Gerard opened his mouth to list what else could go wrong, but changed his mind. Instead he said, “Don’t worry, Stav. I know you can handle the situation there; I’ll make sure the ship’s secure and check that the on-delivery payment gets to Crown & Spears.”
Stavros nodded. “Thanks, Gerry.”
Gerard turned back to the ship.
“What’s happening?” Collins asked, when Gerard arrived on the bridge. “Captain left in a rush—he wouldn’t say why.”
“If he wouldn’t say why, I shouldn’t,” Gerard said. He called up their account at Crown & Spears. The on-delivery payment showed as Pending Clearance. Collins raised an expressive eyebrow. “You think I should?”
“It’s not my place to say,” Collins said. “But if you ask me—”
“Oh, go on,” Gerard said. “I know you and the rest could run the ship perfectly well without us, and you’re laughing your heads off because we got into trouble—”
“Not really,” Collins said. “If you mess up too badly, it’s bad for us, too.”
“And you think we’re bad enough to cause you trouble?” Gerard said.
“Actually, no,” Collins said. “You’ve made some mistakes, sure. All the young officers do. But for the most part, the crew thinks you’ve performed very well.”
“So you’ve discussed us, have you?” Gerard could imagine… stories about Arkady Vatta’s boys would soon be all through the Vatta fleet, and they were bound to get back to Arkady.
“Well, of course,” Collins said. “What do you think? It’s part of our job with any young officers like you. Anyway, you’ve done well on the whole and we’d hate to see you fail.”
“So… does the crew have ideas that might help?”
Collins grinned. “Since you finally thought to ask, we might. We all have a cargo stake, you know.”
Within the hour, the crew had chipped in from their personal funds and sent Baris off to buy cheese and other supplies to implement the new plan. Stavros called back a little later, to report that Arnie had been cleared of charges. The sapphires were synthetic and worth much less than he’d paid for the ring.
“Sell it anyway,” Gerard said. “You’ll want genuine stones for Helen and besides, you now owe the crew.”
“Owe the crew?”
“Get it done and come back; I’m not explaining on this line.”
Arnie reappeared first, lugging two sacks. “I just happened by a market and saw Baris. She said to bring this back.”
“How’s Stavros—I mean, the captain?” Gerard asked.
“Fit to be tied. He’s really upset about that ring. I told him—” Arnie didn’t finish; he didn’t have to. Gerard knew that Stavros, like himself, had been given more advice then he wanted.
“He told me it was a reputable jeweler,” Gerard said.
Arnie snorted. “A dockside jeweler. No such thing as a reputable dockside jeweler. But lovesick lads have to find out the hard way. Now don’t you tease him. He feels bad enough.”
“Me tease him!” Gerard shook his head. “I wouldn’t think of it.”
“You. You’re a younger brother. I know all about younger brothers. Was one myself, had one younger than me.”
“So, did Baris find cheese?” Gerard asked, retreating from what promised to be a long family remembrance. Arnie started to speak, but Baris herself appeared at the hatch.
“I’m back,” Baris said, peering into the bridge. “Somebody’ll have to open up below. I got a great deal on the ingredients. And the outgoing cargo’s arrived.”
Something about her tone alerted Gerard. “Ingredients?”
“Ingredients,” she said. “The cheapest cheese was too expensive when the captain’s ring turned out to be fake. And it wasn’t good enough. We didn’t need more bad cheese.”
Gerry’s heart nearly stopped. “You didn’t get cheese… What did you get?”
“I told you. Ingredients. What you make cheese out of, milk and coagulant and salt. The local cheese factory went out of business, some kind of legal problem; I bought up their raw materials for a lot less than cheese would’ve cost.” She looked entirely too cheerful for someone who had clearly just lost her mind.
“But we don’t know how to make cheese—”
“I have it all right here.” She held up a data cube. “It shouldn’t be hard at all. Environmental’s all about cultures and cleanliness, right? If I can’t make better cheese than was in the market, I’ll be very surprised.”
“Does the captain know—?”
She pursed her lips. “Well… not exactly. I didn’t see any reason to worry him with the details. He’s always said you were his detail man. Now if you and Arnie will just go down there and open the cargo hatch…”
Being the designated “detail man” meant that he was the one who had to tell Stavros they had no cheese, just the ingredients for making cheese.
“Baris said she could do it,” Gerard said, watching his brother’s eyelid twitch. He had insisted on talking to Stavros in the captain’s cabin. One interruption by a helpful crew member and his brother might say something unfortunate. “She seems very confident.”
“Baris—” Stavros began. Then he dropped his head into his hands. “This is the worst voyage anyone ever made. Neither of us will ever make permanent captain—and Helen—”
“It’s not over yet, Stav,” Gerard said. “We have three ten-days before we get to Corland Station. Maybe Baris will make good cheese, maybe the Gumbone will give it the perfect flavor… or maybe we’ll come out of jump in a star and never have to worry about anything again.” That had been the final chance their father listed every time they’d faced a difficulty, from being lost in the hills behind Corleigh Town to a feeling of panic when faced with asking a girl to a dance.
Stavros snorted and shook his head. “Gerry… I could almost wish for that collision with a star, right now.”
“I know. The thought of facing our father if we don’t come back at least even-money scares me, too. But the crew’s on our side. They’re not stupid, even if we were—”
“I wasn’t stupid… not exactly. I swear to you, it looked like a legitimate jeweler’s. Everything seemed to check out. But really—cheesemaking on a spaceship? And we still don’t have any certification. How can we sell a food product we’re not licensed to make?”
“Ah,” Gerard said. “That’s the real question. We can’t pretend we have the license; they’d find out. We can’t pretend it’s someone else’s product; they’d find that out, too. So it’s really a marketing problem.”
They sat staring at each other a long moment. Then Stavros shifted in his seat. “Wait… What if it’s something that’s never been exported before? Experimental or something?”
Gerard felt the hair rise on his arms as an idea leaped into his mind. “Something that hasn’t been exported—so it doesn’t have to be on the manifest—because it’s not for sale.”
“Not for sale? But the point is to sell it—” Stavros looked confused.
“Oh, we’ll sell it. But we’ll have to be persuaded… we don’t want to sell it—”
“Of course we want to sell it!”
“Wake up, Stav,” Gerard said. He saw the whole plan now, clear as the figures in red and black. “We can’t sell it legitimately—we have to have an angle. That’s the angle. Call it our rations or something. Not for sale. But we let the right person get a taste of it—”
Stavros’s face lit up. “Gerry, that’s brilliant! If Baris can make the cheese—”
“We can make the sale,” Gerard said. “And the profit.”