“What?” Bev asked.
“Something that Francis made me think of,” I told her. “Remember back on Margary when we were working that first booth?”
“Yeah.”
“He and Diane had a collection of brocaded vests, and he kept putting them out one at a time.”
“I seem to recall that, but how is it significant?”
“Originally I thought he was displaying them one at a time in order to drive the price up because people would think they were one of a kind or the last one or something. When I asked him about it, he told me that it was just easier to keep track of.”
Beverly raised her eyebrows and looked at me like I had started speaking in tongues.
“Seeing him just now reminded me of that. I was attributing more thought to something that was just convenience. In hindsight I’d over thought the situation and missed the obvious thing.”
“Okay…” Bev gave me a strange look. “And this relates to what?”
“Our little changeling in there.” I motioned toward Sarah.
Bev pondered that for a tick. “And what’s the obvious thing?”
“Something happened over night to convince her to trust us.”
“You base this on…?” she prompted.
“The hair.”
“You are one strange man, Ishmael Wang. Hair?”
Just then, Sarah walked by the open galley door and I saw Bev’s eyes flick over toward the movement. “Oh,” she said as she looked back at me with a speculative glint in her eye.
I shrugged. “Either she trusts us or she’s testing us.”
“I wonder what happened overnight,” Bev pondered.
“I don’t know, but it might be as simple as waking up fed, rested, clean, dry, and safe.”
Bev wrinkled her nose at that. “Kinda simplistic, but I suppose.”
“You probably don’t remember because you’ve been aboard so long, you ole space-dog, but my memories are still fresh. When I came aboard, the only time I felt afraid was meeting Mr. Maxwell for the first time. My first pullout and first jump were a little nerve wracking, but I don’t know if I’d call what I felt as fearful. Despite all the unknowns, I’ve always felt safe aboard.”
There was a little pause then I added softly, “Trust
Bev gave a little chuckle. “Indeed, and if Sarah keeps making biscuits like these, I’m going to need to work out more.”
I finished the last of my omelet and looked at the chrono. “Speaking of which, I didn’t get my laps in last night, and I’ve got a stan before I have to report for duty in environmental. If you’ll excuse me?”
She nodded and waved. “Have fun.”
It felt good to let everything all go while I ran. Of course, I already felt a lot better to begin with. Sitting with Brill for just those few ticks and getting a kind of overview of what I could expect had gone a long way to assuaging my concerns. Seeing Sarah already beginning to fit in, helped as well. I was angry that somebody could have done something to make her act as she did, and I was able to channel some of that energy while I pounded out some distance around the track. Whatever had happened was back on St. Cloud so distance would help her as well.
I cut my run short, and made another mental note not to run so soon after eating. I found Biddy, Francis, and Rhon in the sauna when I got in there. They were almost giddy over the success of the co-op. “So, do we have a rough idea of the final numbers?” I asked them.
“Commissions and fees brought in something around four hundred creds,” Biddy said. “I’ll get the exact figures later.”
I sat down hard on the bench. “How can that be?”
Francis said, “We had almost twenty of the crew selling in the booth at one time or another. Most of them broke a kilocred so they paid the ten credit cap.”
Rhon chimed in with, “The commission on consignments made up the rest. There was not all that much on consignment, really, but it still amounted to more than kilocred.”
I gave a low whistle. “So the splits would be something like two hundred for the co-op and fifty for each of the managers?”
Biddy nodded. “Something like that. We need to account for the booth and table rental, so we’ll be getting our tablets together later today.”
Rhon said, “Pip has a way to get us sync’d up so we’ll have a running total from day to day in Dunsany. It was one of those things we didn’t really think about coming in.”
They all got up and headed out shortly after that, and I sat for a few more ticks, marveling at how well everything was working. It could not last, of course. Something was bound to blow up in our faces and soon no doubt. I chided myself for my own fatalism as I headed for the showers. I wondered just how many creds Pip and I had accrued and how much yarn he had bought. He had made some comment about twenty kilos and I wondered where he had stashed it all.
I grabbed a quick shower before zipping into my shipsuit and heading back to environmental. I got there a few ticks before 08:00 and found Diane, Francis, and Brill waiting. “Okay, people,” Brill said, “we’ve got pullout at 14:00 which gives us six stans for any last port-side maintenance. Recommendations?”
Diane and Francis looked at each other briefly before Francis said, “Sludge. If we do the number one tank now, it’ll be good almost all the way into Dunsany. It’s gonna be due in three days anyway. Number two tank should be good until just before transition.”
Brill nodded. “Diane? Where are we on the scrubbers?”
“We did number three just before docking. Number four is due this week. Then we’ll restart the cycle.”
“So, do we do number four while we’re docked or wait until we’re underway?”
“Six of one, half dozen of the other,” Diane answered after a moment’s thought. “The matrix should be viable for another couple of days.”
“Okay, let’s hold off on the scrubber then and get full use out of that matrix before we trash it. If we all work on the number one tank, it won’t take too long.”
Everything sounded logical to me, but I was not really sure what the meeting was all about. Surely, nothing they said was news to any of them, and I wondered why they spent the time telling each other what they must have all already known. With the meeting out of the way, we headed over toward the number one particulate precipitation tank. “Francis, you’ve got the duty, and Ish is your helper,” Bev said.
“Aye, Chief,” Francis acknowledged and pulled out his tablet to slave it to the watch stander’s station. He started to show me how to do it, but I turned my tablet to show him it was already set. By then we had reached the tank. “We have to close off the intake valves first,” Francis began and then walked me through the whole shutdown procedure. Once the water was diverted to the second tank, he started pumps that emptied the first back into the dirty water reservoir and we waited for the tank to empty.
The rest of the process I had been through before and it went smoothly. We were done by 10:30 and all the loaf pans were in the freezer. It was a messy job and Diane and Brill headed off to clean up while Francis and I finished restarting the number one tank. As we waited, Francis showed me the routine maintenance charts and explained that sometimes we would pull out small filters and replace them. We did one so he could show me and it looked relatively easy to do. It was just a simple matter of yanking out the old one and slapping in a new filter. The trick was knowing where they were and how to get the old one out without breaching the lines. We had our heads together over the ship schematic when the automated system integrity check came up and Francis did the acknowledgment.
“That reminds me,” he said, “after we get cleaned up, we’ll have to make the inspection tour.” Brill and Diane came back in fresh shipsuits and we headed for the engineering san to get cleaned up ourselves. Before we left,
