“Fine, clamber around, but stay tethered to the ship with cable. I don’t want you drifting off. You’re the only one who can operate this generator anyway.”

“Nah, Shall could probably manage it, and in at least some circumstances the generator is happy to operate itself. But don’t worry, I have a strong sense of self-preservation.”

“You do not, Ashok.” Callie glanced at Elena. “He wanders into life-threatening danger more casually than anyone I’ve ever known. You know that saying about how fools rush in where wise men fear to tread? Ashok rushes in where fools won’t even go.”

“I may not be overly concerned about the preservation of my original appendages, I’ll grant you that,” Ashok said, “but I like to keep my core systems intact. Anyway, it’s just space out there, it’s empty by definition. I’ll be fine. Just tell Drake not to go full burn while I’m outside.” He clapped his hands together excitedly. “Yay! I love EVA. You want to come, doc?”

Elena widened her eyes. She’d done two extravehicular activity drills, in training, at a space station in orbit around the Earth. “Ah, no, thank you. I find them very disorienting.”

“You just gotta push through the weird terror and then the euphoria sets in.”

“No means no, Ashok,” Callie said, and he shrugged and hurried off toward the aft airlock. She grimaced at Elena. “Sorry. Ashok is composed largely of enthusiasm.”

“I like him. He must be good for morale.”

“Insofar as he gives the rest of us a single person to focus our annoyance on, he absolutely is.” Callie sighed. “So now we wait. I’m terrible at waiting. Come have a drink with me?”

“Isn’t it early for that?”

Callie shrugged. “We have a saying: ‘It’s always five o’clock in space.’”

Elena chuckled. “All right. As long as it’s not a ziggurat. I had no idea it did that to my lips.”

“Looked good on you, though.”

Was that flirtation? “I used to enjoy doing the femme thing, sometimes, when I had an appreciative partner,” Elena said. “I spent most of my time in a lab coat or a cleanroom suit, so it was fun to play dress-up every once in a while. I left my heels and lipstick and earrings back on Earth, though, alas, and also several centuries in the past. Fortunately I’m modeling the height of spaceship chic.” She did a little shimmy with her hips.

Callie snorted. “Sorry, I know spare crew coveralls aren’t the most comfortable. We should have sent you shopping on Meditreme before we took off. I’d let you dig through my stuff for something to wear, but you’d swim around in my clothes.”

“Is Janice any closer to my size?”