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traffic. He even had a big round button pinned to his blue shirt that said, “Booth Boss.” As we approached, Sandy Belterson finished closing a sale on some small item I could not quite make out, and she sent the customer back to Francis to pay for it. Compared to our first rough outing back on Margary, we looked like real pros.
    Francis smiled broadly when Brill and I walked up. “Hey! Am I glad to see you. What in the world is going on at the ship?”
    Brill gave as innocent an expression as I had ever seen, and turned to me. “Is there something going on at the ship?”
    “I don’t know. Is there?” I asked in return but we were not fooling anyone.
    For his part, Frances just kept glancing back and forth between us as if he was trying to decide which one to hit first. “Don’t make me hurt you,” he finally said playfully. “Gregor was packing up as I was getting ready to leave to come up here. What’s going on?”
    Brill relented. “Gregor’s gone. The Moore needed him aboard at noon and the captain signed the transfer.”
    Francis grinned like he had won the lottery. “Outstanding!” he said with just a bit too much enthusiasm. He tried to backpedal a bit. “I mean, that’s good for him. I know he wanted to be on a tanker.”
    “More like he wanted a bunk-bunny, you mean,” Brill muttered.
    Francis flashed his eyebrows up and down but did not say anything.
    I made a mental note to find out what a bunk-bunny was, although I had my suspicions.
    “What else have you heard?” Brill asked him.
    He smiled mischievously at me before answering Brill, “Well, I heard a rumor that we’re getting some greenie engineman as a replacement.”
    “It’s true. We had to take what we could find on short notice,” she said with a wink in my direction. “He has some potential, don’t ya think?”
    Francis held out a hand and I shook it. He drew me into a hug. “Outstanding!” he said again, pounding me on the back.
    “Yeah,” Brill said. “You shoulda heard Diane going on about the greenie we were gonna get saddled with before she knew it was him. I about peed myself laughing.”
    Francis seemed concerned. “Is she upset?”
    “No, I set her up as a joke,” I told him. “She came into the mess deck all upset about Gregor’s leaving and I played up about some inexperienced goof getting the job.”
    “And she bought it?”
    “Oh, yeah. She took me aside afterward to make sure I knew she was happy that I’d be joining the section. She seemed very sincere.”
    Brill giggled. “Yeah, she only calls people she really likes ‘sludge monkey’ so you’re on her short list of good people.”
    Francis put on a long face. “Damn, it took her a year to call me sludge monkey! ” He burst out laughing.
    Rebecca Saltzman called Brill aside just then and I took the opportunity to ask Francis quietly, “You sure this is okay with you? I know Gregor had—”
    “Are you kidding?” he interrupted. “Hey, anybody who’d give up his break time to scrape sludge is good in my book. I don’t care what your rating is. Most of what we do is pretty mundane. You’ll have plenty of time to get caught up on all the theoretical stuff. You probably already know more than Gregor does. Diane and I had been talking about the possibility of getting you transferred into Foggy Bottom ever since you passed the engineman exam. Anything we can do to help you, just let us know. I mean that.”
    A customer came over to ask about the brocaded vest on the table, and Francis winked at me as he went to answer her questions.
    Brill wrapped up her conversation with Rebecca and we headed out of the co-op booth. They were all selling like crazy so it seemed like a good day for the McKendrick Mercantile Cooperative. We turned the corner and Brill said, “You know, I’ll help you, too, Ish. Francis and Diane aren’t the only ones who’re glad to see Gregor Avery out of the section.”
    I stared at her in surprise.
    “I’m tall,