"I see," Ramona commented thoughtfully. "Maybe I should take another look at my own reports."

"I'm not sure how much good it would do you without other reports to compare it to. What you might do is call a couple of the other ships and ask for copies of their reports."

"I just might do that," Ramona nodded. "Now you've got me wondering."

Tambu's simply giving her copies of the reports submitted to him was not mentioned by either of them. Yearly reports were strictly confidential between Tambu and the individual captains.

Tambu continued, "Besides checking on individual ships, I use the reports to look for new ideas. There's one ship in the fleet, for example, that's shown significant savings on their food expenses by allowing planetside food services to open a franchise on board the ship. Food preparation and planning becomes the service's problem, and the crew buys their meals in a cafeteria."

"Interesting. Does it work?"

"I'm still checking into it," Tambu said. "Even though their food costs have been reduced, they've had to pay their crews more to cover the price of the meals. It could be a false savings."

"I can see where it gets a bit complicated," Ramona commented.

"Oh, that's not the complicated part," Tambu replied innocently. "Where it gets rough is trying to use the reports to find answers to nonspecific quantitative questions."

"You're showing off now!"

"You're right. But it's true nonetheless."

"I'll call your bluff," she challenged. "Give me an example of a nonqualitative... whatever it was you said."

"Gladly. Do you remember the item on the agenda about next year's captains' meeting that calls for a review of the funds allocation methods?"

"I glanced over it, but I didn't read it carefully. Why?"

"You should look at it. It's going to be one of the hottest items on the agenda. Most of the other captains are gearing up for a major brawl."

"Maybe it's the terminology that's putting me off, What's it all about? In non-accounting terms."

"Simply put, the planets who subscribe to our services pay their money into a big common pool," Tambu explained. "From that pool, the money gets divided down among the individual ships which comprise the fleet. The question that's being raised is what is a fair basis for determining which ship gets how much."

"Aside from the fact that everybody gets emotional when there's money on the line, what's the problem?" Ramona yawned. "I mean, how many ways can you carve a pie?"

"Lots. The trouble is, each way has its drawbacks."

He rose and began to pace the room as he spoke, unconsciously falling into a lecturer's role.

"We can't just give a set amount to each ship. Some of our ships are twice as big as others and require larger crews and more maintenance. Similarly, we can't give a set amount to each crewman or captain. On a small ship, a crewman has to do more than one job. Should a navigator gunner be paid the same as a man who is only a gunner?"

"Or should the captain of a five-man cruiser be paid as much as the captain of a forty-man dreadnought?" Ramona supplied.

"Exactly." Tambu nodded. "And then there's seniority. Should a five-year crewman be paid the same as someone in the same job who just signed on?"

"It could get a little sticky."

"I haven't even gotten to the good part yet. There's also the matter of the patrol range of the individual ship. If two ships are the same size with the same size crew, and one of them is patrolling eight planets and the other patrols twenty, should they be paid the same? Of course, there you have to figure in the currency exchange rates and price of supplies on the various planets."

"Stop!" Ramona cried. "Okay! I get the picture. It's a morass. What has all this got to do with the financial reports?"

"Between now and the meeting, I have to formulate a plan. If I don't have something firmly in mind before the item comes ups on the agenda, the discussion will degenerate into a dogfight."

He poked listlessly at the heap of paper and tapes on his table.

"Going through this stuff, I'm trying to find a pattern to our costs-by ship and by man. Then I get to sort through it again to define the modifying factors such as patrol sectors. Hopefully, then, I can rough out a proposal that will make everybody happy-or at least make everybody equally unhappy."

Ramona rose to her feet and stretched lazily.

"Well, this time I think I'm going to do what everybody else usually does."

"What's that?" Tambu asked.

"I'll let you figure it all out, argue for a while, then go along with what you propose. No sense in both of us losing sleep over this."

"But don't you want to conduct an investigation of your own to check against my findings?" Tambu gaped in mock horror.

She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Even if I had access to the data you've got, which I don't, I wouldn't know what to do with it-or have the time to do it if I did."

Tambu shook his head sharply as if trying to clear his ears.

"Could you repeat that last part? It didn't make any sense at all."

"Simply put," Ramona sniffed in imitation of his earlier lecture style, "I've got my hands full running my ship. Running the fleet's your job, and you're welcome to it! Bye now!"

Tambu laughed and returned her wave as she left. But after she was gone, his smile faded.

Even though she had been joking, she was right. The whole mess was sitting in his lap. It wasn't that the captains didn't care or that they weren't intelligent, it was just that no one else in the fleet had the overview he had when it came to problem solving. Ramona knew much more about the intricacies of running the fleet than she had shown during their conversation. It was obvious to Tambu that she had been playing 'straight man' to his show-off performance so that he would have a chance to talk things out a bit. Still, even she couldn't aid him directly in this work. Like the other captains, she lacked the detailed comparative data which currently only he had access to. The captains' jealous hoarding of information was inadvertently giving him sole proprietorship of the job of fleet coordinator.

With a sigh, he started to turn towards the desk again when a light on his command console caught his eye. It was only an amber call-next to no importance or priority, but he was glad to answer it. Anything to stall his return to the reports.

The viewscreen showed an empty chair, causing Tambu to smile as he leaned toward the mike.

"Tambu here," he announced in carefully modulated tones.

Blackjack appeared on the screen, hurrying to his chair, shirtless and half-hopping as he tried to pull on a pair of pants.

"Sorry, boss," he apologized. "I didn't think you'd answer so fast."

"It's been a slow day," Tambu explained dryly. "What've you got?"

Blackjack hedged. "Well, it might be nothing. But when we dropped in on Trepec here, I picked up a bit of information I thought you should have."

"And that is-" Tambu urged impatiently.

"It seems there's been a run on guns-big ones like we use on our ships."

"Interesting." Tambu frowned. "Any word as to who's been buying?"

"As near as I can find out, they've sold a few each to a lot of planets."

"Strange." Tambu pursed his lips. "Which planets?"

"I've got a list here. Some of 'em are on our subscription list, but most aren't."

"Oh, well," Tambu sighed. "I guess it was bound to happen sometime."

"What's that?"

"The planets are arming themselves," Tambu explained, "though what good they expect ground-mounted guns to be against ships in orbit is beyond me."

"Arming themselves? Against what?"

"Maybe against pirates," Tambu smiled. "But more likely against us. We have hit a few planets in our time, you know."