Hugh O’Donnell searched The Bakery, the wardroom, the exercise area, and the rumpus room without any luck. The tech who had been assigned the task of helping him unstow his scientific gear from the logistics module was nowhere to be found. O’Donnell parked himself at the end of the connecting tunnel and took a deep breath. The tunnel looked like a tropical aquarium at feeding time. Human fish dressed in iridescent reds and blues darted against the greenish backdrop. Some shoved bullet-shaped metal canisters while others shouted instructions.
A crewman hovered just outside the logistics entry hatch. As each canister was pushed out of the module, the crewman entered data into a hand-held computer. O’Donnell flattened himself against the wall as a procession of four Martians and two canisters surged past.
“I’m looking for Stu Roberts.”
“The great songwriter?” The crewman laughed. “Check his compartment. Hab One.”
O’Donnell navigated through the currents of moving bodies and pulled himself into the relative silence of Habitation Module 1. Moving slowly down the aisle, he read the names on the black-and-white plastic tags fixed to the bulkhead next to each compartment’s door.
A sudden, ear-piercing screech sent a tingle up O’Donnell’s spine. It settled into a throbbing whine that he followed to the last compartment. The passageway seemed to pulsate with rock music. The accordion door was vibrating from the sound volume.
O’Donnell braced himself against the opposite partition and pounded on Roberts’s bulkhead. But knocking was no match for the noise inside. O’Donnell finally wrenched open the accordion door. Roberts was suspended in the center of his compartment, both feet kicked up behind his ass and his bandannaed head thrown back to expose a bony Adam’s apple twitching beneath pale skin.
Roberts windmilled his right arm across the strings of an invisible guitar in rhythm with the pounding chords and wailed out the lyrics to “Acid Queen”. On each revolution, his knuckles grazed silk-screen posters of ancient rock stars bellying from the compartment’s wall.
“Excuse me, Mr. Townshend,” shouted O’Donnell. “Can I interrupt your performance for about two hours?”
Roberts brought his arm down for a final, ear-splitting chord. He writhed as if squeezing every decibel out of his imaginary guitar until the last note died away. Then he fell out of character.
“You knew who I was imitating,” he said in awed disbelief. He turned off his portable CD player before the next song could begin.
“Sure. Peter Townshend. The Who. Tommy was a classic.” O’Donnell mimed hiking the guitar out of Roberts’s hands and smashing it against the wall.
“Wow, they even trashed their instruments after every performance! Hey, who are you?”
O’Donnell introduced himself and offered his hand. He was not surprised when Roberts grasped it thumb to thumb in a handshake popular during the sixties.
“Hey, guess this one.” Roberts untied his bandanna. His hair exploded into a wavy mass of red curls. He placed the invisible guitar on the back of his neck and started to twang a psychedelic rendition of “The Star-spangled Banner.”
“Hendrix,” said O’Donnell quickly, hoping that the correct answer would not encourage another round of Name That Rock Star.
“That’s outtasight,” said Roberts. “And you’re a scientist working for Trikon? Where the hell they dig you up?”
“I’ve been around,” said O’Donnell.
“Been around long enough to have gone to Woodstock?” There was awe in his voice.
“I was exactly five years old when the Woodstock Nation had its three days in the sun.”
“Oh.” Roberts’s disappointment was palpable. “You look older.” Then he brightened. “How come you know so much about old-time rock and roll? I thought I was the only one keeping the faith alive.”
“I’m not keeping anything alive other than me.”
“Dig that,” said Roberts. “We have a real bunch of survivors up here. Anyway, it’ll be more fun working with you than with Dave Nutt. What an uptight cat. Now he was old enough to have gone to Woodstock, and he didn’t. Probably spent the weekend in the library, if I know him. Damn, I wish I could have gone. Joplin, Hendrix. All the great ones died before I was born.”
“Time marches on,” said O’Donnell, making a point of looking at his watch.
“Ain’t that a bitch. I’m a composer, y’know. Been writing like mad. This job up here is just to put the bread on the table. Once I get back to the States I’ll be the first rock composer to’ve been in orbit. I can’t miss!”
“Good for you,” said O’Donnell, without enthusiasm. Rather than prolong the discussion, he backed away from the compartment. To his amazement, Roberts took the hint.
“One thing you gotta remember about me,” Roberts said as he tamed his wild mop with a hairnet. “I’m a real traditionalist when it comes to music.”
The logistics module had been virtually picked clean of scientific-gear canisters by the time O’Donnell and Roberts entered the hatchway.
O’Donnell found one canister with his name stenciled in black secured to the wall behind a waste drum. Roberts found another adjacent to the food supplies.
The canisters were made of medium-gauge aluminum. Each one was four feet long and three feet in diameter, the maximum size that could pass through Trikon Station’s interior hatchways. Inflatable bladders within the canisters cushioned the contents during lift-off. Depending upon the nature of the equipment, a fully loaded canister on Earth could weigh up to two hundred pounds. On Trikon Station, a person could easily lift the weightless canister with the touch of a finger. But maneuvering it was another matter. Regulations required that two people guide the bulky canisters from the logistics module to the labs, to avoid damaging equipment along the narrow aisles.
O’Donnell and Roberts guided the first canister through the connecting tunnel with little problem. The young tech chattered incessantly about rock music, and O’Donnell nodded at all the pauses. At The Bakery, Roberts directed O’Donnell past the people already at their workstations to a partitioned area located in the starboard forward corner of the module. The cubicle was almost the same size as Dr. Renoir’s office, but it appeared much larger since it was totally empty.
“We called it our overflow storage room,” explained Roberts after they jockeyed the canister through its narrow door. He switched on the drafting lamp bolted to a metal runner on the ceiling. “I wondered why they made us clean it out. It’s gonna be your personal lab.”
“Not very bright in here,” said O’Donnell, seeing that the room was separated from the track of fluorescent lights running down the center of the module.
“I can rustle up a few more lamps for you.”
“Do it. Full-spectrum bulbs,” said O’Donnell.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get them.” Roberts fingered a pair of clips attached to vertical runners on the walls. “You can attach equipment to these. I’d put all your bulky stuff here.” He rapped his knuckles against the bulkhead of the module’s exterior shell. “None of this shit weighs anything, but if you accidentally bump against something bulky you could dislodge the partition.”
As they exited the compartment, O’Donnell realized that the other scientists and technicians were eyeing him from their workstations throughout The Bakery. Some were openly staring. He tried closing the door, but it did not latch properly.
“Is the canister safe in here?”
“No sweat,” said Roberts.
They floated the second canister through the connecting tunnel and into The Bakery. Again, O’Donnell felt many pairs of eyes boring into his back as he and Roberts stood the canister on end and spun it into the storage room. His lab suddenly seemed quite congested.