He started to swing the door shut, and I stopped it with my hand. “What?” Ahiga hadn’t said anything about that.

“New rule. Made it about a month ago.”

“Why?”

The man looked like he sucked on something sour. “SpaceTech makes the rules. Ask them if you want to know so bad. Time’s ticking.”

I turned to the pilot’s seat and quickly sat as he swung the door shut, sealing me into the pitch-black pod.

A second later the screen lit up. Harness straps came down from the tops of the seat, locking me into place. A keyboard and controls came up from the ground.

“Good morning, Maité Martinez,” the AI’s voice sounded like a perfectly pleasant English woman. “Today’s Mining Proficiency Test will take approximately one hour, thirty minutes. The test covers a variety of subjects and ends with simulation. To pass, you will need to achieve eighty-five percent or better.”

I took a breath as the first question popped onto the display. A simple physics question. No problem. There were a few more after that along the same line. Then it switched to music. I had to listen to a sample and find patterns in tones. Each question was timed, and I had to give a quick answer. I went with my gut, and with every answer, felt more and more like a failure. I wasn’t sure I’d gotten a single one of them correct.

What the hell did tones have to do with flying a ship? This was so iced. Nothing in the practice tests Ahiga had given me said anything about music or tones or pitch, but I remember him mentioning it in the med bay. I should’ve asked him more about it.

I kept answering the questions as best I could. Some of them were easy. Others took me a while, and even then, I was sure I got them wrong.

The timer counted down in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. A cold sweat broke out across my skin, and I felt sick as I thought about what would happen if I failed. If I had to put on the suit again…

This was going worse than I’d thought.

By the time I got to the simulation, an hour had sped by, and I wasn’t sure that I should’ve agreed to give up the thirty minutes. If the flight simulation took a while, I was going to be screwed. I had to at least nail that part of it.

The pod fired up, rocking as it simulated flight. It was much nicer than the ones I’d used on Earth, but it freaked me out a little. There were so many more buttons and features.