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In a tick he had disappeared into the ship and I settled down with the Cargoman training materials. I was scoring ninety-five percent on the Messman exam. If I managed to stay with the ship, I’d be testing again in just a few days. If not, well, I could always test at the Union Hall. I sighed and settled down.

Traffic in and out of the lock was pretty steady until about 21:00 when it tapered off. At 21:30, the captain came back aboard followed by somebody I couldn’t see. I stood as she came into the lock and walked up to the watch station. “Good evening, Mr. Wang,” the captain said. “Would you log my guest aboard, please?”

“My pleasure, Captain,” I told her and Cassandra stepped up to the station.

“Captain Cassandra Harrison,” she announced with a light dancing in her eyes, “commanding the
Samuel Slater
.”

“Thank you, Captain,” I said and hoped my smile wasn’t displaying anything more than proper respect from an Able Spacer to a captain.

Captain Giggone took her by the elbow then and they headed into the ship. “Wait till you try this, Cass, I got it on Neris and it’s just ambrosia.”

Around midnight, just as I was considering bipping Art to bring me another coffee, I heard them coming back. The soft laughter was charming and I wondered just what the ambrosia had been. It certainly sounded like they had enjoyed it.

“Mr. Wang,” Captain Giggone said, “please log Captain Harrison out.”

“Of course, Captain,” I said with a smile.

“Thank you, Ishmael,” Captain Harrison said with a wink.

They headed to the lock and I keyed it open for them. It was a small space and I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop but even over the noise of the opening lock I heard the captain say softly, “You seem so much better, Cass. I’ve been so worried about you.”

Cass smiled broadly at that, patting the captain’s arm. “Thanks for being there for me all this time, Alys. I got a new mirror recently and I think I’m finally ready to move on.”

They gave that woman-to-woman hug with a cheek-kiss thing—the real one that only very good friends do, not the fake one that colleagues trade—before Captain Harrison headed off the ship. “Next time you buy dinner!” Captain Giggone called after her.

Cassandra waved and called over her shoulder, “Deal!” Captain Giggone punched the close button and crossed her arms against the cold as she watched her guest leave. She looked thoughtful as she walked up to the station and I remained standing as she approached.

I expected her to walk right by, but she stopped and looked at me out of the corner of her eyes without speaking for as much as two ticks. Finally she said, “Cass Harrison was my roommate at the academy. I’ve been very worried about her for the last couple of stanyers. Her husband left her for some orbital chippie and she was devastated.” She wasn’t looking at me then, but more inwards as if telling herself a story. “I talked to her when we first docked and she was, if anything, worse than ever. That was two days ago.” She looked at me then. “Did she seem like a woman on the edge of a breakdown to you, Mr. Wang?” she asked.

“I’m sure it’s not my place to say, Captain, but no. She seemed, you’ll pardon my saying so, magnificent.”

“An excellent word, Mr. Wang,” she said with a considering smile. “Magnificent, yes.”

She gave me an odd look and I was afraid of what she was about to say next, but she only asked, “You wouldn’t care to explain how she knew your first name would you, Mr. Wang?”

“I couldn’t say, Captain.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wang,” she said with a small smile and headed back into the ship.

I settled back down to my studies, but I kept seeing that image in the mirror when, for that briefest of instants, I’d held that magnificent woman in my arms. My mother had written a paper on the metaphor of mirror in literature through the ages. She published it in one of the university journals. The thrust of the article had been how the mirror symbolized magic. I couldn’t help but think maybe she had missed the mark slightly with her emphasis on symbolism.

Watch was pretty quiet from that point forward, for which I was grateful. One close brush with the high and powerful per day was my limit. I did find out what Fong meant though about the blackmail possibilities inherent in opening the lock for returning crew who celebrated a bit too vigorously. For example, I learned that Rhon Scham had a delightful little honey bee tattoo that I’d never seen before. Given the number of saunas we’d shared, it made me see her in a whole new light.

When she came to relieve me in the morning, looking a bit worn around the edges but cheerful enough, she just said, “Souvenir of Siren.” We chuckled and she took the watch while I went to breakfast.

When I went into the mess deck, I found CC settling in with his omelet.

Pip looked a little tired, and as he fixed my breakfast I asked, “Tag team from the
Alistair
again?”

“Yeah, they can be quite a handful.”

“We better get underway soon, before they kill you!”

He considered that for a moment, bouncing his spatula in his hand. “Maybe, but can you think of a better way to go?”

“Maybe old age?” I suggested.

“Okay, death by tag team at one hundred and forty! Beat that.”

I just laughed and shook my head.

I took my omelet over and sat with CC. “How’s the solo watch standing going?”

“You’ve stood that watch before so I don’t need to tell you.” He laid his head on his shoulder, closed his eyes, and made snoring sounds.

“Yeah, now you know my secret for studying.”

“You really passed the spec two exam? I’m not doubting you, it’s just a lot to grasp all at once.”

“Yeah, well I started by studying spec one by accident. I got stuck and had been thrashing there for a month. By the time I discovered the mistake, I had almost worked through the entire spec one curriculum. Dropping back to spec two wasn’t so hard after that.”

“Why didn’t you just finish and go to spec one. Brill seems to think you should have.”

“Nah, there was too much math in one of the science components. I didn’t have that background and the curriculum assumes you know it. I need to find a way to learn that.” As soon as I said it, I remembered the advanced math curriculum on my portable and made a mental note to kick myself later for not thinking of that sooner.

“You learn pretty well on your own, then?”

“I seem to do okay. If I can read it, and it’s clear enough, I can usually get my head wrapped around it. I’ve always been that way and it’s paid off here.”

“Yeah, the Handbook is good that way—at least at the lower levels.”

