In A Starship's Wake

Chapter 58: Changed Circumstances

"Oh. Well good, that makes this a lot easier." He walked back toward her with a large screen in one hand, scrolling through the list of shipments with the opposite finger.

"Putting together shipping papers? Yeah, Katie had me do it a couple times while you were on vacation last month. It's a little difficult to get them ready when half the paperwork isn't done yet."

"Very. You're right, there aren't as many as I thought. At least something's going right today. I forgot you wouldn't be affected by our little shipping mishap."

"Not until next week anyway. When we don't have the right product and I have to delete it from every order manually, I'll be a little testy." Allison shut down her computer and began to pack up her things.

"Hopefully that isn't going to happen. I called the factory and they're going to send a ship out over the weekend. We should have our fertilizer by the time we need to send out the orders."

"Good. Are they going to collect the other stuff at the same time?"

"No, they offered us a reduced price to keep it. Since we sell pearlite anyway, I took it. It's a pain, but we have enough space to store it until we sell it off. Might as well make a little extra money off of their mistake."

"Why wouldn't they want it back?" Many things about the distribution business still mystified Allison. Her parents were farmers, and it was an entirely different business. She wondered occasionally if she shouldn't have picked a job in one of the agricultural domes. Fortunately Larry never seemed to mind explaining.

"All kinds of possibilities." Larry gazed absently at the screen in his hand. "I think they hire most of their ships, so it's probably that they'd have to pay return freight on it. It'll still mean they take a hit, but at this point it's less of one to just give us a discount."

"Well, as much as I love to learn about the business, I'm ready to head home." Allison slung her backpack onto one shoulder. "You'll have to explain it to me next week." Larry laughed. "If you remember by then, I'll be happy to. Do you want a ride?"

"Not today, thanks. I like the walk, otherwise I would have bought a cart by now."

"Alright. If you're ever in a hurry all you have to do is ask."

"If it ever comes up I will. Have a good weekend!"

Allison checked for traffic as the windowed door of the warehouse office closed behind her. She had to ascend a couple levels to Baker Dome's main traffic floor, where the tube that connected it to it to Ottawa Dome opened. The corridor outside the warehouse wasn't usually very busy, but foot and vehicle traffic had to share it. The cargo trucks used on stations were much smaller than their planetary equivalent, but still much larger and heavier than the carts used by people. Look before you leap.

The rather gloomy industrial lower levels soon gave way to the agricultural dome's main traffic level. A band of open corridor ran around the circumference of most of the round domes, sealed off from the sections where crops were planted. It was a little bit of public space that allowed residents to pass through them to go between towers or reach jobs and suppliers that were on one of the domes. The public corridors usually had transparent exterior wall sections similar to the casings above the crop production areas.

Allison walked slowly as she passed through the wide tubes. It was a Friday evening, she had no plans for tonight or Saturday other than meeting Lauren for their usual weekend pursuits, and she enjoyed the view of Couradeen Station's exterior from the tube. There was no reason to hurry. Lauren was the first person she'd met on Couradeen Station who wasn't a coworker or an associate of Joseph and Tyrone. The two young women had taken to having dinner together most nights in the last couple months. Like Allison, Lauren came from a large family, and now that they lived alone both found it difficult to cook only for themselves. Eating together had let them, at least for the most part, cook an amount that wouldn't spoil before it could all be eaten. Allison still had leftovers for her work lunches most days.