Quarter Share

by Nathan Lowell

  The second day out of Gugara, Pip looked up the Sarabanda Dark prices in Margary, trying to get a feel for whether they were rising or falling. Coffee is one of those volatile markets that operates as much on emotion as fact and he worried that reports of the bumper crop might drive the price down in Margary. The short run between the two systems counted against us on that score because it meant that information and goods moved easily between them. I was sweeping out the galley when Pip gave a strangled cry, “Aphrodite’s flimsy nighty!”

  He startled me so much that I dropped the broom and turned. He was pointing at his tablet his mouth gaping in disbelief. I crossed to him so I could see what was wrong and saw that the spare container wasn’t empty any longer. We pulled up its contents and found it filled with the exact list of items that Pip had given to Mr. Maxwell.

  Cookie came to look over our shoulders and simply gave a little, “Hmm,” before wandering off.

  Pip looked up at me, the stricken expression still painted on his face. “I don’t know whether I should cheer or cry.”

  I shrugged. “Well, your ideas are getting a good shake out, if nothing else.”

  “Yeah, but what if I’m wrong?”

  “Look, the ship has seventy-one other containers, right?”

  He nodded.

  “If this one had stayed empty, how many creds would it earn?”

  “None.”

  “Worst case is what?”

  “None of this stuff sells in Margary and we need to dump it to take on scheduled cargo. That would be a ten kilocred loss.”

  “I doubt that. Is that really likely?”

  He stopped to think for half a tick before speaking. “No. In fact…” he pulled up another manifest, “we’re scheduled to have two more empty containers when we leave.”

  “See. Okay, so then, the worst case is we drag it to St. Cloud. What are your projections there? Will that stuff sell if it doesn’t move on Margary?”

  He tapped keys, first on his tablet and then on the portable. He was in zombie mode so I went back to sweeping. Finally he spoke, “Yeah, actually, the market is slightly better on St. Cloud.”

  “Okay, so you see, it should be fine, and it’s not all riding on one throw of the dice, either.”

  Pip’s color started returning and he stopped hyperventilating as he focused on refining the calculations for St. Cloud. “Okay, you’re right. It’s just that I’d made up my mind that Mr. Maxwell was just testing me and seeing that container showing up full surprised me.”

  I nodded in response. “You ready for another shock?”

  He looked at me hesitantly. “What?”

  “If I were you, I’d start planning what you’d put in those other empties once we land in Margary, because I’ll bet Mr. Maxwell is down here the day after transition to give you that little assignment as well.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Pip said, but the color started draining from his face once more.

  “Well, maybe not, but you at least better figure out what to reload your container with, assuming it gets emptied in Margary and earns a bit of profit.”

  Pip gulped and started hammering on the keys.

  ***

  Ship board routine settled around us like a comfortable old sweater. The availability of the new stores worked wonders with the daily meals. For the first few days out of Gugara we had fresh greens and fruits. As they began to taper off, we still had an occasional urn of the nutty, rich Sarabanda to break up the monotony of the Arabasti. Cookie ordered a bunch of new canned fruit and he pulled a couple cases out of our trade goods to help me experiment with fruit crisps and cobblers. It was a lot of fun and livened up the luncheon preparation. The crew’s sweet tooth seemed to appreciate the desserts.

  Evenings were spent in the gym and sauna. I soon realized that I was in the best physical condition of my life. I spent my afternoon breaks alternating between studying for the steward exam and hanging out in environmental. I really wanted to get my hands dirty with some of the routine activities in that department to see if I’d like them.

  One day, about a week out of Gugara, I went down to find them dredging out sludge. The process wasn’t terribly physically difficult. It smelled a bit funky, but nothing like you might expect. All in all it was just messy. The sludge that came from the water treatment plant had been biologically stabilized to the point where it was practically sterile.

