'd have a direct, encrypted link which didn't go through the station network; we'd need that later, after I was interrogated and made my, uh, "escape." We were funneled to the decontamination chamber and a violet mist surrounded us. We stood there and waited for it to kill all of our space germs, or whatever. When the blaring klaxon indicating that we were clean came on, I popped the emella nuts Fern had synthed into my mouth and munched on them, already anticipating the queasiness. For shiz, I was glad my allergy was only mild. After the violet fog thinned, animated arrows lit up on the walls and directed us to the customs queues.

They were ready and waiting for us, before we could get to the queues. Fern and I were separated. We hadn’t expected that. My heart quickened. A couple of agents escorted me to a dimly-lit room away from the throngs of travelers. One stayed in the room and the other took my bag from me and shut the door. I was hella glad I'd kept the fake ident badge in my underwear; if they'd found that and checked it against the name I had registered from the flight, I'd be sunk.

The agent was a burly dude in a beige button-up shirt and black slacks. He led me to a chair in front of a desk that was stacked halfway up his chest with data pads. He could barely see me through a crack in the stacks. He gave me a hard look and then picked up a data pad.

"Good day. I'm Agent Browne," he said.

"Good day, sir."

"Well, Ms.―" he tapped on the pad. "Ms. Agven, it says here you're an unregistered research assistant?"

"I'm a freelancer, so I wouldn't be in your database," I began, but he waved me away.

"Right, right. And that wouldn't be much of a problem, except your last-minute approval for the―” he consulted his data pad, “—Angstrom project was denied.” He yawned. Looking up at me, he continued, "Excuse me, I haven't had my coffee yet."

I grinned. "Oh, I know how that goes, sir."

He smiled. It looked like he'd missed a few spots shaving and the buttons under his collar were fastened unevenly.

The agent lowered his voice. "Ms. Agven, to be honest with you, I don't know why the professors make such a fuss over these formalities, and if I had it my way, we'd not bother with all of this."

He let out a surprising chuckle. "I mean, c'mon, do they think you're going to sneak on to a research station? Why would anyone want to do that?"

I held up my hands, my eyes widening in bafflement at the sheer idea of such a thing.

He set down the pad and tapped a finger against his lips. "I suppose you could be involved in inter-Academy espionage," he mused. His eyes snapped back to mine, voice abruptly all serious. "You're not, are you?"

"No sir," I said. "I'm just here to help Dr. Angstrom with her research project.”

"Of course, of course. Why else―"

He was interrupted as the other agent opened the door with my bag in hand.

"It's clean; just standard issue personnel gear," he said, tossing it to Agent Browne. And the other agent left and shut the door behind him.

He picked up my bag and looked me in the eye. "Is that correct? Just standard personnel gear? No blackmail material for one of the profs?" he asked grimly.

"J-just a change of clothes, sir; Dr. Angstrom and I were unsure if we'd be on the station for one day or two, given the uncertainty of our research."

The other agent obvy hadn't examined it too closely; the outfit was smart fabric, designed to be convertible between research assistant and professor specs. It was in RA mode now since that's what they thought I was.

He nodded slowly, standing up from behind his desk. His shirt was partially tucked in. He handed the bag back to me. "Makes sense. Well," he sighed, "as much as I think this is a waste of both of our time, regs are regs, and I'll have to―"

Uh oh. My stomach started gurgling. Oh man, this was not gonna be fun.

"A little bit of space sickness?" he asked. His giant moth-like eyebrows furrowed in concern.

I grabbed my belly and doubled over.

The bile was already rising in my throat, so my words came out all scratchy and husky. It was hard to feign surprise while feeling so gross. "I- I guess?"

I peered up at him, trying to hold on. I had a rush of frig-no-I-don't-want-to-puke. He gave me a concerned look. "Just take a few deep breaths, and it'll pass. It's perfectly normal after hyperspace travel. You'll be ok in a minute or so. I've almost never seen anyone actually―"

Hurl, is what he was going to say, and he might have said it. But my stomach was too busy heaving for me to notice.

I felt the room closing in on me, and what little light it had went out. My stomach decided that was the time to evacuate what little food had been there.