Another Talk

Month 12 Day 24

2251 Hours

Smythe

I shouldn’t have come, Smitty told himself as he made his way up a jeffries tube. There’s no sense in my coming; I’m just going to make a fool of myself. Again. But he had come, after putting it off for most of the evening. He had reached a point where, he told himself, he had to make sure it was her who had sent the message, and not... someone else.

It was the same message, so far as he could tell, as he’d gotten the first time. So who else could have sent it? And why would they? How could anybody else know about... that message?

He saw red curls in the horizontal tube, and sighed, either in relief or frustration, he wasn’t sure which. “Colleen,” he whispered.

She was laying on her back this time, and craned her head around to see him. “Hello, Smit. I was just about to decide you weren’t in your quarters this evening, and go get ready for my shift.”

“Why did you want to see me?”

“I wanted to say thank you. For making arrangements for me to work with Ivy for my training. Even though it does mean we couldn’t work on our project tonight.”

She’s not the only one disappointed that we couldn’t work on the transporter machine tonight. We all are. “It wouldn’t be fair to Wilson—”

“Oh, I know,” she interrupted. “It wouldn’t be fair to Ivy to continue on a project she’s been part of, even for just 1 night. I understand why we couldn’t work on it tonight. But that doesn’t mean I missed it any less.”

“You missed it?” he repeated in mild surprise. Most people look forward to an occasional day off, even from an extra project that they wanted to work on. It’s the equivalent of working an extra half shift a week, and that can get tiring. “What exactly did you miss about it?”

“Oh!” She grinned and turned her head back to looking at the top of her tube, but kept talking. “Everything! I missed working with my hands, with my brain. My Yukoskian language skills, in case we incorrectly translated some phrase or other. I missed being part of a team, the laughter, the camaraderie.” She glanced briefly at him. “I even missed you, Smit.”

“Me!”

“Even you,” she repeated. “The thing is, I don’t think you’re a bad guy, even though I didn’t make a great impression when I first got here. Fact is, if we weren’t superior and subordinate, I think we could be friends.” More softly, she added, “Or something.”

What is she saying? Or trying to say? No, best not to travel down that path. Return to a safer subject and then get away from here. “You don’t see our Monday night get-togethers as another half-shift of work?”

“Work!” She gurgled a bit with laughter. “No, not a bit. I just wish my real work was half as much fun as Monday nights!”

“So, you don’t enjoy your job as a communications officer?”

“Oh, dear, did I say that? That’s not what I meant to say. No, my job in communications is fine, now that I don’t have to put up with Adams and Evans. Thank you for making that happen, too. But I know communications too well, if that’s possible. There’s no challenge left to it.”

So she likes a challenge. Maybe she’ll fit in engineering as well as Wilson does. “I can only take responsibility for Adams. It was the captain who moved Evans. Once she found out and could prove what was happening. Perhaps you should have piped those conversations to us superiors, and not just your peers. Let us hear for ourselves what you were having to go through.”

“No, I thought it was too dangerous. I wasn’t sure how my superiors might react to being woke up in the middle of the night. For all I knew, all the blame might have landed on me. Again. And having made that decision... well, I can be stubborn.”

“So you chose to torture your peers.”

“Just for half an hour at a time, maybe less. I kept telling myself that perhaps their peers could put some pressure on them to behave themselves.” She heaved a sigh. “Not that it seemed to work.”

“So, have you?” he changed the subject, and then realized that he had. “Incorrectly translated any phrases?”

“There’s been a few that I’ve tinkered with, finding a word that better fit the actual definition or intention of what was in the original manual. But not anything that would have sent us off in the wrong direction.”

“Excuse me” came a soft interruption.

Smitty looked down past his body, to find Wilson standing in the jeffries tube below him. “What?” he asked. How much has she heard? Have we said anything that was... compromising?

“Sir, the #17 shield relay has become inconsistent. I was going to replace it.”

He reached down as far as he could, his face close enough to Colleen’s hair that he could smell lilacs. “I’ll do it. Hand me the new relay and the tools.”

“Will a spanner be enough?” she asked. “I brought a magna-driver, too, just in case.”

“Good. Give it all to me, and then you can get back to engineering.”

Wilson had taken another step up the tube, and must have caught sight of Colleen’s red curls. “Mac? Is that you? Aren’t you working tonight?”

“Yes,” came the inevitable answer. “Why?”

“Girl, you’ve got about 5 minutes to get to the bridge.”

The redhead somehow rolled over onto her stomach and studied the alarm button attached to one sleeve. “What? Oh, no, I set the timer wrong! And I’m still in my civvies!” She climbed to her knees. “Any chance I can get out past you, Smit?”

It was a logical question; the tube she was in didn’t have any other connection for some distance. “Yes, come ahead. Wilson, get out of her way.” He took a couple steps up, trying to clear the path for her as much as he could. He could no longer see Wilson, as red curls came out and rested against his shoulder. A small hand gripped his other shoulder, then her body shaped itself against his. Not in the position he’d anticipated and longed for ever since arriving at this junction, but close enough to send his temperature soaring. It was all he could do not to drop the relay and tools as she hesitated in that position.

“Later, Smit,” she breathed, and then she was gone, moving down the jeffries tube faster than he thought was possible.

Smitty took a few deep breaths while he willed his body to calm down. Finally, he was able to replace the #17 shield relay. He took the old relay and tools back to engineering, where he ran into a familiar face. One he was not exactly pleased to see, following the conversation he’d had only a few moments before. “Adams! Good. I have an assignment for you. This is a #17 shield relay. Rebuild it. I want it on my desk by morning.”