The colored spheres floating around Roberts’s red mane were globules of water shot through with dyes used for experiments, the kid’s version of psychedelic lighting effects.
Roberts’s back was still to him, twitching in time to the music. Nutt pushed himself past the module’s computer terminal, reached the CD player, and cut off the music.
“Circus time is over,” he said.
Roberts abruptly turned his head. His body automatically twisted in the opposite direction; his flailing arms made the colored spheres scatter. He caught himself and for a moment hung in midair, a lean youthful scarecrow in dirty white laboratory coveralls hovering a scant few inches in front of the bearded, puffy-faced “old man” of nearly forty who was his boss. Nutt was slightly pudgy and potbellied back on Earth; in the weightlessness of the station his body fluids had shifted to make him look even rounder.
“Aw, Dave,” Roberts whined as he yanked off the earphones, “you never let me have any fun.”
“Fun is for the ex/rec room. Find your hairnet and do something about those spheres. If one of them gets into a specimen you’ll have ruined six months’ work.”
Roberts hung up the earphones and then shepherded the spheres into a group and pressed them against the door of a small freezer. They adhered to the cold surface and formed perfect hemispheres. Soon they would evaporate and leave smudges of food coloring that could be wiped off with a damp cloth.
“Did you unzip the wrong end of your sleep restraint?” asked Roberts. One of the most annoying things about the kid was that he constantly tried to adapt Earthbound cliches to the realities of life on a space station. Few translated well. “I thought you were happy about going home.”