The emigrants cry and loose snot over the soil. The recorder-drone, a ball of steel, steers through the crowd, taking care to capture what rolls off their faces. It pans downward to other expelled viscosities and it takes in the discolorations where some are sitting, where they rub their legs and feet with balms.

A comment flashes across the steward's visor. It says, "This is the wettest this sector of the world-surface has been in a time." Several hundred viewers endorse the comment with laughing emoticons, and the viewer count is rising. The steward replasters her smile.

"Congratulations everyone—"

Her cart is missing a wheel, leaning to one side when wind blows up, but she keeps it balanced on her hip. She exhales and waits. The drone isn't finished, and it has weaved itself into the far-backedness of the crowd. The breeze tosses grit and clay. Eventually, the drone stops at a wide-shot. She flicks a switch. "Activate megaphone—"

Feedback screeches; the steward cowers and covers her ears. The crowd pushes themselves over one another. The camera captures this. The portrait of the video is in the left corner of the steward's visor, and she rises, straightening herself before running her hands down the creases of her uniform. The screech echoes, even after she cuts the microphone. "Sick fucks," she says, and the megaphone captures the expletive, then censors the word from the viewers; the crowd hears. The steward replasters her smile. The feedback stops.

"Congratulations, residents of Earth. I am Alice, your chief and guide of Station 69's 33rd Steward Division. Any questions before I take you to space?"

Awe to paperwork—symbols fill the visor. Alice points up, and the heads in the crowd look the way. Where the clouds form a canvas, there is a torn hole, and the pale of it curls around the tear like lifting linen. When they look back down, the guidance display system puts each of their faces inside a browned square. A percentage bar is within each of those squares, but most stop at fifty.

"I said, any questions?" Her hands go beneath her chin and within the visor. Sweat drips down her wrist, then off her elbows.

She shields her eyes with her hands, scanning for those who raise their own, heaved with dirt, and faces which should not be here—the stowaways. The system, however, fails—dust clears, but even then, the symbols on the visor dissolve into the sun's glare. Light bounces off terrain that is bleached and featureless. All else real and tangible is blonded by the glare, blinding more than were one without sight.

Alice pulls a wire. "Request to use the drone to run scans?"

A red banner flashes. The request is denied by the conductor. The livestream is higher on the priority list than the potential profit a stowaway brings.

She yanks another wire. "All stewards, greet-scan protocol is in effect. If you find anyone not on the registrar's list, report the stowaway to me, the Chamberlain, or our assistants immediately—"

"I have a question!"

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She looks around, then points at one of the hands. "Yes?"

"This side!"

She twists her body leftward, still pointing.

Someone says, "You all said there would be medicine—"

"Ah!" She nods and reaches into her cart with the missing wheel. She slides the lid back until the lock clicks. There's a pile of containers. She rattles one in the air. "Tiny pills," she says. "Motion sickness aids, immune system, and blood pressure regulators."

Another hand rises. "That's it?"

She shakes them some more, frowning. "Blood circulatory stabilizers and radioprotective supplements for our ascent. Something for the altitude headaches and muscle-bone atrophy preventatives."

More hands. "Water, what about water?" There is no telling where the voice came from. It can be assumed it is the voice of the dust itself.

"Water!"

"Alright!" Alice raises her hands up. Her gaze sweeps the crowd. More voices mingle with the wind and the dirt. She raises her hands until her shoulders pop, then lowers until she touches the metal she stands on, and the crowd quiets.

"Let me nip it all in the bud: Don't chew the pills, wash them down with water. Before you enter the shower, there is a water faucet which will spray water in your mouth so you can swallow your pills. Clean water is in each cabin which you will enter after your shower. Again, the water is free, and again, the water is free."

Still hands.

"The medicine is brewed under our own patents, made by the brightest minds of the Milky Way. You don't have to pay, you're employees, you have healthcare—we invest in you." She pauses. "And have gifted you all extensions on your copay due date. But! Missing organs, cures, and body modifications? We only offer basic procedures aboard the elevator. But if you survive—" She pauses again. "When you reach the station, you can request any procedure imaginable. We grow our own organs, bio and mechanical."

She takes a breath. Fewer, but still, a hand.

"Don't drink the shower water."

And the hand folds into the mass. No hands are up. No more hands are in the air. Alice gives another smile. There is a sheen over her body, and her chest rises high when she breathes. She pulls the rear of her uniform from its tuck where it sags with sweat. She wipes the small of her back. Another hand in the crowd rises.

"Good! No more questions. Next up—"

Technicians sprint behind. She catches her cart before their rumble rolls it down the gangway. The last tech in the line stops in front of her, face obscured by its helmet which shows her a reflection of herself. It pulls its microphone-wire. Static crackles from tech's voice box. Dialogue scrolls across Alice's visor. She nods. She glances at the crowd and a murmur ripples, but it doesn't reach a riotous decibel.

"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I got it. Now go on."

The tech runs off, rejoining the squad of others. Alice raises her hands, with what joy she can muster, with the joy that protocol incentivizes, she says, "We're overbooked!"

She smiles. The megaphone echoes the sentiment. The words skip across the pan. And a mother's hand enters a child's. And a lover enters another's. And a brother joins a found-brother's, though their blood is not shared, this journey was, this fear was.