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Loka’s heart warmed as he saw the smile on Heather’s face.

“Of course, I’ll help. I didn’t want to get in your way. That was why I was hanging back.”

Loka appreciated that. He understood her caution around him. He’d been unkind to her the last time they’d been in the lab. He passed her a pair of protective gloves. “Wear these. Some of the materials we handle are toxic to human skin.”

Heather pulled on the gloves without comment, snapping them into place and looking at him expectantly.

He had to admit her smile was a lot sweeter to look at than Hoan’s. “Do you know how to prepare molecular material for a petri dish?”

“We did it back in high school,” Heather said. “Show me how to do it again. I’m a quick study.”

“This won’t take long. I might as well start these tests again while we’re here.” Loka set out twenty samples, each with their own petri dish. He extracted the first sample. “Take a single drop, squeeze it onto the gel in the petri dish, and then seal. Mark each with a number, starting from one and add the date. Do this for all twenty samples.”

“Got it.”

Loka watched Heather for a few seconds. She was confident in her work. He felt himself relax. His research was safe. Although they’d been set back a few weeks in their progress, they could continue with their mapping program. The testing of the biological samples from the fragments of rock they’d extracted was a tiny part of their work, but he needed to be thorough.

The mapping of the Milky Way would ensure Loka made a name for himself. Then he could pick his own project anywhere he wanted. He might even stay in this galaxy. His gaze slid to Heather. There were appealing aspects to remaining here.

“While you’re doing that, I will take a look at the code you discovered in the system. It looks like some of the internal monitors are active.”

Heather didn’t look up from her careful pipetting. “It looked alien to me.”

Loka smiled. “I am alien.”

She paused and glanced at him. “I didn’t mean that in a bad way. Simply that I didn’t understand it. On Earth, we use HTML code. Most other aliens use a similar system.”

“The Intergalactic Coding Language.”

“That’s the one. But this was well, alien.”

Loka brought up the code and studied it. “It does indeed look alien. This lab has a built-in coding translator, so our systems integrate. This is new to me.” A series of swirls and dashes had been placed into the system’s coding structure. No wonder the space station was malfunctioning. It was trying to decode a language it had no understanding of.

Loka puzzled over the code for some time. All the while, Heather worked quietly in the background.

He found her presence soothing. She only asked questions when she needed to. He already preferred her company to Hoan’s, who talked too much and not always about work.

“I’m all done with the samples.” Heather date stamped the last one and turned to Loka. “How are you getting on with the code?”

“Come take a look.” He moved to the side to allow her to see the screen.

She scanned the code. “That’s odd. You’re looking at the My Single Alien coding. I recognize this.”

“I’ve been tracking the origins of the code.”

“Someone at My Single Alien planted this code?”

“I believe that is where it originated from.”

“You think the code began in the My Single Alien database?”

“Perhaps someone accessed your system and planted it there.”

Heather shook her head. “Our security systems are as good as anybody else’s. There’s no reason to target the matchmaking agency.”

“Have you noticed any glitches in the data you’ve received?”

Heather tugged at her bottom lip. “Yes. The last few batches of pairings have been awful. I even looked at the algorithms to see if there was a problem with the coding. That’s when I first spotted the odd coding.”