"You must be quite talented to design something like that," Myitt said approvingly. "Paranoid android..." She shook her head, musing.
"Right, pool's in the back," Corliss said, getting up out of the navigational chair with a loud metal creak. He led Norpo, Aurora and Michael toward the little storage room at the back of the ship, carefully prying off the blue lid of a medium-sized square plastic tub. There wasn't enough room for everyone inside the little room, just Corliss and Norpo, but plenty of room to watch from the doorway. Myitt paced to the hatchway and murmured for it to close again--it was getting cold in there, and she preferred to watch the proceedings grudgingly, from afar.
Grey liquid sloshed inside the tupperware container, and the little metal room's antiseptic feel was quickly tarnished by the strong scent of mulch. Corliss turned to one of the small metal panels on the wall and waved a hand, revealing a self-sliding drawer, inside of which were a number of small silver spheres. He pulled one out, not larger than the palm of his hand, and pressed the flat bottom side. The little generator started humming faintly, and a vague electrical current added the ionic smell of lightning to the storage room, made people's hairs stick up on their arms.
He carefully set the Kandrona wave/particle generator into a corner of the pool of grey sludgy liquid and gestured to Norpo. "It's all yours, mate," he said, stepping back.
