Pip looked up at me, the stricken expression still painted on his face. “I don’t know whether I should cheer or cry.”
I shrugged. “Well, your ideas are getting a good shake out, if nothing else.”
“Yeah, but what if I’m wrong?”
“Look, the ship has seventy-one other containers, right?”
He nodded.
“If this one had stayed empty, how many creds would it earn?”
“None.”
“Worst case is what?”
“None of this stuff sells in Margary and we need to dump it to take on scheduled cargo. That would be a ten kilocred loss.”
“I doubt that. Is that really likely?”
He stopped to think for half a tick before speaking. “No. In fact…” he pulled up another manifest, “we’re scheduled to have two more empty containers when we leave.”
“See. Okay, so then, the worst case is we drag it to St. Cloud. What are your projections there? Will that stuff sell if it doesn’t move on Margary?”
He tapped keys, first on his tablet and then on the portable. He was in zombie mode so I went back to sweeping. Finally he spoke, “Yeah, actually, the market is slightly better on St. Cloud.”
“Okay, so you see, it should be fine, and it’s not all riding on one throw of the dice, either.”
Pip’s color started returning and he stopped hyperventilating as he focused on refining the calculations for St. Cloud. “Okay, you’re right. It’s just that I’d made up my mind that Mr. Maxwell was just testing me and seeing that container showing up full surprised me.”
I nodded in response. “You ready for another shock?”
He looked at me hesitantly. “What?”
“If I were you, I’d start planning what you’d put in those other empties once we land in Margary, because I’ll bet Mr. Maxwell is down here the day after transition to give you that little assignment as well.”
“He wouldn’t,” Pip said, but the color started draining from his face once more.
“Well, maybe not, but you at least better figure out what to reload your container with, assuming it gets emptied in Margary and earns a bit of profit.”
Pip gulped and started hammering on the keys.
Ship board routine settled around us like a comfortable old sweater. The availability of the new stores worked wonders with the daily meals. For the first few days out of Gugara we had fresh greens and fruits. As they began to taper off, we still had an occasional urn of the nutty, rich Sarabanda to break up the monotony of the Arabasti. Cookie ordered a bunch of new canned fruit and he pulled a couple cases out of our trade goods to help me experiment with fruit crisps and cobblers. It was a lot of fun and livened up the luncheon preparation. The crew’s sweet tooth seemed to appreciate the desserts.
Evenings were spent in the gym and sauna. I soon realized that I was in the best physical condition of my life. I spent my afternoon breaks alternating between studying for the steward exam and hanging out in environmental. I really wanted to get my hands dirty with some of the routine activities in that department to see if I’d like them.
One day, about a week out of Gugara, I went down to find them dredging out sludge. The process wasn’t terribly physically difficult. It smelled a bit funky, but nothing like you might expect. All in all it was just messy. The sludge that came from the water treatment plant had been biologically stabilized to the point where it was practically sterile.
As a normal part of processing, the sludge settled into the bottom of the water treatment ponds and even after the water had been pumped out, it was still wet, sticky, and slimy. We used mechanical scoops to load the sludge deposits into shallow metal containers, what the environmental gang called,
One pond yielded about five of these large loaves. The pans were incredibly heavy when wet, but once dry, the sludge cakes had about the same mass and consistency as polyfoam. One person could lift one, but handling it was awkward because of its size and shape. As we were finishing up, Diane told me they would do it one more time before hitting Margary, but on the other pond. I confess it wasn’t as gross as I thought it would be, just grubby. I left them loading the last pans in the dryer when I went to clean up before heading to the galley for the dinner mess.
As I got into the shower, the raspy buzz of the fire alarm went off followed by,
I played the shower quickly over my head and zipped into a fresh shipsuit in less than a tick. In under two, I was trotting into the galley where I found Pip and Cookie working on dinner. Cookie called in and we continued with the preparations. I finally felt like I was getting the hang of it.
Nineteen standays out of Gugara, and two before the jump into Margary, Pip picked up the data beacon and downloaded the current market conditions. He spent almost the next whole day revising and refining his models. The longer he worked, the gloomier he seemed.
When we did the final jump prep, twenty-one standays out of Gugara, he sighed and threw down his stylus rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“Problems?”
“Maybe. The problem is I can’t tell really. It looks like the coffee prices have tanked. The market appears to be saturated with Sarabanda Dark and oddly, the wholesale price of Arabasti, which you can usually get for three creds a bucket is now twenty-two creds. If these prices are correct we can buy Sarabanda for less here than we just paid in Gugara. And there doesn’t appear to be any Arabasti for sale in the whole system. It’s crazy.”
Cookie listened to our conversation and smiled. “I’m glad I laid in extra Arabasti in Darbat, then.”
Pip laughed. “Good point.” He consulted the pantry inventories and said, “Okay, we have sixty-eight full buckets of Arabasti. We paid an average of three creds each. Net on one of the Arabasti would be nineteen creds. We paid an average of eight creds a piece for a hundred and fifty buckets of Sarabanda. Net on the Sarabanda is a loss of three as we can buy it here for five.”
This shocked me. “Wait, you’re telling me we’ll lose money if we sell the Sarabanda in Margary?”
Pip nodded. “Exactly. We’ve got that Sarabanda because we bought it to trade, not drink. How much Arabasti do we need to make St. Cloud?”
I considered the question. “We use about a bucket a day, more or less. How long is the Margary to St. Cloud run?”
Pip pulled up the schedule. “Eight standays to jump, and twenty-eight on the back side. St. Cloud has a weak sun and the orbital is a long way down the well.”
“Five weeks in roundish numbers. And we’re a week out of Margary?”
He nodded. “About that.”
“Call it six weeks. Between the rest of this run, the in port time, and the run to St. Cloud, we need forty-two, make it forty-five just to be safe. If we brew half Sarabanda, which the crew likes just fine, that means we only need twenty-two of each.”
Cookie spoke up, “Might I suggest that we keep just two buckets of Arabasti and plan to sell the rest in Margary. If we shift to Sarabanda now, and only use the Arabasti for special occasions, we can sell sixty-six of the
