Grace's coffee cup had been moved.
Not far. It was still on the lab bench where he'd left it, resting on top of the open notebook he'd been using to record his on-hand supplies. The handle was still pointed towards the supply cupboard he'd been itemizing. At a casual glance, he would have never been able to spot the difference.
But he distinctly remembered setting it down so that it covered up the line that listed the quantity of nitrogen that remained on board. Seeing that number made him think about how much he'd had to use to purge the ship of the loose taumoeba, and then he couldn't stop himself of thinking how Rocky didn't have that option and that he had likely already fallen victim to the taumaoeba running rampant through the ship and eating all of his fuel and leaving him no protection from the deadly radiation of space and Grace was on his way but what if he didn't make it in time and —
So yes. Grace had deliberately covered that number.
But now the coffee cup was sitting just a few millimetres to the left, revealing the point zero three at the end.
He'd heard a clatter earlier when he'd been busy in the systems corridor doing routine checks, like something had dropped and hit the floor. At the time, he'd frozen in place, his blood turning to ice. There was no one else on the ship with him. No one else who could have dropped something, or made that noise.
Maybe Armando had activated for some reason, and knocked something over? Only, no, Armando went dormant when Grace wasn't in the dormitory, and on top of that, the sound had seemed to come from the lab.
"Hey, Mary?" Grace called out, licking his lips nervously. "What was that?"
"Unknown query," the ship replied pleasantly.
"That, uh. That noise? Did you hear that?"
"There are many noises aboard this ship, Dr. Grace. Please clarify."
"This ship has not crashed. There are no current obstacles on our course."
"No, I meant the...sound in the lab? Just a few seconds ago?"
He wasn't sure if she meant that she didn't know what the sound was, or if she didn't understand the question. Either way, this seemed to be going nowhere. He glanced back down the corridor towards the lab, his heart pounding and his mouth going dry. He nervously licked his lips again.
And then he very deliberately turned back to the panel on the wall he'd been checking, eyes locking on the clipboard in his hand. "Whelp, that's terrifying. Anyways. Mary, can you change the orientation on this panel? I want to make sure it's still functioning in centrifuge mode."
Eventually he'd finished his checks, however. With nothing else to distract him, he'd headed back towards the lab capsule, his clipboard tucked under his arm. He was still a little bit on edge, but the longer that he'd gone without hearing any other strange noises, the more his heart rate settled. Maybe he was just hearing things. Maybe some small piece of space debris happened to bounce off of the Hail Mary's hull, and the noise had sounded like it was coming from the lab. It was probably nothing.
But then he'd arrived back in the lab, and immediately noticed that his coffee cup had been moved.
He stared at the coffee cup. It didn't stare back because it was an inanimate object, but for some reason Grace couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched. His skin itched, and he started scratching at the back of his neck, desperately trying to alleviate the sensation.
"Hey, Mary?" he called out, cautiously taking a seat, his eyes still locked on the cup.
He stared at the cup for one long moment. It had been moved. Something had moved it. Something that wasn't him. Mary would know what had done it. She had sensors, monitors. If he asked, she'd tell him.
The coffee cup continued to sit there. Grace pursed his lips, considering.
And then he very carefully pushed it to the side with the tip of his finger, so that it was fully covering the nitrogen value again, and picked up the manual he'd been paging through to brush up on the ship's functions. To heck with that. "You know what? Never mind."
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