“You don't think we really caused this, do you?” Hendrix asked. The maintenance door lurched to a close and a reverberating clang resonated through the shafts. “No communications from earth at all! I mean, did those intranet upgrades even intersect with inbound station communications? Aren't the relays a separate system?” Questions that jumped like whiteflies in a breeze. “And for that matter, wouldn't the feed have cut immediately?”

“Must have knocked something. Just didn't jiggle loose until hours later.” Lester glanced down to his sleeve. It had snagged something during the ethernet re-installation at the start of the day's shift, and he had failed to identify what. He wondered whether he should mention this now. “Anyway, what else could it be?” His voice trailed off.

Hendrix was wearing him down, and Lester was beginning to become stressed himself. He massaged his forehead, running his fingers along the base of his hairline where the scarring would have been—but Lester was special: members of Command weren't given the patch like the rest of the crew. There would be a bump just under the skin.

“I'm telling you, Lester, these patches are awfully bad at their job.” Hendrix had seen the motion. “Is there gonna be another update any time soon? I swear if anything, my patch isn't secreting Stress Reduction Hormone, it's absorbing it.”

“I wouldn't know that, Hendrix. They don't keep me updated on patch tech anymore.”

A lie, but not a bold one. The crew of Strelka knew he had originally arrived from the sister station, Belka, and Lester kept them under the illusion he'd been nothing but a harmless Patch Technician. None here knew that his original title was that of Command and Crew Monitoring.

None except Mayne. Mayne the messy janitor. Mayne the philosopher. Mayne the only other crew member who had come from Belka.

“Guess we'll be working overtime, today. What is it with these stations and keeping even the smallest things on need-to-know?” Hendrix asked. The clatter of the old pipe-wrench he subsequently kicked joined the chorus of distantly fading echoes. “It pisses me off. Honestly, Lester, sometimes I think we'd be better off calling it here and finally heading home.”

Lester stopped surveying the shaft and looked at Hendrix.

“What do you mean?”

“I've checked the fuel levels; If we backfire the thrusters now, we'd still have just about enough to turn the station around.”