Collateral Trade Read Online Free PDF Page A

a rock passageway. This one did have the light bulbs in cages spaced along the walls. Her knuckles were white on her suitcase while she walked beside Manny.
    They stopped and he looked at her. There was excitement in Manny’s eyes and he rested his hand on her shoulder. “I always love this part. Ready to see the project you’ll be working on?”
    At this point, Sharell was afraid she had signed on to a mining crew. “Sure thing.”
    Manny kept his hand on her shoulder and walked her onto the launch pad.
     
    * * * * *
     
    “Matt, hand me my stubby.” Sharell held her hand out from under the console and felt his palm rest on her butt while he reached into her front tool belt pocket. Her fifth attempt at lining the little bugger screw into the hole finally seated it, and she finger-tightened the threads.
    Everything they had worked on for the past six months was in cramped spaces and it seemed like the stubby three-inch screwdriver was attached to her hand. When their shifts coincided, she worked with Matt. After shift, they worked on other things in his living quarters. He was tall and well built, which made him practically useless for squirming into their current projects.
    Sharell ran her palm along the surface, checking for more empty sockets. There was no way to use a flashlight in the confined space. She backed out, her black braid sweeping the polished floor and her bottom wiggling while she crawled, guided by Matt’s hand. “That’s the last one.”
    “Ten minutes left on shift, so I guess we’re done.” Matt stood and held down his hand to help her up.
    Sharell slid the stubby screwdriver back into its leather pocket on her hip and brushed non-existent dust from the knees of her jeans. There were as many people on the Cleaning crew as in Maintenance. The board was a stickler for spit and polish.
    She followed Matt to the chute that would slide them down two decks to the launch pad level. Elevators took you up, but with space at a premium the workers had to use the tubes to go down. They used to remind Sharell of waterpark slides when she first climbed into one over two years ago. When I lived in the world with kids playing tag and greasy fries, she thought, as she slid down the dark chute remembering the ‘perfect’ day. By the time she reached the packed dirt floor, Henry Thompson Park was filed away with all the other ‘outside world’ distractions.
    She and Matt melded into the file of workers walking towards the locker room. Sharell’s left hand unbuckled her leather tool belt while her right spun the combination to her gray locker. She hung the strap on the hook in the back and decided to forego a cursory glance in the mirror stuck to the inside door. After spending the last eight-hour shift working with Matt, he had a pretty good idea of what he was getting.
    Workers stood before the scheduling board on the wall, bitching. Even from across the hall, Sharell recognized the red heading with white block letters. Shit. Shifts were predictably scheduled, except when they were… “Shit, we just had a system check two weeks ago.” Sharell ran her finger down the list. “Dammit.”
    She searched for Matt and found him standing further down the hall, and she nodded. Sharell squirmed her way out of the griping pack and joined him. “We gotta’ report back in four hours.”
    The cavern was quiet this late at night. Only shift change workers trudged through the rock passages towards the freight elevator taking them to living quarters. Women were housed on level three and men on level two. Matt and Sharell remained pressed against the metal wall until the second stop.
    After more than two years working for Manerea, it still struck Sharell odd that she lived in a primitive rock cave and worked on a spaceship. It was disorienting at times, but actually helped her not dwell on current items she no longer had access to. She rarely dreamed of driving her pickup down winding roads through farmland any