The only sounds Tred could hear were Soothing Acoustics Volume 27 and his own breathing.

The acoustics were soft, pleasing sounds that were actually shown by studies to decrease heart rate. They were more than just pleasing, they interacted with the brain in such a way as to calm it even in moderately-stressful situations.

Of course, by moderately-stressful, they probably meant a hard day at work, Tred thought. Not a spacewalk on your city-ship that was floating in the void between stars.

His heart rate was alarming him, and each time he noticed it, it kicked up a little higher. His HUD had started automatically hiding it to help, and then when he overrode that, his system suggested he turn it off.

But he wanted to know how fast his heart was beating!

"O-okay," he said, swallowing and then repeating the word with a little more energy. "Okay, this section is good. Let's . . . let's head onto the next section."

The drones beeped affirmatively. They had thrusters but mostly just clung to the ship with tiny magnetic claws and hooks.

Meanwhile, he floated free.

Well, not entirely free. He was in a spacesuit inside a bottleship - a small metal can with multiple manipulator arms and thrusters. It was better protection from stray cosmic rays, and thankfully he had gotten permission to use it. It still counted as a space walk.

Every engineer and officer had to do at least one spacewalk every four months. It was just a core skill that could come into play in any emergency scenario.

Tred was not a fan.

They were cleaning the hull; which really meant filling in tiny scratches with titanium paste and scrubbing off the bits of micrometeors that regularly bumped into the ship. If they were travelling fast enough it wouldn't even take much to leave a mark.

They had the whipple shield, a kind of stand-off, multi-layered, honeycomb armor, to break up and absorb a lot of those. But that outer layer got damaged as it worked, and those plates would have to be removed and recycled.

A small warning chirp told him that a screw had split and the two pieces were floating away from the ship.

"Catch them!" he called. Some of the drones thrust after them, but soon hit their tether distance and came back.

He couldn't let those two pieces just float off. You did not leave scrap in space! Even if you were in the middle of nowhere, for all you knew twelve billion years from now it would hit some space family on their way to vacation, and you've just become a murderer!

It had nothing at all to do with being obsessive-compulsive, he told himself.

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Grabbing the controls, he maneuvered his bottleship after them. It only took a few puffs to move close, and two claw-like arms automatically collected the screw pieces.

He looked back through the bubble canopy and realized that he was drifting further and further from the Craton.

Not a dangerous amount of distance, but it gave him a thrill of fear all the same. He jetted back.

The bottleship itself was tethered, and he hadn't reached the end, but he felt a great deal of relief when he was back closer to the ship.

He glanced up at his heart rate, seeing that it was elevated.

"On to the next area. And be careful of brittle screws!"

The drones beeped back an affirmative. He thought it sounded sarcastic.

The bottleship started to move automatically to the next section of the ship for them to check, and Tred found that he was literally twiddling his thumbs. On the controls.

Well, that was not a good idea.

He glanced into his HUD, checking messages. It was more a nervous reflex than anything that mattered right now.

He had unread messages; he usually had updates from the ship's blog and other people's blogs that he followed. He did not read them, but he did subscribe, and then he felt guilt over not reading them . . .

But one was marked as urgent. Why hadn't it . . . oh, right. Nothing except an emergency message from command itself would come through while you were on a space walk.

He glanced at it. "To Diplomatic Staff".

What? He was an engineer, not a diplomat! Diplomats were good with people, not-

Then he saw it was from Ambassador Jophiel.

His heart pounded. They had . . . spoken a handful of times in the last few months. But things were not the same since he had taken her to see that play, Ussa and Usser: A Tragedy of Ancient Earth.

It had never occurred to him that the bloody story would leave a negative impression on her. She was composed of plasma, a Star Angel whose natural environment was in the corona of an unusual star, an environment they simulated inside Reactor Seven.

Star Angels could not, as far as he could tell, even hurt each other. So seeing the horribly violent depiction that the Qlerning playwright had created had disturbed her.

Jophiel did not open up to him about as many things, he felt. He wanted things to go back to how they were, but he did not know how to do that without saying things that seemed like too much.

Cursing at the timing, he opened the message to read it.

To: All Diplomatic Staff for 'Jophiel' of the Star Angels.

As this diplomatic mission has reached its conclusion, all personnel assigned to the Ambassador are hereby released from their duties. All information, data, correspondences and other forms of communication continue to be Guarded Secrets between Earth-Humanity, the Yia-Star Angels, and the greater Sapient Union. Congratulations and our greatest appreciation are due to all who were involved . . .

Tred stared at the letter in shock, reading and re-reading it.

His console beeped at him. The bottleship had reached its next spot.

"Abort!" he told the ship. "Take me back inside!"

"Query: Is all well?"

"No! I mean, I'm not in danger. I- I'm having a personal crisis!"

He pounded his fists onto the controls. "Take me back inside right now!"