  As a normal part of processing, the sludge settled into the bottom of the water treatment ponds and even after the water had been pumped out, it was still wet, sticky, and slimy. We used mechanical scoops to load the sludge deposits into shallow metal containers, what the environmental gang called, loaf pans. They were about a meter and a half long, a meter wide, and a half-meter deep. When full, we ran the pans through a combination freezer-vacuum compartment where the water sublimated out of it. After the loaves dried we knocked them out of the pans, wrapped each one in a sealant eerily similar to clingfilm, and stacked it in a storage space for disposition at the next port.

  One pond yielded about five of these large loaves. The pans were incredibly heavy when wet, but once dry, the sludge cakes had about the same mass and consistency as polyfoam. One person could lift one, but handling it was awkward because of its size and shape. As we were finishing up, Diane told me they would do it one more time before hitting Margary, but on the other pond. I confess it wasn’t as gross as I thought it would be, just grubby. I left them loading the last pans in the dryer when I went to clean up before heading to the galley for the dinner mess.

  As I got into the shower, the raspy buzz of the fire alarm went off followed by, “THIS IS A DRILL. THIS IS A DRILL. FIRE IN THE ENGINEERING BERTHING AREA. ALL HANDS TO FIRE AND DAMAGE CONTROL STATIONS. FIRE IN THE ENGINEERING BERTHING AREA. ALL HANDS TO FIRE AND DAMAGE CONTROL STATIONS. THIS IS A DRILL. THIS IS A DRILL.”

  I played the shower quickly over my head and zipped into a fresh shipsuit in less than a tick. In under two, I was trotting into the galley where I found Pip and Cookie working on dinner. Cookie called in and we continued with the preparations. I finally felt like I was getting the hang of it.

  ***

  Nineteen standays out of Gugara, and two before the jump into Margary, Pip picked up the data beacon and downloaded the current market conditions. He spent almost the next whole day revising and refining his models. The longer he worked, the gloomier he seemed.

  When we did the final jump prep, twenty-one standays out of Gugara, he sighed and threw down his stylus rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  “Problems?”

  “Maybe. The problem is I can’t tell really. It looks like the coffee prices have tanked. The market appears to be saturated with Sarabanda Dark and oddly, the wholesale price of Arabasti, which you can usually get for three creds a bucket is now twenty-two creds. If these prices are correct we can buy Sarabanda for less here than we just paid in Gugara. And there doesn’t appear to be any Arabasti for sale in the whole system. It’s crazy.”

  Cookie listened to our conversation and smiled. “I’m glad I laid in extra Arabasti in Darbat, then.”

  Pip laughed. “Good point.” He consulted the pantry inventories and said, “Okay, we have sixty-eight full buckets of Arabasti. We paid an average of three creds each. Net on one of the Arabasti would be nineteen creds. We paid an average of eight creds a piece for a hundred and fifty buckets of Sarabanda. Net on the Sarabanda is a loss of three as we can buy it here for five.”

  This shocked me. “Wait, you’re telling me we’ll lose money if we sell the Sarabanda in Margary?”

  Pip nodded. “Exactly. We’ve got that Sarabanda because we bought it to trade, not drink. How much Arabasti do we need to make St. Cloud?”

  I considered the question. “We use about a bucket a day, more or less. How long is the Margary to St. Cloud run?”

  Pip pulled up the schedule. “Eight standays to jump, and twenty-eight on the back side. St. Cloud has a weak sun and the orbital is a long way d
own the well.”

  “Five weeks in roundish numbers. And we’re a week out of Margary?”

  He nodded. “About that.”

  “Call it six weeks. Between the rest of this run, the in port time, and the run to St. Cloud, we need forty-two, make it forty-five just to be safe. If we brew half Sarabanda, which the crew likes just fine, that means we only need twenty-two of each.”

  Cookie spoke up, “Might I suggest that we keep just two buckets of Arabasti and plan to sell the rest in Margary. If we shift to Sarabanda now, and only use the Arabasti for special occasions, we can sell sixty-six of the more expensive brand and turn a nice profit. That will give us capital to buy more Sarabanda and lower our average cost.”

