Safety Tests Read Free

particularly a ship you’re not familiar with.
    But she does a credible job. She only fumbles twice at the door, manages to get through the airlock without mishap, and finds her way to the cockpit easily.
    That bugs me. It really does. The specs of the tester ships are supposed to be impossible to find. Plus she shouldn’t have known which ship she was going to be in. We rotate them, for one thing. For another, we generally don’t discuss which ships go with what test—although I suppose if you interview enough test-takers, you could figure that out.
    I sigh and follow the perfume trail into the cockpit. It’s not as large as it should be, given the size of the ship. Yet another sign of age. Older ships were designed for only a few people in the cockpit, figuring that only a handful of people even knew what the controls were for, so those people should be the only ones allowed inside.
    Newer models allow anyone to sit in the cockpit and watch. Of course, newer models are tied to the operators’ (and their pilots’) DNA. Harder to steal.
    Impossible to use in this kind of situation.
    She sits at the controls, hands on her lap, just like some instructor probably told her to do. It’s good advice, considering how much could go wrong with the brush of a fingertip.
    I sit beside her and strap in. Then I use the voice command to release the ship to her. Kinda. I retain shadow control that no student knows about.
    “Get us out of here,” I say.
    She doesn’t lift her hands. “Where are we going?”
    Correct question, if this were some other kind of flight besides a test flight. But right now, I want her to take everything one step at a time. I’ve learned from painful experience that if I tell her too much, she’ll jump ahead and screw up.
    I’m not protecting her; I’m protecting me. I don’t want to end up a bloated corpse with burst eyeballs. I want to return to my bed tonight and come in fifteen minutes late tomorrow, while I’m working hard to save up for my Please-God-Make-It-Soon retirement.
    “I’ll tell you when we get out of here,” I say.
    She looks at me, and for a moment, I think she’s going to refuse until I give her our destination. Then she puts her hand on the docking controls. She taps them off as if she’s done it her entire life, and the ship rises slightly. She gives me a sideways glance, as if she expects me to tell her now, but I wait silently.
    I suppose she thinks I should be impressed. I’m not impressed. I’m confused. The docking commands on this ship are complicated. They should have taken her a few minutes of study before she figured out how to access them, and I know she didn’t have time before I arrived in the cockpit.
    I want to ask her if she took this test before, with this very ship, but I don’t. Instead, I not-so-surreptitiously remove my little info screen, turn the screen away from her, and tap it like I’m recording her movements. Instead, I’ve sent a request to Connie:
    How many times has this LaDonna woman taken this test?
    LaDonna leans forward and clicks on the automated request for departure. We leave departure and entry requests automated so that Control doesn’t have to ask for voice rec from every single student. Or so that I don’t have to verify the voice/entry. Because in emergency situations, every second counts, and a verification might be the difference between saving our lives and losing them.
    The bay doors seal, and the environmental controls shut off.
    The info screen vibrates in my hand, giving me Connie’s response.
    This is the first time she has taken the test.
    The top of the dock opens. We use top exits because they’re harder to maneuver than in-front-of-the-ship exits. Not that we can actually see this in real time. It’s all visible on the monitors. This tiny cockpit has no exterior windows.
    Really? I send back. Because she knows this ship too well for it to be the first time. Check her records. See if someone snuck her in here