Fifteen meters away, at the far end of the cylinder, Stu Roberts was loading tempered glassware into the two huge microwave ovens that had inspired the lab’s nickname. His thick mop of brick-red hair was puffed up into a wild, waving nest of weightless microgravity snakes. The mesh hairnet he was supposed to be wearing was nowhere in sight. His white coveralls looked grimy and spattered. Thin-faced, lean, and loose-jointed as a scarecrow, Roberts was making this rotation the longest six months of Nutt’s life.
Roberts fancied himself a creative soul. Simple tasks such as sterilizing glassware and monitoring experiments were too easy for him, so he constantly poked himself into Nutt’s research. He invented shortcuts, misused organic material, and analyzed data in ways that only he could interpret, all with an irrepressible cheerfulness that irritated Nutt beyond measure.
Roberts closed the oven door, then floated upside down over to the keyboard that controlled the ovens and other equipment and deftly tapped out a combination. He clamped a pair of earphones over his wild hair and immediately started to convulse, feet kicking wildly and arms flailing at tiny spheres of color that bubbled up around his head. A stranger might have thought that Roberts was being electrocuted or zapped by lethal microwaves. Dave knew better.
Heaving a sigh, Nutt pulled himself through the hatch. Properly oriented, he could maneuver through the narrow confines of The Bakery fairly well. It was almost like swimming in air instead of water. The microscope and centrifuge workstations slid quickly past before he grabbed a handhold and steadied himself at the refrigeration section. Roberts’s convulsions had slowed down. He was moving in time to rock music from a portable compact-disc player Velcroed to the ceiling between the strips of fluorescent lights. Nutt could hear its thin wail and the thump of a heavy bass beat. The kid must have the earphones up to max, he thought. He’ll be deaf before he’s thirty.
The colored spheres floating around Roberts’s red mane were globules of water shot through with dyes used for experiments, the kid’s version of psychedelic lighting effects.
Roberts’s back was still to him, twitching in time to the music. Nutt pushed himself past the module’s computer terminal, reached the CD player, and cut off the music.
“Circus time is over,” he said.
Roberts abruptly turned his head. His body automatically twisted in the opposite direction; his flailing arms made the colored spheres scatter. He caught himself and for a moment hung in midair, a lean youthful scarecrow in dirty white laboratory coveralls hovering a scant few inches in front of the bearded, puffy-faced “old man” of nearly forty who was his boss. Nutt was slightly pudgy and potbellied back on Earth; in the weightlessness of the station his body fluids had shifted to make him look even rounder.
“Aw, Dave,” Roberts whined as he yanked off the earphones, “you never let me have any fun.”
“Fun is for the ex/rec room. Find your hairnet and do something about those spheres. If one of them gets into a specimen you’ll have ruined six months’ work.”
Roberts hung up the earphones and then shepherded the spheres into a group and pressed them against the door of a small freezer. They adhered to the cold surface and formed perfect hemispheres. Soon they would evaporate and leave smudges of food coloring that could be wiped off with a damp cloth.
“Did you unzip the wrong end of your sleep restraint?” asked Roberts. One of the most annoying things about the kid was that he constantly tried to adapt Earthbound cliches to the realities of life on a space station. Few translated well. “I thought you were happy about going home.”
“I’m damn happy about going home. But there’s this little matter of a report I have to write in order to justify all the money we’re being paid.”
Nutt shoved himself backwards to the computer terminal and slipped his stockinged feet into a pair of loops attached to the floor. Chairs were useless in microgravity; it took more work to force the body into a sitting position than to stay on one’s feet. All the work surfaces were breast high because under the weightless conditions one’s arms tended to float up almost to shoulder level.
Standing at the chest-high desk, his body hunched slightly in a zero-gee crouch, Nutt began pecking at the computer keyboard. After the obligatory beeps and grunts, the display screen lit up in bright blue and spelled out in cheery yellow letters: GOOD MORNING! TODAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!
Another of Roberts’s little cutenesses. Nutt cast the technician a sour look.
He entered his password, received clearance, and typed in the preliminary set of instructions he had written with the help of a programmer back on Earth. The computer responded with the date and the time that each file had lust been accessed.
Nutt felt his heart spasm in his chest.
“Were you in here last night?”
“When?” asked Roberts.
“Two a.m.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“What about Wilson and the other techs?”
“Beats me,” said Roberts.
“The computer says my files were last accessed at two A.M.,” said Nutt. He typed in another command; the computer responded with another message. “Holy shit! There’s been a download!”
“What?”
“A download.” Nutt typed furiously, his stomach wrenching with each response that played across the monitor screen. “The genetic files. Goddammit! Some sonofabitch copied all my genetic files!”
“Dave, there’s no problem.”
“No problem? Six fucking months of work stolen and you say no problem?”
“If you’ll let me explain…”
“Explain what? The computer’s already explained everything. Somebody slipped in here at two this morning and downloaded all the genetic files!”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” said Roberts.
“Nothing to worry about!” Nutt shouted. “I’m not talking about a glitch in an experiment! I’m talking about a career at stake. My career!”
Nutt unlooped his feet and pushed away from the computer and its terrible string of messages so hard that he sailed across the width of the lab and banged his head against a cabinet on the opposite wall. The pain stunned him momentarily. He tumbled slowly, running his fingers through his hair and checking for blood. Roberts grabbed his arm to steady his movement, but the touch only angered him.
“I’ve got to tell Tighe.” Nutt yanked away from Roberts’s grip, spinning himself halfway toward the hatch.
“Dave, don’t!”
But Nutt swam away toward the hatch, his shouted curses fading to echoes.
“Well, if you want to make an asshole of yourself, be my guest,” said Roberts to the empty lab. He patted the hip pocket of his coveralls.
Mission control for Trikon Station was at Houston. Many of the consortium’s European members had objected, but it made more sense to lease time and equipment from NASA’s existing Manned Space Center than to build an entirely new complex somewhere else.
So it was at 0753 hours central daylight time that Commander Dan Tighe closed the light-blue plastic accordion-fold door of the cramped cubbyhole that served as his office. It was no larger than a telephone booth wedged into a forward corner of the command module.
His regular morning call to Mission Control was scheduled for 0800, as usual. And after that he was supposed to see the station doctor for his weekly exam. Like most fliers, Dan Tighe did not trust doctors, not even attractive female doctors. He rummaged through the small cabinet built into the corner of his office where the curving shell of the module met the forward bulkhead. His face, red and chafed, was set in a grim scowl of determination.