  “Can we do that?”

  Cookie shrugged. “Why not? The Sarabanda is actually a better quality coffee and the crew, as you so eloquently pointed out, young Ishmael, likes it just fine. Personally, I prefer it.”

  Pip started tapping again and nodding. “Yes, this will work. The prices are holding on St. Cloud. They might even be a little better.”

  Cookie nodded. “Very good, then. Yes, this is our best course. How are the mushroom prices looking?”

  “They’re good.” Pip grinned. “Prices for fresh are holding steady but the dried have actually started dropping. Three varieties are available in commercial quantities and we can get two other artisan varieties in large enough bulk to make it worth stocking.”

  “Mushrooms?” I looked back and forth between the two.

  Cookie nodded. “It’s a kind of edible fungus.”

  I huffed. “I know what mushrooms are. We’ve never had them on ship before, have we?”

  Cookie shook his head. “Not in some time. They are difficult to procure and expensive when they’re available. Margary is one of the few sources in this end of the galaxy where they’re commonly raised.”

  I rounded on Pip. “That’s what you meant,” I burst out.

  He nodded with a cat-ate-the-canary grin. “Yup. Most people don’t know about the Margary mushrooms. Few consider them food so they get overlooked.”

  “Any insight on the empty container?”

  “Depends on budget. Freeze dried mushrooms would be best. They’re not very dense and they have a good upside potential. We can get container quantities of them but they’d cost upward of fifty kilocreds. The upside is that a container of good quality freeze dried mushrooms would net a hundred or hundred fifty on St. Cloud and even more at Dunsany Roads.”

  I whistled. “Not bad for spare mass. What else could we get?”

  Pip browsed through his sources for a moment and said, “Well, there’s no container sized lots, but there are several dozen pallets of minerals: quartz, beryl, jade, lapis, even some emeralds, and rubies. Those will be the bulk, industrial grade stuff, not the jewel grade. The prospectors and minors pick out the best pieces as they go. The minerals won’t take up as much volume because they’re a lot denser but the initial cost of the minerals is a lot higher and the profit potential on the other end isn’t as high.”

  “What would you recommend to Mr. Maxwell if he were standing right behind you?” Cookie asked.

  Pip blew out his breath noisily while he considered. “Sounds funny, but I’d leave the minerals and fill the container with mushrooms. While a kilo of mushrooms won’t fetch the same price as a kilo of rubies, you can put a lot more mushrooms in a container for the same investment. It’s not the mass that’s the issue, six hundred tons is six hundred tons, but there is a big difference in cost. We could probably fill a container with a fifty kilocred investment. Profit on the mushrooms would be somewhere between one hundred and one hundred fifty. The prices for mushrooms on St. Cloud and Dunsany are quite high. A container of mixed gems would cost three hundred kilocredits, maybe more depending on what you got. You’d be lucky to get four hundred kilocredits on the other end. In both cases, you’d make about the same, but the initial investment is a lot higher on the minerals. Profit ratio on the mushrooms is likely to exceed two hundred percent while the ratio on a similar container of minerals would be maybe twenty-five or thirty.”

  From behind him Mr. Maxwell spoke, “Thank you, Mr. Carstairs, for that cogent and reasonable assessment. Please notify me if you identify any other opportunities.”

  Pip just closed his eyes and didn’t appear to breathe for a long time.

  Chapter 20

  Margary System

  2352-January-05

  The run into Margary station went quickly. The only interruption came in the middle of the night two days after the jump. The whoop-whoop of the environmental alarm woke me out of a sound sleep just before midnight. I scrambled out of my bunk and went to the suit locker as soon as I was able to find floor space for my feet. By the time I got there, Bev had the locker open and was handing out suits as people filed quickly past her. I took one and kept walking until I found a clear spot on the deck. I remembered where to grab the suit and how to shake it to get it opened up to wear. I had it on and the helmet sealed before the drill announcement finished. This time I wasn’t the last one by a long shot.

