To Build A Hot Rod

[Alestone]

Christian came through the lock and looked around. The bay was in the same ordered chaos it had been in the last time he had seen it. The Starflier was suspended in the spider web of cabling that kept it from moving, and the bay was still in free fall. He noticed maintenance bots drifting around on puffs of air, keeping the bay clean. Even so, the place had an air of disuse.

A brief whistle caught the attention of one of the bots and he tossed his flight jacket out to be placed in one of the lockers. The lighting system noticed the motion and started bringing up shop lights.

Christo took a deep breath and kicked off from the wall toward the main work bench. Glancing around, his habitual grin surfaced briefly as he saw paper scattered around under little pressor beams, keeping it on the surface of the bench. His attention jumped from stack to stack, trying to follow Hyun's wandering thoughts. The laser drive was a familiar argument, although it looked like they might have dead ended. This other idea, a multi-stage injection...

Without thinking about it, Christo reached out with a toe and slipped it into one of the anchors. He brought up the 3D modeling software and found Hyun's last work, making a fresh copy. On another screen, a telescope feed from Freeport 5 of Omega-41's primary showed a lensing effect from the gravitation of the neutron star. After 15 minutes of relative stillness, the shop lights dimmed, leaving Christo highlighted in a small pool of light, lost in thoughts of gravity and plasma.