Running With Argentine Read Free Page A

you like career
climbing, backstabbing, ambitious crewmen that are willing to rise through the
ranks on their back, and then heartlessly stab you in yours, there is
absolutely nothing wrong with that woman. If you want to trust her with your
life, though, just make sure I don’t get stuck with the cost of your funeral.”
     
    Argentine couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a story
behind that…
     
    “Come on,” he said. “She’s not that bad… and she’s never
come on to me.”
     
    “She comes on to you all the time…”
     
    “Well, she does flirt a little.”
     
    The chief raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment.
     
    “You’re the one that asked who I would want to be stuck on a
desert island with,” Argentine insisted.
     
    “I never asked any such thing,” the chief responded
exasperatedly.
     
    Now he realized, Argentine was just yanking his chain…
     
    “Seriously, you don’t consider her that trustworthy. Do
you?”
     
    “No, I suppose not. But sometimes it’s nice to dream,” he
said whimsically.
     
    “So, is there anyone else? Is there anyone else on the ship
that you really trust?” the chief persisted.
     
    “Well, there might…”
     
    “No, there’s not. I’ll answer that for you. You know as well
as I do that just because we get along with them doesn’t mean we can totally
trust them. Not when the stakes are this high.”
     
    “What do you mean by this high? ”
     
    “Never mind about that right now. I just need to make sure
we’re on the same page. Can we agree on who’s trustworthy?”
     
    “Sure, I suppose. But what difference does it make?”
Argentine asked.
     
    Just then the General Quarters alarm sounded.
     
    The two men looked at each other and Argentine said, “The
Captain didn’t say anything about running another drill.”
     
    “I think he gets more nervous and paranoid every day, but I
suppose we’d ought to get to our stations.”
     
    Neither one of them really believed this was anything except
for the Captain flexing his power again, but Argentine couldn’t help but think
about the timing. This would usually be when he takes his dinner, and the
Captain never let anything interrupt his dinner.

CHAPTER THREE
     

Physics is Fun
     
     
    An
Obscure Uninhabited
    Star
System
     
    Astrogator
Samantha Parker was trying to figure out why her boob was blue.
     
    She was standing in front of her cabin’s mirror when she
noticed it.
     
    She’d been preoccupied thinking through the new ballistic
trajectory challenge when she’d realized she was almost late for her watch. As
quickly as she needed to get going she still stopped changing clothes long
enough to figure out the puzzle.
     
    She checked her discarded clothing. Sure enough, one cup of
her bra and the pocket of her coverall were covered in blue ink. She had a bad
habit of chewing on things when trying to work through a problem. Apparently,
this time her pen had been the focus of her unconscious habit.
     
    She pulled a new coverall out of a drawer and realized she
wouldn’t have time to scrub. Well, it wasn’t like anyone was going to see her
boob, and blue wasn’t a bad color anyway.
     
     
    ΔΔΔ
     
     
    Astrogators are
a weird, rare and strange lot. It takes a very unique and rare talent to be
good at it. It’s not just the math, although that’s enough to disqualify most
people. There’s an element of intuition to it that is almost impossible to
quantify – or predict.
     
    To understand what an astrogator does, imagine that there is
a flat hard surface as large as a football field. Now pretend that there are a
thousand dimples in this surface, such that if a marble is rolled across its
face it might be caught by one of the dimples and circle around to the bottom
of it.
     
    Now imagine that the marble represents a spaceship… and it
needs to get from one side of the flat surface to a small pinpoint location on
the other side. If the surface is tilted just a little so the