  Everybody made it on time, and after the captain’s congratulatory message, I stripped off my suit, set the used tag, and crawled back into bed.

  ***

  As we got closer to Margary, one question started to nag at me. Finally I decided to talk to Pip and approached him during the evening clean up. “How are we going to sell the belts?”

  “We talk to people who retail similar stuff…anybody who has a clothing store, that kind of thing.”

  I suppose I shouldn’t have worried that much, after all, Pip didn’t seem concerned and he’d been at it a lot longer. Being new to this whole thing, it still bothered me. His nebulous response left too much to chance for my comfort. Later, in the berthing area, I asked Bev about it. “How are you going to dispose of your belts?”

  “I don’t know. I usually just find somebody who wants what I have and I sell it.”

  “But how do you find them?”

  “Me? I go to the flea market. Usually there’s somebody there who sells something similar to whatever I’ve got and is willing to pay for new stock.”

  “Okay, that makes sense, but doesn’t that eat into your profit? I mean, you wind up selling at wholesale, right?”

  “Yeah, but that’s the price of doing business.”

  “Why don’t you rent a stall and sell retail?”

  “It’s not worth the hassle for just a few belts. Stall rental would probably eat the difference and I’d have to stay there until they sold. Doing it my way, somebody else does all the work.”

  “Sure, I can see that.” I thought a moment. “But doesn’t everybody have something to sell? What if we all got together, we could share the booth costs.”

  Bev blinked at me several times. It was rather disconcerting, to be truthful. “Out of the mouths of babes,” she muttered.

  Pip came in and crawled into his bunk just then. “Who you calling a babe?”

  Bev just shook her head. “Not that kind of babe. But you’re brilliant.”

  “Thanks,” Pip said. “But what did I do now?”

  Bev poked him playfully. “Not you, silly, I meant Ish. He’s a genius, did you know that?” She jerked a thumb in my direction.

  “What’d he say?”

  “That we should all share a booth on Margary.”

  Pip turned all owly and blinky himself for a tick before saying, “Yup, I taught him everything he knows.”

  The next day Bev started circulating the idea around the ship looking for others who might want to go in on the booth. Not knowing what it would cost hampered the effort a bit, but several of the crew agreed, so long as they didn’t have to hang around selling the whole time.

  I mentioned it to Sandy Belterson when I ran into her on the track that evening.

  “If you have any trade goods, Pip, Bev, and I are thinking about renting a booth at the flea market on Margary Station to sell our stuff. Yo
u’re welcome to add yours if you like.”

  “Do you think it will work out?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know but it seems worth a shot. We’re trying to find out the costs now. That should give us an idea whether or not it’s even possible. If it’s too expensive, we won’t do it. But since we’re not going to be in port all that long we’re trying to line up people before we hit the station. We’ll give it a shot, assuming we can swing the price and we have enough stuff to put out.”

  We ran another whole lap while she thought about it. “That’s a really intriguing idea, Ish. I’ve got a few things I’d be interested in moving. Let me know if it goes forward, okay?”

  I nodded and we finished our laps together.

  ***

  The next afternoon we docked at Margary Station. Pip looked up the terms and conditions on the flea market. They charged ten creds a day for space rental and an extra cred if you wanted a table. They charged a one-day minimum fee. We looked at the tablet for a long time. Pip finally shook his head a muttered loud enough for me to hear, “It’s too good. There has to be a catch.”

  I shrugged. “Well, I know who we can ask.”

  Pip looked at me with a raised eyebrow.

  “Mr. Maxwell.”

  His eyes got big for a tick, but he nodded his agreement and we went in search of the first mate.

  We found him in the ship’s office, where he spent most of his port time. We knocked and went in.

  Mr. Maxwell just sat observing us for a tick. “How can I help you gentlemen this fine day?”

  Pip looked at me as if to say, it was your idea.

  I took a deep breath and then rattled off the plan. I finished with the question we needed answered. “So what are we overlooking? Is there some hidden cost? Or some rule against crew renting tables?”