Page 124 of Alien Haven

“Sometimes I ask a thousand. You’re cleaning the circuit board?”

“They get gunked up faster than anything else. Half the breakdowns are due to dirt getting in the circuit boards.”

“Show me and I’ll help.”

“You?” He finally looked at her.

She scowled at his disbelief. “What do you mean ‘you’? I can handle delicate objects. Have you ever manually calibrated a priceless antique cadioptric telescope? I have, thank you somuch for asking. I’ve also disassembled loads of telescopes and put them together again. By hand.”

“Wouldn’t have figured you for the manual labor type, starry-eyed college girl. Don’t you have the heavens to gaze at?”

“Stop making my eyes roll so hard at your obvious attempt to convince me to leave. I’m getting a headache.”

She watched him dip a brush barely bigger than a sewing needle in a solution to clear grit from the circuitry. She selected a similar brush and tweezers from the folding leather case next to him. She used the tweezers to extract another paper-thin circuit board from the field monitor, laid it delicately on her pantleg, and set to work. She glanced at how Detodev performed the task from time to time to make sure she was cleaning it properly.

After a minute, he used his set of tweezers to pluck the board from her custody.

“Hey! I’m not messing it up.”

Detodev looked at it closely and grunted. He set it on her pantleg again. “No, you aren’t. You’re actually doing a pretty decent job.”

Wait until you see how I bake a pie, you big grouch. You’ll literally eat your words.“I’m a fast learner. I also spent a lot of time assisting my sister on her projects. She builds micro machines. We’re talking nanos you have to look at through a microscopic holo. I bet I can solder faster than you and with greater precision.”

“I’m happy for you. Don’t you have anything else to do?”

The man who’d hovered at the edges of their bar group and had occasionally darted in their midst was clearly gone. He wanted her gone too.

Tough cookies, jerk. “You realize the more you try to scare me off, the more I’m likely to hang on like a tick?” She resumed cleaning.

“What’s a tick?”

“Oh joy, they didn’t revive those horrible little monsters. Score one for Haven.” Her com buzzed for attention, and she set her work down before grabbing it from a pocket. “Hey, it’s Ilid! Hi, Ilid. I was about to com you.”

She was aware of Detodev gazing at her. “No, you weren’t. You were cleaning a circuit board.”

“Well duh, I was going to com him when I was done. Ilid, you’re on speaker, by the way.”

Ilid chuckled, his deep voice giving her a pleasant shiver. “Is that Detodev?”

“His evil twin. Nice Detodev is apparently hibernating.”

“Oh, sorry to hear it. Hi, Evil Detodev.”

“Hello, Ilid. Feel free to take her somewhere I’m not.” The Nobek sighed.

“Miss Behavior giving you a hard time?”

“Does she do anything else?”

Charity blew him a raspberry and concentrated on the laughing Ilid. “Anyway, Ilid, Sara invited you here for dinner tonight,herebeing the farm in case you didn’t guess where I am. Pork tenderloin and I’m baking berry pies.”

“Sounds good, I guess. You know I’m unfamiliar with most human food, though my mother bakes a type of berry pie calledaserch.”

“You’ll love the strawberry and blueberry version.” Charity drew out the wordloveto ensure he understood how amazing it would be. “You’ll worship those who fed you such an amazing meal.”

“Okay. Should I bring anything?”

“I’ll ask Sara, but she didn’t mention you needing to. If you don’t hear from me beforehand, assume you just need to bring your appetite.”

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