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!”