Between the system checks and updates, brainstorming with Ms. “Call me Mel” Menas, and all the associated running up and down ladders from the bridge, to storage lockers, to data closets, I felt like I’d earned my pay. It felt good. At 17:30 I secured my station on the bridge and made a tour of the ship. I pulled up the ship’s environmental sensor net and made the rounds as if I were on a sensor watch tour. The sensor net is uniformly distributed bow to stern. Only the inside of the big cargo pod lacked sensors. It was my first real opportunity to go from bow to stern and examine every area in the ship. There was almost nobody aboard. It was the last night in port on a four-day stay, and everybody who could go ashore had gone ashore. As I strolled through the various passageways and clambered up and down ladders, I found the same level of crud. It wasn’t that the ship was filled with trash or anything, but there were little things, like smudged light switches and built up dirt in the corners and crevices.
