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“We are getting to know each other. You said we are now a team. Teammates look out for each other.”

“And get them out of their clothes?” Heather glanced at Hoan. “Does he do that for you?”

Hoan’s laugh turned into a cough as Loka glared at him. “No, Loka has never changed my clothing.”

“I would if he needed that doing,” Loka said. “You needed something clean. Was that wrong?”

Heather studied his face, trying to work out if he’d taken a sneaky peek as he’d taken her clothes off. He most likely did; he was male. She realized she didn’t hate the idea. “It’s okay.”

Loka nodded. He glanced back at her before returning his attention to the food replicator. “This is still not operational. You will have to forego your waffles.”

“I’m not in the mood for waffles anymore,” Heather said, “although I can eat breakfast food anytime of the day or night. Maybe waffles another time.”

She felt nervous around Loka, now she’d had time to think. He’d helped her twice, once when the bots had tried to throw her out of the airlock, and again when she’d almost electrocuted herself. He must like her, but he was so uptight about his work, acting like he didn’t trust her.

Heather still smarted when she recalled how Loka had reprimanded her when she’d touched his experiment. She hadn’t meant any harm; she’d been curious. She was interested to learn more about what he did and what made him tick.

She smiled to herself. She could be like that with her own ambitions. Heather had her future all planned out and wanted no interference. Nobody got in the way of her saving for her dream space pad, no matter how cute they looked as they tugged on their horn and tried to get the food replicator to make waffles.

“We need to see how they’re getting on in engineering,” Heather said. “Maybe they’ve figured out what that weird code is and are fixing the problem while we sit in here.”

“When I was there earlier, they were trying to figure out where the code originated from. If we can do that, we can shut it off,” Hoan said.

“Our research also needs saving,” Loka said.

“Agreed,” Hoan said. “I checked earlier. Power has been restored to the cooling units. Not everything has spoiled. Most of the bacterial analysis will need to be started again.”

“If you’re looking for a gopher to help with the experiments, I wouldn’t mind,” Heather said.

“What’s a gopher?” Loka shook his head. “It doesn’t translate.”

“A cute, furry creature. They’re hard-working and diligent, just like me.” She grinned at him. “They do the grunt work. The sort of thing nobody else wants to do, but it has to be done to keep everything running. Making sure pipes get unblocked when the sewage gets stuck, restocking shelves so people don’t run out of their favorite beer, that sort of thing.”

“Your skills run higher than that of a gopher,” Hoan said.

Loka grunted and then nodded. “It is best we conduct our experiments on our own. You might bring in contaminants.”

Heather saw Hoan hiding a smile as he ducked his head.

“Loka has a certain way of doing things.”

“The right way,” Loka said.

She scowled at Loka. He still didn’t want her help. They weren’t a real team. Pushing aside her disappointment, Heather focused on their immediate needs. She wanted to find Vegas and her friends and make sure they were okay. She needed to figure out what this code was and make sure the space station didn’t blow up. If Loka wanted to get protective over his research and exclude her, that was his problem. She had enough going on not to start worrying about an uptight Picar’s precious experiments.

“Something is happening.” Loka took a step back from the rumbling noise emitting from the food replicator. Three enormous waffles flopped out of the replicator.

“Wow! They’re huge.” Heather jumped to her feet.

“They are not normally this big?” Loka speared one with a fork and studied it carefully as if he expected it to attack him.

“They’re not normally this big.” Heather held out her hand. “These are the size of my head. No, the size of your head.” She laughed. Suddenly, she did want waffles. Giant ones made by Loka.

“I should throw them away,” Loka said. “They might not be safe to eat if they have mutated.”

“There’s no way you’re throwing away giant waffles.” She hurried over and grabbed the one he’d speared on his fork. She sniffed it and then took a small bite.

“It’s acceptable?”