Free Safety Tests by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Page A

but really the tablet monitors everything that’s illegal to track through the health monitor—DNA, hormone balance, skin secretions. We find out if they have untreated genetic propensities toward schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, if they have too many genes for dementia and its cousins, if they have the markers for high blood pressure, diabetes, and all of those diseases we can treat but which would give our company a significant financial burden, particularly if someone were to suffer a stroke decades before the statistical likelihood because of the stress of our watch.
    Yeah, it’s illegal, but we do it, because L&R always gets blamed for failing to weed out the defective ones. We also get blamed if someone goes off the deep end and flies a ship into a space station or just avoids the navigation plan altogether and heads out into the Great Beyond without enough fuel or oxygen or sense. Usually we can catch those idiots before they ruin a ship, kill their passengers or their crew or (worse, in the eyes of many corporations) dump or destroy the cargo.
    All of this rests on guys like me. We’re supposed to find these nutballs before they go off the deep end, even if the deep end is five decades from now.
    That’s why the illegal monitors. I’ll flunk someone’s ass for a violation they don’t commit if there’s any warning signs at all.
    Let them sue. It’ll take forever to go through the courts, and by then, my six years of post-job liability will have waned, and someone else can take the blame for what I did. If they can figure it out. Connie and I cover our tracks pretty well, mostly because she doesn’t get paid as much, will work longer, and has ten times the likelihood of being successfully sued than I do.
    Before I arrived, she’s weeded out four, probably sent them back for more training, trying to discourage them. Or maybe they weren’t qualified at all. Not for me to know or to care about, quite honestly. All I know is that by the time I arrive, ten bodies should have be in my waiting room, and I only have six.
    Hallelujah. Maybe I can quit early.
    And maybe pigs will fly out of my ass on a historic Saturn V rocket, singing the national anthem of the no-longer-existent Soviet Union. Yeah, I’m a space history buff. Yeah, that’s what got me into this job.
    That, and an unwillingness to sleep in any bed but my own. I didn’t even want to do cargo runs, no matter how much the bosses begged me. You don’t get to be a Level One Military Pilot—something that happens to only a few of us—without job offers pelting you when you leave the service.
    I did my time in zero-g. I did my time in danger zones. I signed up here in the hopes that my life would get quiet from now on.
    Yeah, right. Quiet.
    I didn’t think it through.
    There’s nothing more dangerous than a nervous baby pilot on his test flight.
    And by the time I figured that out, I had passed the job’s probationary period and I couldn’t escape. I’m stuck here until I Section out (and the tests for a Section 52 Waiver are too complex to fake) or until I serve my time.
    I traded one government master for another, one danger zone for dozens, and one headache for countless nightmares, each and every day.
    Okay, not countless. Today’s count is six.
    Different sizes, different ages, different levels of ambition. There’s the pretty, youngish woman who sits at the edge of her chair, clutching the tablet as if she can squeeze it to death. She’s watching everyone and everything. She’s thin, in shape, and has her hair cropped short. Prepared for anything.
    Three youngish guys, two muscular, one probably too big to fit into most cockpits. I’ll look at his tablet closely before I ever get him into our test ship. One older guy, salt-and-pepper hair, corded arms, lines around his mouth—probably a retest. Drugs? Alcohol? Health scare? Or maybe he let his license expire. Or someone ordered a flight test for the renewal, which would be odd.
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