On test day, I reported to Mr. von Ickles at the appointed time. He grinned when he saw me. “Do you have your frequent testing card? I can give you a discount.”
I chuckled. “Sorry, I musta left it in my other shipsuit.”
“You sure you want to do this?”
“What’s the worst that can happen?”
“You might not pass.”
“And…?”
“Yeah.” He grinned. “I know, but I have to ask. If you’re ready…”
Some indeterminate time later, from my perspective, I heard him say, “Time.” I put my stylus down and looked up at him.
He stared at me intently. “Are you some kind of machine? I’ve never seen anybody disappear into a test like you do. Let me ask what test did you just take?”
I hadn’t quite re-surfaced into reality. “Um, ordinary spacer?”
He laughed. “You don’t sound too sure for somebody who’s been answering questions for almost a full stan.”
“Wasn’t it?” His comment made me nervous.
He nodded. “Yeah, it was and that’s probably the hardest test. How’d you do?”
“You tell me. I’m not even sure what test I took.” We both laughed at that.
He pulled up his display and showed me, ninety-six.
“Congratulations, Mr. Wang. You are now rated ordinary spacer and I will add a note in your jacket this afternoon,” he rattled off the formula.
I grinned. “Thanks. Steward tomorrow.”
“You’ll have collected the full set. Do you have the commemorative binder?”
“Wha-?”
“Sorry.” He grinned sheepishly. “Joke.”
I laughed. “I get it. It just took me a tick to process what you said. I’m still a little groggy from the test, I think.”
Mr. von Ickles smiled. “Well, I mean it. I’ve seen many people take these tests and you slide into some kind of zone, a world unto yourself. You didn’t even see Mr. Maxwell come in, did you?”
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t.”
“Or the captain?”
I looked up in alarm.
“Just kidding. The captain didn’t come in.”
I laughed. “Thank you, sar. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
The rest of the day went by in one of those strange fogs where you get to the end and you know you did something but can’t remember what it was. I knew about the test, but nothing else seemed to stick. I had a vague memory about helping Pip and Cookie with lunch and clean up. I’d used the afternoon break for a run and sauna instead of studying. After dinner I made one last pass through the food handler test and hit the rack early.
Breakfast was pancakes and waffles. Cookie went overboard and made hot fruit compotes in several flavors along with the usual selection of pork products. Myself, I would have preferred a nice cheese omelet with some mushrooms, but I enjoyed the waffles with granapple topping. Clean up went smoothly and Pip and I were trading off on coffee duty. We had it down to a science. After finding the proper grind and proportion-we had standardized that early on-the rest was just keeping the urns clean and the brew water cold. We had to make some adjustments when we switched from the Arabasti but less than I would have thought. When it came right down to it, the two weren’t that different except for the expense.
At the appointed time I presented myself to Mr. von Ickles, “Ah, the machine. Are you ready?”
I surfaced about a stan later.
Mr. von Ickles offered me his hand and I shook it. “You now have the full set of half share ratings, congratulations.”
I thanked him, and went back to the galley.
Cookie and Pip both congratulated me but I really didn’t feel like it was much of an accomplishment. My duties remained the same as they were before taking all the tests. Sure, I could move up, if something became available, but one of the reasons for doing all this was to determine what I liked best, and in the end I still didn’t know. All I really had was a collection of entries in my personnel jacket.
After lunch and clean up, Pip convened a meeting of the steering committee on the mess deck so we could map out our strategy for St. Cloud. In my absence, they started a list of crew who wanted to be booth managers: Rhon, Biddy, Diane, and Francis. I felt a little miffed that I wasn’t listed, but that would let me come and go as I pleased. I’d owe the ten creds, which they had decided should be per-person for the entire port stay instead of a per-day fee. That made sense for somebody selling a little something each day who might not sell a thousand creds in one session.
They also started compiling a list of crew who wanted to sell something, along with a catalog of goods for sale. They had a short discussion on scheduling times so everybody didn’t show up at once, but soon chucked that out as too restrictive. The watch schedules would sort out some of it in any case.
After the discussion ranged for a bit, I started getting concerned about the level of detail. “How many people are we talking about here?”
Pip looked at me and answered with a completely flat expression, “Seventeen.”
I almost choked on my coffee. “Seventeen? That’s almost half the crew! Do they know they have to chip in to the co-op?”
Rhon nodded. “Oh yeah, in fact most of them wanted to before I told them. When they heard it was one percent or ten creds, most of them were willing to pay right then. I had to explain that we would collect after they were done selling.”
Biddy piped up, “Yeah, you have no idea what it’s like to try to find buyers for this stuff without a table. The things I sold the other day I had dragged through three systems without even a nibble. This is just such an obvious idea, I can’t imagine why nobody ever thought of it before.”
Pip shrugged. “Well, I know why it never occurred to me.” We all looked at him. “Lone wolf syndrome. I thought I was a wheeler-dealer. Then I got mugged…man, that was stupid and less profitable. I made more in the last booth than I’ve made in my whole career.”
Rhon nodded and grinned. “Yeah, and it beats the sneakers off trying to use other people’s booths. Selling wholesale really takes a bite and it’s not always easy to find someone who will carry the stuff you have. Even the successful traders like Bev and Tabitha are switching to this model.”
Pip pointed at me and grinned. “Well, we owe it all to Ish.”
I groaned. “Oh, come on. Save the kissing up until this actually works. We’ve got a lot of things to figure out yet.”
Francis snorted a laugh. “Like what?”
“Well, does everybody know how to move the grav-pallet? Are we all clear on how to set up the booth? Have we established who’ll handle the money? If we’re going to take a percentage we should have a cashier, and maybe that’s the manager. I don’t know. Where do we stow the pallet when the market is closed? Do we know where to rent chairs on St. Cloud? Has anybody looked at the rental agreements there?” I ran through the issues rather quickly off the top of my head. The group sat staring at me.
Pip shook himself out of a daze and pulled out his tablet. “Could you run through that list again?” he asked, holding his stylus.
Everybody laughed and we got on with the process of organizing the co-op. I wanted Lois to be proud of us.
Unfortunately, we were interrupted by the pingity-pingity-pingity of the abandon ship alarm. We bolted for the boat dock and arrived at the gym just as the announcement came for the drill. We split up to attend to the ship’s
