Fifteen meters away, at the far end of the cylinder, Stu Roberts was loading tempered glassware into the two huge microwave ovens that had inspired the lab’s nickname. His thick mop of brick-red hair was puffed up into a wild, waving nest of weightless microgravity snakes. The mesh hairnet he was supposed to be wearing was nowhere in sight. His white coveralls looked grimy and spattered. Thin-faced, lean, and loose-jointed as a scarecrow, Roberts was making this rotation the longest six months of Nutt’s life.

Roberts fancied himself a creative soul. Simple tasks such as sterilizing glassware and monitoring experiments were too easy for him, so he constantly poked himself into Nutt’s research. He invented shortcuts, misused organic material, and analyzed data in ways that only he could interpret, all with an irrepressible cheerfulness that irritated Nutt beyond measure.

Roberts closed the oven door, then floated upside down over to the keyboard that controlled the ovens and other equipment and deftly tapped out a combination. He clamped a pair of earphones over his wild hair and immediately started to convulse, feet kicking wildly and arms flailing at tiny spheres of color that bubbled up around his head. A stranger might have thought that Roberts was being electrocuted or zapped by lethal microwaves. Dave knew better.

Heaving a sigh, Nutt pulled himself through the hatch. Properly oriented, he could maneuver through the narrow confines of The Bakery fairly well. It was almost like swimming in air instead of water. The microscope and centrifuge workstations slid quickly past before he grabbed a handhold and steadied himself at the refrigeration section.