“All the telltales were good,” Gerard said. “I used the sniffer, everything—”
“Everything but your brain,” Stavros said. “You didn’t unpack every carton.” He transitioned from glare to glower.
“You didn’t want to wait, remember?” Gerard glared back. “You didn’t want to risk missing that early-delivery bonus on the run to Allray. I’m not taking all the blame. It’s as much your fault as it is mine.” He swatted idly at Moro, the ship’s cat, whose fascination with the containers in question had led to the discovery of fraud. “And these CraigsHollow cheeses, we’ve got to move them to separate containers and hope the mold or whatever it is hasn’t gotten into them.”
“I’m sure it has, after five days.” Stavros chewed his lower lip, then sighed. “Better try, though. Get Arnie to help—”
“Me? There’s forty containers—why not you?” It was not the first time Stavros had expected him to do all the cleanup by himself.
“Because I’m captain, remember? And I have other duties, such as figuring out how to make a profit on this run even though we’ve just found out our private cargo—that you chose—is worthless.” Stavros turned away. Gerard glared at his back, but wasted no time calling Arnie, their senior cargo handler.
Arnie Vatta, older by decades than Stavros and Gerard, shook his head as he came into the hold. “I told you, young sir—I told you to watch out for last-minute bargains.”
“Yes, you did,” Gerard said, as graciously as he could. Arnie, like the rest of Polly’s experienced crew, had offered far more advice than he wanted; by the time they’d reached Gum, he’d been tired of being treated like an apprentice. Arnie being right was worse than Stavros being angry. “You’re right; I didn’t watch hard enough. Now, though—”
“That stuff really does stink,” Arnie said. “Best tell Baris, in Environmental, before any spores get into the cultures. She’ll want special filters… ”
One thing after another. He could just imagine Baris’s reaction; she had little patience and a formidable temper. Gerard called her, with the result he expected. She cut off the intercom before he’d finished explaining the problem and was at the hold hatch in less than two minutes.
“What have you done—oh, spirits of space, you idiot. That stuff’s just this side of toxic!” She smacked the hold’s environmental control panel and shut off air circulation. Immediately the smell intensified. “There’s enough oxygen in here for you to work six or seven hours—I’m not turning circulation back on until you have that stuff under wraps again. And I strongly suggest a hard vac or flash-freeze.”
“But Baris—it’s getting thicker. Can’t we—?”
“No. Put on masks. Or suit up, if you want to; I don’t care. I’m not having that stench—or more of it—all over the ship. And don’t open the hatch until you’re done.” With that she was gone, shutting the hold hatch behind her as forcibly as the mechanism allowed. Gerard looked at Arnie, who shrugged and turned towards the hold lockers.
“I’m suitin’ up, Gerry. If I stay in here with no circulation, I’ll be pukin’ in no time. And the smell will be in my clothes and hair and… ”
Gerard sighed and got another suit from the lockers. This was not the way he’d imagined his first real trading voyage. He didn’t mind having his older brother as captain and his boss; Stavros had always taken the lead when they were children. Handling backup, any pesky details, had always been Gerard’s job. He’d expected to do the same this time. After all, he’d negotiated several tik-production contracts under their father’s supervision. He’d thought he would make a good cargomaster.
And now he’d failed. Not just failed, but put Stav’s future as a Vatta captain in doubt. Coming home with a contaminated ship, unsalable cargo, in the red? That promised to keep both of them off the list for a long time. “Let’s get at it,” he said, once he’d sealed the protective suit. “Any ideas for how to clean up the good stuff and store it so it’ll be salable?”
“Get it all out fast and into fresh containers—we got any empties?”
“Er… no,” Gerard said. Traveling with empties made no profit. Gerard had made sure they were all full.
“Mmm.” Arnie was unsealing canisters as he thought; Gerard followed his example, pulling out the good cheeses and then setting the lids back on to contain—at least a little—the stinking mess below. Twice, Gerard had to pull Moro out of a canister before he could put the lid on.
“We could move the Gumbone too, pack containers tight-full of it, and that would give us some empties for the CraigsHollow—”
“Canisters’d have to be cleaned, Gerry. I dunno what would get this stink out of ’em.” Arnie popped another canister lid. “I guess it’s better than nothing, though.”
Gerard started reopening lids he’d set back, stuffing Gumbone lumps into the space left by CraigsHollow wheels and then resealing the canisters. Even through the suit filters, he could smell the Gumbone.
“Why would anyone even make this stuff?” he said. “And why does the cat like it?”
“Dunno,” Arnie said. “What I heard is, the people back there eat it before it stinks so bad and they say it’s really good. Cats—can’t ever tell with cats why they like some smells. You’re lucky Moro likes you and the captain. He don’t like everybody, and if he don’t like you, he leaves marks.”
“Moro? Bites people? Scratches?”
Arnie chuckled. “There’s that, but there’s worse. Years ago, we had this young captain. The cat we had then, Sally, hated him. He was a difficult sort, we found out, but Sally was hissing at him and peeing on his bed before he’d done anything. Puked in his shoes, used the captain’s chair for a toilet. He hated her as much as she hated him; he finally threw her out the airlock—”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. Not a nice young man at all.”
“Who is it? Is he still around?”
Arnie looked around, then shook his head. “I don’t like to say. Not good to start rumors.”
Gerard changed topics. “I was thinking… if Moro likes the smell so much, maybe we could market it—”
“As a cat-finder? For what you paid for it?”
“Cat food, Arnie. I know it’s not hard to find cats…”
“You don’t know it wouldn’t make cats sick.”
“Right.” Gerard pushed Moro out of the way again. “It’s interesting he’s not trying to get into the CraigsHollow cheeses, even though they must smell a lot like this stuff by now.”
“To us, maybe. He’s a cat.”
“Has anyone ever analyzed Gumbone? Seen if it has anything… you know… salable in there?”
“Not that I know of. It doesn’t travel well, you see…” Arnie snickered.
Gerard repressed a desire to throw a lump of Gumbone at his back. He was an adult now, a cargomaster according to the personnel list; he couldn’t give way to boyish impulses.
Finally the transfer of Gumbone produced enough empty canisters for all the CraigsHollow Premium, and they had sealed and double-taped the lids on the others, to Moro’s annoyance. The stench hadn’t diminished. Gerard called Baris. “We need to clean the canisters we’ve emptied of Gumbone, so we can put the good cheese in those. We’d only need to open the hatch for a minute; we can use the crew decontam just down the passage—”
“No, you cannot!” Baris said. “Decontam dumps watermass outside, and we’re in FTL. No external openings, remember?”
Now he felt really stupid. He’d been on a ship before; he should have remembered that. “Well… where, then?”
“How valuable are those CraigsHollow cheeses? Really worth the trouble of saving them?”