12/19/21 Snippet, THE DOOM THAT CAME TO LUNA CITY.

I didn’t get as much done as I’d like on this one today, but I did get stuff done. That’s the important thing.

Step one was checking his suit for external piggy-back riders. And it was good that they did; an orb-camera found several black globules on Tobias’s suit, out of sight but not reach. They were sticky, but came away without residue — but Tobias sprayed ammonia dust on the affected areas anyway. “Better safe than sorry,” he muttered.

Then he just had to patch himself into the bus’s intercom without using the newly-reestablished communications network. It was one of those jobs that was mildly tricky with Asenath’s help and absolutely impossible without it; Tobias often wondered what he’d do without her help. He did not wonder why the other people at Heinlein Base never seemed to use her services, mostly because he had learned not to have (or remember) that particular sequence of thoughts. It always ended up distressing him, often to the point of passing out.

But the real tricky part was convincing Buckley and Jillian that Tobias was — well, if not fine, then currently in control of his own head. It turned out they didn’t need any particular warning. “The longer you were in there, sir,” Buckley said, “the weirder you all got. I mean, we could watch it happen in real time. Whatever’s going on in that place, it’s moving damned fast.”