Sam stalled it off. "Imperial survey," he answered briefly. "We're both still covered."
The computerman grinned knowingly. "Which jail were you in? The Imperial Council hasn't ordered a secret survey in years."
"This one was so secret they forgot to tell you about it. Write 'em a letter and burn them out about it," Sam stood up. "Finished, Max?"
On the way back to the Purser's Office Max worried as to his probable assignment, checking over in his mind the skills and experience he was alleged to have. He need not have worried; Mr. Kuiper, with a fine disregard for such factors, assigned him as stableman.
The _Asgard_ was a combined passenger liner and freighter. She carried this trip Hereford breeding stock, two bulls and two dozen cows, and an assortrnent of other animals consigned for ecologic and economic reasons to colonies--pigs, chickens, sheep, a pair of Angora goats, a family of llamas. It was contrary to Imperial policy to plant most terrestrial fauna on other planets; the colonials were expected to establish economy with indigenous flora and fauna--but some animals have been bred for so many generations for the use of man that they are not easily replaced by exotic creatures. On Gamma Leonis VI (b), New Mars, the saurians known locally as "chuckleheads" or "chucks" could and did replace Percherons as draft animals with greater efficiency and economy--but men disliked them. There was never the familial trust that exists between horses and men; unless a strain of chucks should develop a degree of rapport with men (which seemed unlikely) they would eventually die out and be replaced by the horse, for the unforgivable sin of failing to establish a firm treaty with the most ravenous, intolerant, deadly, and successful of the animals in the explored universe, Man.
There was also a cage of English sparrows. Max never did find out where these noisy little scavengers were believed to be necessary, nor was he acquainted with the complex mathematical analysis by which such conclusions were reached. He simply fed them and tried to keep their quarters clean.
There were cats in the _Asgard_, too, but most of these were free citizens and crewmen, charged with holding down the rats and mice that had gone into space along with mankind. One of Max's duties was to change the sand boxes on each deck and take the soiled ones to the oxydizer for processing. The other cats were pets, property of passengers, unhappy prisoners in the kennel off the stables. The passengers' dogs lived there, too; no dogs were allowed to run free.
Max wanted to look back at Earth and see it as a shrinking globe in the sky, but that was a privilege reserved for passengers. He spent the short period when it would have been possible in hauling (by hand) green timothy hay from the hydroponics airconditioning plant to the stables and in cleaning said stables. It was a task he neither liked nor disliked; by accident he had been assigned to work that he understood.
His immediate boss was the Chief Ship's Steward, Mr. Giordano. Mr. "Gee" split the ship's housekeeping with Mr. Dumont, Chief Passengers' Steward; their domains divided at Charlie deck. Thus Mr. Dumont had passengers' quarters, officers' country, offices, and the control and communication stations, while Giordano was responsible for everything down (or aft) to but not including the engineering space--crew's quarters, mess, and galley, stores, stables and kennel, hydroponics deck, and cargo spaces. Both worked for the Purser, who in turn was responsible to the First Officer.
The organization of starships derived in part from that of military vessels, in part from ocean liners of earlier days, and in part from the circumstances of interstellar travel. The first officer was boss of the ship and a wise captain did not interfere with him. The captain, although by law monarch of his miniature world, turned his eyes outward; the first officer turned his inward. As long as all went well the captain concerned himself only with the control room and with astrogation; the first officer bossed everything else. Even astrogators, communicators, computermen, and chartsmen were under the first officer, although in practice he had nothing to do with them when they were on duty since they worked in the "worry hole" under the captain.
The chief engineer was under the first officer, too, but he was nearly an autonomous satrap. In a taut, well-run ship he kept his bailiwick in such shape that the first officer did not need to worry about it. The chief engineer was responsible not only for the power plant and the Horst-Conrad impellers but for all auxiliary engineering equipment wherever located--for example the pumps and fans of the hydroponics installations, even though the purser, through his chief ship's steward, took care of the farming thereof.
Such was the usual organization of starship liner-freighters and such was the _Asgard_. It was not identical with the organization of a man-of-war and very different from that of the cheerless transports used to ship convicts and paupers out to colonies that were being forced--in _those_ ships, the purser's department was stripped to a clerk or two and the transportees did all the work, cooking, cleaning, handling cargo, everything. But the _Asgard_ carried paid passengers, some of whom measured their wealth in megabucks; they expected luxury hotel service even light-years out in space. Of the three main departments of the _Asgard_, astrogation, engineering, and housekeeping, the Purser's was by far the largest.
A first officer could reach that high status from chief astrogator, from chief engineer, or from purser, but only if he were originally an astrogator could he go on to captain. The three officer types were essentially mathematicians, business managers, or physicists; a captain necessarily had to be able to practice the mathematical skill of astrogation. First Officer Walther, as was usually the case with a liner, had formerly been a purser.
The _Asgard_ was a little world, a tiny mobile planet. It had its monarch the captain, its useless nobility the passengers, its technical and governing class, and its hewers of wood and drawers of water. It contained flora and fauna in ecological balance; it carried its miniature sun in its power plant. Although its schedule contemplated only months in space, it was capable of staying in space indefinitely. The chef might run out of caviar, but there would be no lack of food, nor of air, nor of heat and light.
Max decided that he was lucky to be assigned to Mr. Giordano rather than to Chief Clerk Kuiper. Mr. Kuiper supervised his clerks minutely, but Mr. Gee did not often stir his fat frame out of his office-stateroom. He was a jovial boss--provided everything ran to suit him. Mr. Gee found it an effort to go all the way down to the stables; once he became convinced that Max was giving the animals proper care and keeping the place clean he gave up inspecting, merely requiring Max to report daily. This gave Giordano more time for his principal avocation, which was distilling a sort of vodka in a cubby in his stateroom, using materials grown in the hydroponds--also in his charge. He carried on a clandestine trade in his product with the crew. By keeping his mouth shut and his ears open Max learned that this was a usual prerogative of a chief ship's steward, ignored as long as the steward had the judgment to limit his operations. The ship, of course, had a wine mess and bar, but that was for the "beasts"--crewmen could not patronize it.
"I was once in a ship," Sam told Max, "where the First clamped down--busted up the still, busted the steward to cleaning decks, and generally threw the book." He stopped to puff on his cigar, a gift from the passenger steward; they were hiding out in Max's stables, enjoying a rest and a gab. "Didn't work out."
"Why not?"
"Use your head. Forces must balance, old son. For every market there is a supplier. That's the key to the nutshell. In a month there was a still in durn near every out-of-the-way compartment in the ship and the crew was so demoralized it wasn't fit to stuff vacuum. So the Captain had a talk with the First and things went back to normal."