“Why didn’t you?”
“Not ready yet. Got to have a lot more songs down before I hit the studios. By the way, what are you working on that you rate your own lab?”
O’Donnell ignored the question as he studied the walls, figuring how he would arrange his equipment.
“Oh, shit!” Roberts blurted.
O’Donnell turned in time to see the lid of the first canister fly open. The effect was textbook jack-in-the-box. Books, diskettes, micro-gee vials, beakers, jars, bottles, test tubes spewed out and swarmed around the room.
O’Donnell lunged past Roberts and pulled the door shut before anything could escape into The Bakery.
“Sorry,” Roberts said with a laugh. “You should see when that happens in the big lab. Sometimes we don’t find things for weeks.”
O’Donnell grunted, unamused.
“Don’t sweat the details, man. If you ever can’t find anything, check the ventilators. Everything ends up stuck to them eventually. Small stuff, anyway. You’ll get used to it. Becomes second nature after you’ve been here awhile.”
Roberts easily began picking objects out of the air. O’Donnell wasn’t as dexterous and batted away as many things as he caught.
“Hey, what’s this?” said Roberts. He waved a glassine bag containing powdery red soil.
“Dirt.”
“I know it’s dirt. Where’s it from?”
O’Donnell squinted in thought. “Georgia.”
“Georgia in the United States?”
“Yes, Georgia in the United States.”
“You could have been talking about the Georgia in Russia.” Roberts held the bag up to the light. “Never seen dirt like this before. This is redder than the soil from Mars. I know. One of my buddies has been analyzing the Mars soil. Says he found evidence of life in it, but nobody believes him. What’re you doing with this?”
“Part of my experiment.”
“Will you stop talking to me like I’m a kid,” said Roberts. “I know this is soil and I know it’s part of your experiment.”
O’Donnell looked at the scarecrow face, the brick-red hair matted beneath its net, the bony elbows and knees. He had been with Roberts barely an hour and already he wished that the young tech had been scared Earthside by the personable Ms. Skillen.
“You people are working on phase one of a very complicated project,” he said. “I’m working on phase two.”
Roberts’s face lit up with recognition.
“I get it. This soil contains toxic wastes already neutralized by microbes.”
“Right,” O’Donnell lied. “And I’m here to test whether it will be as useful as everyone expects.”
They swept the rest of the flying objects into the opened canister and closed the lid. O’Donnell inspected the door that separated his lab from The Bakery. The latch was broken beyond repair, but the outside surface had a hasp and eyelet.
“Are there any padlocks lying around?” he said.
“Not lying. Floating around, maybe.” Roberts’s grin vanished when he saw that O’Donnell did not smile. “I’m pretty friendly with some of the crew. They might have one.”
“See what you can do,” said O’Donnell. “One with a combination rather than a key.
“Oh sure, I’ll just trot down to the hardware store.”
O’Donnell frowned.
“I’m going, I’m going.”
After Roberts sailed away, O’Donnell closed the door as best he could. He popped the lock of the second canister and opened the lid slowly. Simi Bioengineering, his immediate employer and a member corporation of the North American arm of Trikon International, had rushed it to Cape Canaveral after the incident that led to the station’s power-down. It housed the most powerful and sophisticated laptop computer available. The station’s mainframe and terminals were off limits to O’Donnell. No one would have an opportunity to steal his data files.
He deflated an air bladder. Behind it were several dozen plant sprigs tightly bound in glass jars. The roots were swaddled with moist cotton pads and the leaves were carefully positioned so they would not bend or break inside the jars.
He unbound one of the jars and spread it open. The leaves were oblong and shiny. Healthy. Lethal. A chill coursed through his body and he shuddered involuntarily.
He was damned glad Roberts hadn’t seen these.
Thora Skillen’s cubbyhole office was at the opposite end of The Bakery from O’Donnell’s makeshift lab. She pushed herself past the open door and slid it shut.