Kuru walked through the largely empty halls of Deep Space Station H7. At this time of station's night, most of the population was asleep, tired and exhausted from the ardous task of mining the local asteroid field for precious metals. He thought of a time when gold was considered precious and snorted derisively. In this day and age, "precious" meant whatever the Nutzco Metallurgy Corp. was willing to pay the most for. Gold was somewhere around iron, treated like so much scrap. Being a pragmatic individual, Kuru followed market trends very closely, thus his current occupation as an expert in the mining of francium, that fantastically rare and short-lived metal that is sometimes generated in asteroid fields through rare cosmic events. H7 was built near one of said events.

That story is a pretty good one, thought Kuru to himself, looking at the angry red star whose instabilties created the conveniently-located francium. For of course H7 was far more than a simple mining rig, just as Kuru himself was much more than a francium miner. His boss back at HQ, old man Graves...that is to say, Admiral Gilash Than-Zurion, PhD, MilOZE, LFG7, and most of the rest of the alphabet, was inordinately fond of old westerns and stoutly maintained that his agents should get enough exercise otherwise they lose their edge and start craving desk jobs, thus making them useful only for administrative work (like him). The exercises in question tended to be dangerous on average and fatal on occasion, but Kuru didn't mind. He had nowhere to go anyway and the pay was good.

He was scheduled to meet a fellow exerciser at the back of the galley. Old man Graves had (rightly) reasoned that the dining hall is where a crew is most likely to be off guard, and therefore Kuru's inside man was the exuberant and slightly grating cook. Corporation employees are usually hard to influence, but the previous cook had a sketchy history with the Syndicate and had thus been easily "encouraged" to leave, his resistance further lowered by a sizeable sum of money. It had been a win-win situation all around, even for the miners. Compared to Kesh, Tox was a Cordon Bleu chef, and orders of magnitude cleaner.

He reached the galley and heard the sounds of a dishwasher in distress out at the back of the room. A little bit of investigation revealed a pair of stubby legs protruding from under the machine, and some mild swearing accompanied by the dishwasher belching out dirty plates in rhythm. Kuru grinned. Business as usual.

The pair of legs seemed to register his presence. A slightly strained but still cheery voice called out from under the dishwasher, "hey, couldja hand me the nanowelder, it's inna box t'ma left". Kuru looked around. The box was to the right. He shrugged. Everyone makes mistakes, even trained Observers. He retrieved the nanowelder and gave it to the outstretched hand that had joined the pair of legs. The hand withdrew and for the next minute the peculiar high pitched whine of nanowelding filled the room. The dishwasher groaned and suddenly started spitting out clean plates. The pair of legs emitted a sigh of satisfaction and slid out from under the machine, revealing a grime-covered Tox.