“A game, Mr. Carstairs. Use your research database and propose for me one container’s worth of mixed cargo. Assuming an empty container is available in Gugara, what would you put in it to take to Margary?”
Pip slid into his calculating mode. “Budget parameters, sar?”
Mr. Maxwell considered for a moment. “Give me minimum required investment and maximum potential profit.”
“So cheapest full container and maximum probable return, sar?”
“Precisely, Mr. Carstairs.”
“Aye, aye, sar. Let me see what I can do. I’ll have a preliminary by midwatch. But our best information will be at the jump point beacon. We can adjust at that point, if that would be acceptable, sar?”
“Quite acceptable, Mr. Carstairs. Thank you. One more thing, gentlemen.” Mr. Maxwell swiveled his steely gaze in my direction. “Mr. Wang, please see to it that Mr. Carstairs passes the cargo handler exam in six days.”
“Aye, aye, sar,” I answered briskly. There didn’t seem to be an option.
Cookie had that funny look on his face. The one he gets when he’s trying not to laugh. Pip just looked like he was choking on something.
Mr. Maxwell nodded one last time and left the galley.
I turned to Cookie. “Is it just me or does he seem to be spending a lot of time here lately?”
Chapter 14
Darbat System
2351-October-26
After Mr. Maxwell’s little visit, we finished cleaning up the lunch service. Pip started the cargo analysis and I went back to studying for my engineman exam. I knew when he finished his empty-container exercise for Mr. Maxwell, he’d be leaning on me to get him ready for the cargo test. Having been through that material several times, the cargo exam didn’t worry me, but the engineering test did. I’d spent so much time with the instructional materials, I found I could practically recreate them from memory. The practice exams went pretty well, but I still missed about five percent of the answers. I hoped that would be good enough.
At 16:00 I headed back to the galley to help set up the dinner service. Pip and Cookie looked up from the portable when I came in, and stowed it when they realized the time. Dinner included some of the new stores and it went pretty well. The crew appreciated the variety in the menu and it didn’t hurt that Cookie had a great granapple crisp with vanilla ice cream for dessert.
While we were serving, I nudged Pip. “So? How’s it going?”
He shrugged. “Okay, I think. I should be done with another stan’s work, but I’ll be ready for a work out and a sauna.”
“Oh yeah, I’m with ya there. Tell you what. You finish your container and I’ll clean up tonight. With any luck, we’ll be done at the same time and we can hit the gym.”
He shot me a grateful look. “Thanks, Ish. That’ll help. I was a bit ambitious when I promised the results by midwatch. That’s a lot of mass. And there’s one other little distraction.”
“What’s that?”
“The manifest shows an empty container on the Gugara to Margary run.”
I froze in place for a moment and shot him a quick look. “Will he…?”
Pip shrugged. “Dunno.”
When we secured the dinner mess, I shooed Pip off to the computer and started tearing down the serving line and making the galley shipshape. The process was so familiar by then that I could do it on autopilot. I found my mind wandering back to the cargo and engineering exams. I’m a good test-taker, but this new context gave me more than a few butterflies. Before long I found myself chanting, “Filter the water and scrub the air down,” under my breath. It was one of those things that once you get it in your head, you can’t get it out. I found myself sweeping to the rhythm. It drove me crazy but I couldn’t shake it.
“There!” Pip’s sudden outburst from his corner of the galley startled me.
“Done?” I stowed the broom and looked in his direction.
Pip nodded. “Yup. Now, I need to go work out.” He downloaded his planning files and sent them off to Mr. Maxwell. “Only a twenty percent best case margin projection, but we typically run a twelve to fifteen percent margin. And that’s the least cost filled scenario. The gross margin goes down in the maximum probable return, but the actual profit triples.”
“How does that work?” I asked as he stowed the portable and we headed out of the galley. “How can we make more profit with a lower margin?”
“Easy. Which would you rather have? Ten percent of a hundred creds or one percent of a million?”
I sighed. “Of course. Sometimes my own stupidity astonishes me.”
“Yeah, well, you haven’t failed the cargo handler test twice, either.” He sounded miserable.
“What? You failed the test?”
He nodded, his mouth screwed into a grimace. “Twice.”
“But the content isn’t that hard.”
“For you. I’m not good at tests.”
His bitter words caused a sinking feeling in my stomach, but I didn’t say anything while we changed up and went out into the gym. My mind had finally stopped repeating the doggerel about the filters and scrubbers but had gained a new chant, perhaps better suited to the situation. “I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble…”
Later that evening we got together on the mess deck with our tablets, and I walked him through the cargo handler instructional materials. “But I’ve been through all this.” He pushed the tablet away.
“I know, but you’ve also failed the test.”
“Twice.” He reminded me.
“Okay, twice. So you’re going to go over it again, then take the sample test and we’ll keep doing that until you get it right.”
It took less than two stans to get through the material together. “You don’t seem to be having any trouble with this.”
He shrugged. “It’s not the information. I practically grew up on a cargo deck.”
“Okay, well, let’s do the practice exam and see how it comes out.”
We settled in and I breezed through the test in a few ticks. I’d done them so often, they began to look familiar to me. It approached the level of silliness. When I got to the end, I’d gotten a perfect score again.
Pip, on the other hand, dithered over his tablet, checking, un-checking, and re-checking responses. He appeared to have no idea what he was doing. He finally finished and sighed. He turned his tablet so I could see his score: thirty-five percent.
“But you know this stuff,” I said with dismay.
He nodded miserably. “I just can’t take tests. Something in my brain shuts off as soon as I start anything remotely like a quiz or examination.”
The chronometer clicked over to 23:00 so we headed back to the berthing area and bunked down. The chanting in my head got louder. “I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble. I’m in
The next day went by in a blur. Time was getting short. During our afternoon break, I sat Pip down and watched him take the test again. Once more, he picked, un-picked, and re-picked his responses. There didn’t seem to be any kind of pattern to it. It was almost like he chose them at random. He did better, forty percent, but still not good enough to pass. I thought he might actually have scored better using a random number generator. We both sighed and headed back to the galley to set up for dinner.
After clean up, Pip started to pull out his tablet again, but I stopped him. “Come on, Pip. You need a work out more than you need to beat yourself with that tablet further.”
“But the test is just a few days away.”
I sighed. “I know, but that’s not helping. You know the stuff. It’s the testing itself that’s killing you. More
