When I went back to environmental, I took a fresh mug of coffee with me. Diane had gone, but Brill was sitting at the console. “You didn’t have to wait,” I told her, indicating my tablet.
“No problem, Ish. I’m going to grab some supper in a tick. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
I nodded. “The food helped perk me up and I can always wander around the ship.”
“How’re you doing on the spec two materials?”
“Really good. I’m still not confident that I could pass the real exam, but I’m getting mid-to-high eighties on the practices. That’s probably good enough, but I want to go over that fluid thermodynamics section a couple more times.”
She stood then and shook out her legs one at a time. “You’ll have plenty of time.”
“So? We’re going to see Henri tomorrow afternoon? Who all is going?”
“Diane, Bev, you and me.” I was relieved they had not bothered the second mate, Ms. Avril.
“Jillian has the duty tomorrow, or she would have come. That’s too bad, because I think she’d have had a great time.”
Secretly, I was not sure how much fun I was going to have but I was grateful to the watch standing gods for delivering me from officers.
“How’re you doing with Francis?” she asked.
“Okay, as far as I know. He’s been friendly enough. I don’t think there’s any residual animosity for tricking him or anything.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of how you are relating to him. He played a nasty little trick on you and those cracks about you and Diane were completely uncalled for.”
I shrugged. “Wind through the sails, boss. The tablet thing was just stupidity on my part. I can’t imagine why I never noticed. Ultimately, he probably did me a favor because I doubt that I’d be getting ready for the spec two exam if I hadn’t spent a month banging my head against spec one.”
“That’s true enough. You’d be ready for spec three though.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no. In the end, it’s irrelevant. As for the Diane thing, he was right about that. I am too easy to tease about women. Maybe having my face rubbed in it so badly helped me, too.”
She smiled sympathetically. “Well, Diane thinks the world of you, Ish. We all do.”
“Aw, thanks. Growing up, I didn’t have sibs or an extended family. I always wondered what it would be like. I think I’m getting a feel for that now.”
Laughing, she nodded. “Yeah, that’s true. Well, I just wanted to touch base with you before heading out for supper. I’ll be aboard all night, so if you get in a bind, or can’t stay awake or anything, bip me, okay?”
“I’ll be fine. The nap and the coffee helped.” I held up my mug with a smile. “There’s plenty more where this came from.”
“Okay, I’ll stop being a mother hen. Carry on, Mr. Wang.” She laughed as she headed for the hatch.
I liked hearing her laugh.
I settled into the console and ran a little checklist of things I needed to do before morning. Diane had changed out the water line filters on the number three scrubber pumps earlier in the day. Nothing else needed scheduled maintenance until we had to swap the algae matrix in a couple of days, so I got no help there. I only needed to do one VSI and decided to save that for 03:00. It would give me something to do on the back side of the watch. Sitting there at 18:30, twelve stans looked like a long, long time.
There was nothing to be done about it, so I put my feet up on the console, made sure my coffee was in easy reach, and settled into my studies. I had a long time to sit, nothing else to do, and nobody was likely to interrupt me. I pulled up the section on liquid thermodynamics and started from the beginning.