Nathan Lowell - Quarter Share

Pip added, “We’re planning on buying a couple of extra duffel bags for transportation when we get to St. Cloud. But we don’t have spare mass for even a couple of cargo totes, let alone a grav-pallet.”

The captain nodded and pursed her lips. “What about renting a grav-pallet as well?”

Pip nodded. “We looked at that, Captain. They’re expensive compared to the booth rental, but if this works out perhaps we can do that downstream, yes.”

“Mr. Cotton,” the captain said, “does the ship have a grav-pallet they might rent?”

“I’m sorry, Captain, no, in port we need every pallet we can find, ya.” He pulled up his tablet and consulted his inventory. “But…we do, have one that is scheduled for scrap, ya. Ach, it was supposed to have remained on Margary, in fact.”

She nodded thoughtfully, and I had an odd feeling that she had known all along. “What’s the mass on a grav-pallet, Mr. Cotton?”

“Ya, fifty kilos, Captain.” His response was immediate.

She turned to the first mate. “Mr. Maxwell, does Lois have sufficient mass in her allotment to cover fifty kilos?”

“Yes, Captain, she does.” His reply was likewise immediate.

“Well, then I think we have the grav-pallet problem solved.” She gave us all a little self-satisfied shrug. “I’m very pleased with the progress you gentlemen and your group have made. A captain likes to keep the crew happy-busy, but happy.” She looked around, first at Mr. Maxwell and then Mr. Cotton. “Is there any other business for these two spacers, gentlemen?”

“No, Captain,” they answered in near unison.

“Very well.” She turned to us. “Thank you for coming, gentlemen. I appreciate your diligence.”

We stood and started out but at the door the captain stopped us with a final question. “Oh, what are you calling this enterprise of yours?”

Pip and I glanced at each other, and I told her. “The McKendrick Mercantile Cooperative, of course. I understand it has a proud tradition, Captain.”

The captain grinned. “Yes, Mr. Wang, it does indeed. Thank you, again, gentlemen.”

We beat a hasty retreat from officer country and the whole way back Pip kept shaking his head and making little tsk’ing sounds.

When we entered the galley, I finally broke down and asked, “What’s the matter?”

“Split the commission. How stupid can we be?”

I chuckled. “I don’t know about you, but I have a proud history of being pretty stupid.”

“Hmm. Maybe it’s contagious and I’m catching it from you, then.”

Cookie was icing a cake for dinner and looked up at Pip. “No, Mr. Carstairs, you’ve always had a very healthy amount of your own,” he said with a wicked grin. He turned back to his icing. “And if you’re finished lazing about, number one coffee urn is out again.”

Margary System

2352-January-15

After evening clean up, I settled on the mess deck with my handbook and a cup of coffee. The quarterly exams were only a few days away and, while I was pretty confident about the food handler test, I had barely looked at ordinary spacer.

It was huge.

Everything that didn’t appear on one of the other exams was on the deck division test-ship configurations, basic communications, and standing orders for: watches, helm, and gangway duty. My brain froze and shut down. Sandy found me half a stan later just sitting there staring into my tablet.

She waved a hand in front of my face. “Ish? Ish? You okay?”

“Oh yeah, thanks, Sandy. I just realized how much is on this deck exam. It flipped me out for a bit. The test is in ten standays and I’m planning on taking this one and the food handler exam.”

She chuckled. “You are a glutton for punishment, aren’t ya? Didn’t you take cargo and engineering last cycle?”

I nodded.

She looked over my shoulder at the tablet. “This isn’t so bad. I’m finally taking my Astrogation II exam this round. Once you start specializing it gets a lot harder. Look.” She pointed at the port starboard diagram. “If you don’t know that by now, you’re just so much congealed saltwater.”

I chuckled. “True.”

“And tell me you haven’t absorbed the watch stander schedule. What watch are we on now?”

“Evening, but…”

“See, this isn’t hard. You still have plenty of time. What haven’t you gotten to?”

“Standing orders. Look at how many there are. How am I supposed to memorize all that?”

She punched the button and brought up the first set. There were ten of them, but each was just common sense. She’d brought up the gangway watch orders and it started with, “Watch standers will report to duty stations fifteen ticks before the change of watch to assure a smooth transition of duty.”

“Hmm. This doesn’t look all that hard.”

“You’ve been hanging around with Pip too much. Maybe you should spend more time with Beverly.”

I’m pretty sure I blushed.

She patted me on the shoulder. “Look, you know how to eat an elephant?”

I nodded. “One bite at a time.”

“Yup. Dig in. I bet you can finish this one in a couple of days.”

I flipped back and forth a couple of times and began to realize she was right. The list was long, but the individual items were small. A lot of it I knew already having lived aboard for-gods could it really have been almost five months? “You’re right,” I said. “I don’t know what happened there. My brain just kinda seized up.”

She looked at me with a frown. “Hmm, you’ve been up since 05:00 and worked all day?”

I nodded.

“You’ve got a lot on your plate. I heard you had a meeting with the captain this afternoon. It seems like the co-op is shaping up.”

I nodded again.

“Well, let me ask you this. Don’t you think you should get some sleep? It’s almost time for the midwatch.”

I chuckled. “Which would make it nearly midnight and I’ve got to get up at oh-dark-thirty.”

She laughed then. “It’s all dark out here, but yeah. I’m off watch myself in a few minutes and I better not find you on the track.”

“Okay, okay, sheesh.” I laughed and stood. “Thanks, Sandy.”

“No problem, Ish.” She waved and headed out of the mess. “Sleep well.”

When I got to the berthing area, Pip and Bev were both already asleep. As I settled into my own bunk, I heard the little snorty-snores through the partition and thought, One bite at a time .

For the next couple of days I focused on my exams and let Pip worry about the steering committee. He kept me filled in while we worked the serving line or during clean ups. The group liked the idea of splitting the commissions but were hung up on whether to split all of them or only consignment sales. Eventually they agreed to split them all and to put a ten percent no-cap commission on consignments. That seemed about right to me. Beverly and Rhon wanted more, but Diane and Francis wanted less so it was a good compromise. Personally, I liked the idea of splitting them all. Of course, we’d already decided that booth manager wasn’t subject to the one percent sales commission. It was a way to get more people to volunteer to be booth managers. Adding the commission split between manager and co-op, we developed a nice economic model that gave a little extra to anybody who worked for the common good.

I got through all the ordinary spacer material in just a couple of days and took a practice test with a seventy-five score. Good, but not enough to pass. I took a break and ran quickly through the food handler again, just to refresh myself and tested at ninety-four. By the end of the second day after transition, I was passing both tests consistently and I messaged Mr. von Ickles to let him know I’d be taking both deck and steward tests.