Sean Grishan came in for breakfast just then and shot CC a dirty look before he noticed me sitting with him. He looked a seemed a bit confused by that. He collected some coffee and a pastry then disappeared again.

“How are you adjusting to life on the
Lois
?”

He sighed. “Oh, peachy. It’s so pleasant starting a new berth being hated.”

I ate in silence for a bit. “I know it’s not your fault, but not everybody here sees the big picture.”

He shrugged and sighed again. “Well, you have a lot of friends who seem to blame me because you didn’t get that spec three berth.”

“Sorry.”

“I don’t see why you just don’t bump somebody,” he said, resting his fork on the side of his plate and staring at me across the table.

I shook my head. “No, I’d rather go ashore than hurt one of the crew by making them take my place.”

“Doesn’t that make you a bit of a martyr? I don’t mean to sound cruel, but you have the rank and have earned the privilege. Everybody here has the same opportunity.”

“That’s true but I have to look at myself in the mirror. I don’t see the value added to the universe if I just take my problem and pass it on to someone else.”

“Well that’s the way the universe works, isn’t it?”

“It might seem like that some days, but I’m hoping that it’s just a short-term karmic debt.”

He blinked at me. “Do you always talk like that?”

“Sometimes it’s worse,” I told him with a grin. “Early childhood training.”

He had no idea what I was talking about, and I did not want to explain, so I tried to distract him by asking, “So, what were you doing on Betrus that the company had you available?”

“What?” he asked, apparently having a bit of difficulty following the left turn in the conversation.

“You were on Betrus? The Company didn’t fly you in special to take this job, right?”

“Oh yeah, right. I was working environmental on the
Matthew Boulton
on a loop from Dunsany out to Barsi and back around through Ablemarle. One of her scrubbers had a water leak that was constantly dribbling. The day before we were to pull out for Niol, I slipped in a puddle. My relief found me knocked out cold and they took me to medical. Apparently I cracked my skull on the deck and had a concussion so the skipper had to ground me.”

“Yuck. How long you been here?”

“Four months,” he said with a grin.

“You don’t seem too upset about being grounded for that long.”

“Well, it was job related, so they had to give me full pay and expenses.”

“So, you’ve been sitting here milking it for four months?”

“Yup. It’s been pretty cushy, but I’m ready to get back to work. Hard as it is to believe I started to get bored.”

“Why didn’t you ship out before?”

“Why would I? Pay’s the same either way and here I didn’t have to work. Besides, there hasn’t been any other Federated Freight ships come through with an environmental berth open. About two months ago I got a bip from home office that I’d be assigned to the
Lois
if I didn’t find a berth before then.”

“They got tired of paying you for sitting here, huh?”

“Yeah.” He grinned again. “They got tired of it after about the third week and bugged me once a week ever since, but there’s nothing they can do about it. The regs say I don’t have to take a job that’s lower than the one I left. On their books, you were an engineman so they could force me into your slot.

“End of your gravy train, huh?”

He shrugged. “Yeah, but I’m ready. Betrus is not the cultural hub of the galaxy. Like I said, I was getting bored—finally.”

We had finished eating so I made some excuse so I could head out. Whatever I felt about the new guy, he was here and we had to deal with that fact.

It was 07:00 so I grabbed a few of Cookie’s pastries, two fresh mugs of coffee, and headed down to environmental.

“Hey!” I called when I stuck my head through the hatch. “You missed breakfast.”

Diane was sitting behind the watch stander’s console and she didn’t look happy.

“I brought you fresh coffee and a pastry,” I said as I crossed over to her.

“Thanks for the coffee, but I’m not real hungry this morning. I grabbed a pastry before I came down.”

“So what’s wrong?” I said as I ate the pastry myself.

“The new guy,” she answered with a frown.

“Already? What up?”

“When was the last time you handed off a watch with pending scheduled maintenance, Ish?”

“Not counting last week?”

“No, not counting that. We had so much crap flying we all passed it on until we got out from under, but even then we were clear within two days. There are no extenuating circumstances now.”

“He didn’t do his overnight maintenance?”

She shook her head. “Number two input trap was scheduled for cleaning.”

“Messy, but not difficult.”

“Agreed,” she said.

“Maybe he didn’t see it in the log?”

“He relieved me with it.”

“What?”

“When I relieved him he said, ‘Number two input trap maintenance scheduled but not performed. You may relieve me.’ And that was it.”

“Did you ask why?”

“Oh, you bet I did. He said he didn’t think it was that important and that I could pass it on if I wanted.”

“Was that his first solo watch?”

“I think so. Brill has been sitting with him, but you know how that can be—sporadic. This might have been the first one he actually saw.”

“But you don’t think so?”

“Oh, I think it was the first one he saw here, but what kind of ship lets environmental maintenance slip like that?”

“The kind that lets a scrubber leak on the deck, maybe,” I said.

“What?”

I just shrugged. “Just something he mentioned. In any case, he’s here now and I think we should keep in mind not to blame him for something the company did.”

“But you’re gonna get grounded here because of him!”

“Maybe, maybe not. There’s stuff happening in officer country that we don’t know about, and perhaps something will turn up.” I smiled at her. “I’m not grounded yet, and even if I am it’s not because of him.”

“True,” she said, then she slapped me on the arm. “You ate all the pastry you sludge monkey!”

We had been docked for five days and still had no estimated time of departure. Usually four days was our limit and it looked like we still had some time left to go. The captain wasn’t saying what, but it seemed obvious that we were waiting for something beyond repairs. The crew was getting worn out from the long watches and late nights ashore. I suspected that more than one person’s cred balance was beginning to feel the pinch. It was odd—as much as we looked forward to getting into port when underway—we all felt a kind of frustration about being nailed down. I almost wished the waiting was over, even if it meant leaving me behind, just so the ship could get back underway.