Sole credit for a catastrophic collision with an incoming 250,000-kilogram repair ship would not make a good line on your resume. Or your tombstone.
It was mostly a robot-choreographed routine by now. Still, my perfectionist engineering anxiety always kicked up when a visitor was en route.
Awareness intruded into disembodied thought-space, tight itchy reminders of unruly brunette hair pulled back into my usual ponytail. Wrench in hand, I paused to re-align the wayward strands and assess the day’s work. A sprawling Medusa’s coil of tubes and wires emerged from the external airlock’s nitric monoxide analyzer cabinet, in need of final re-assembly and testing. Reaching up to prevent the errant hair from falling across my eyes, I absently allowed the tooth-colored ratchet wrench made of recycled lunar regolith to slip from my hand.
The wrench didn’t actually fall, of course, but merely hung in zero gravity. No stray hairs needed smoothing, either; nervous habits die hard.
All four walls of the external airlock were crammed with equipment, every surface a bed of essential instrumentation. Screens streamed realtime data from CPUs, switchboards, dial-boxes and keyboards, insulated wires winding from electrical panels to penetrate deep into sealed, hidden inputs. I returned the wrench to its compartment in a toolbelt around my waist.