After such a long and difficult day, Spruance Del Curtin didn’t even feel like hanging out with his clone-brothers and scoping girls at the dining commons. Right now he just headed to the table where Brenda Redmond and Lou Corlin were eating supper.
As he approached, both of them looked up. “So what are you doing here?”
“Just wanted to find a quiet place to eat, maybe talk shop a little.”
Lou narrowed his eyes and studied Sprue. “That’s unusual for you. Are you sure you’re feeling OK?”
“No, I’m not coming down with anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Sprue slid into an empty seat and checked himself in. “It’s just been a really long day. First, Dr. Doorne pulls me in on the problems with the main mixing board, never mind I don’t know that much about it. And I only get off that job because I’ve got an air shift to do. I mean, they even ordered my lunch delivered to the station.”
Lou wiped up the last bit of gravy on his plate with a piece of bread. “So how are things coming on it?”
“Apparently some time while I was on the air, she decided that the problems were so complicated we were better off tearing it down all the way and rebuilding it from scratch. So now Ken’s sent it off to someone in Engineering, I’m not sure exactly who’s handling it. But assuming they don’t have any major problems with parts, and there’s not other weirdness in that thing, we should have it back on the air in a couple of days.”
That got a wry grin from Brenda. “Yeah, all we’d need is a case of Moon gremlins.”
Except it wasn’t really a laughing matter. More than once there’d been weird things up here, of the sort that left people wondering about the possibility of incorporeal intelligences, whether mischievous or malicious. And given the very thin margins by which humans survived up here on a world utterly inimical to biological life, those thoughts were not reassuring.