Morning check

Every morning at station time 0600, Mae Kurtz put on her boots, walked the eighty metres of corridor to the relay room and checked that the big antenna was still pointed at the sun that warmed a planet she had not stood on in nine years. It always was. She checked anyway. That was the job.

Tern Station sat on the far side of a moon so small and so dead that the survey had given it a number instead of a name. Three people lived on it. Mae fixed things. Bartholomew cooked, and ran the hydroponics, and sang badly in the shower. Joss kept the logs, answered the monthly message from home and said, twice a week, that they would all be replaced by a machine before long. Nobody had replaced them yet.