4 years of training just to experiment on rats. I'm not getting paid enough I thought as I gave Janet a thumbs up to recall my tethering cable. I was out fixing a solar panel that had been knocked loose by a rock.

　　It was me, Janet, Mike, and Albert on the suttle. 4 weeks. We were out to see how the rats would respond to a bacteria that someone had found in Antarctica or someplace, why we had to be in space to do it I had no idea. But as long as there was the money we were promised when we get back down to earth, I'd be happy.

　　I stood in the antechamber as the door sealed and air filled the room. "That didn't take you very long," Janet said as the inner door opened up. "are you sure you fixed it or did you just push it back in place to make it look better?" "oh please," I said "I don't half-ass my job just because no one is looking, unlike some people I know" she crossed her arms "you'd better not make me angry, we've got to be together for three more weeks, and who knows what can happen in the depths of space," she said dramatically gesturing all around her. I tossed my helmet at her. she caught it essay. "you'd better be careful, you've already broken one of these with your stupid stunts".

　　yeah, I had almost forgotten about that. I was about to answer her but the radio crackled to life, once again was saving me from coming up with a retort. "this is Husten to Blue Eyes, come in Blue Eyes." Janet pushed in the coms and answered "This is Blue Eyes to Husten, we read you." It took a second for the message to get to earth. "Husten to Blue Eyes, What is the status on the rats?" "The same as the 8 times you've asked" I mumbled She Rolled her eyes as she answered, "Blue Eyes to Husten, the test subjects are healthy and have not had any change since the last check-in." "roger that, anything else that needs to be noted?" Janet took a moment to think, "we had a panel nocked lose today but it's been fixed." she went on to talk about everything else that had happened today, most of it boring, how much fuel we had, how our navigation was doing, things like that. I walked out of coms and into the cockpit where mike was sitting, dour-faced over the controls. "beautiful Day, isn't it Mike?" I said, smiling. "you would say that," he said. Mike was always in a bad mood. you could say it was nice we didn't have to cook the MREs we had made that day, he would say they didn't have the nutrition we needed, you could say the peas in the greenhouse were doing well, he would say the lettuce was suffering. no matter what, he would choose to be in a bad mood. you just couldn't help some people. I shook my head, he was going to make 3 weeks seem like 3 months.

　　I walked out through the hallway, my steps making a hollow reverberation through the whole ship. you couldn't do anything here without someone else knowing about it. one time Albert, whose favorite pastime was eating on earth, had gotten up late one night to sneak an MRE out of storage. by the time he had gotten to the kitchen, we were all waiting for him, sitting down, to see how he'd try and get out of this one. " I was just..I.." he looked down, apparently he hadn't prepared an excuse. needless to say, he only got half his Food supplies that day and was severely reprimanded by Janet, who was the leader of the op, she should have toled Husten but had decided not to. she was nice like that, most of the time.

　　As I walked past the greenhouse I checked on the cabbages, they weren't doing that great, and I had no idea why. all the others were doing fine, it was just them that had a problem. I needed to find Albert, I was assigned the job of taking care of the greenhouse, but he had come from a farm, and I thought he might know what was wrong with them. He wasn't in coms or nav, he could be in the mess hall or sleeping quarters, but odds were he was where I was going, where we keep the rats. he had taken a liking to them, even given them names, even though Janet had told him not to. there were 5 of them, Tomas, Sally, steven, Jarey, and the other one, I never could remember her name, something with a "j" I think.

　　I didn't think it was good that he liked them so much. They were test subjects.

　　I got to the lab door and opened it. Albert had his face up against the glass of the cage, just looking at them. "what ya doing there Al?" I asked. "just watching them, they're amazing aren't they?" he asked me with wonder in his words, looking up. "I guess if you like small furry rodents with human hands," I said. He looked at me, with an annoyed look on his face. "the amazing thing about them is that they don't fight among themselves, no rules no politics no fancy words to throw around, they just live. the food comes in and they eat. the fresh bedding comes and they sleep. they don't make fun of each other, there's no discrimination."

　　He had talked about this before. Albert didn't have a great liking for society. He had been mocked at school for his weight And mocked at home for his bad grades. oh, he liked the crew well enough. we had been on a lot of missions together, but he didn't really trust anyone outside of us. "come on Al, it's time to eat, and I need to talk to you about the cabbages.