Russell Obwobwo was the youngest crewmember of the SS Andromeda Clipper. A recent graduate of the Merchant Space Academy, the nineteen-year-old was on the engineering detail’s third watch. His duties included making minor repairs and adjustments throughout the ship as needed. At the moment, he was working on a balky waste control pump in the port dorsal cable and piping access tunnel. This was the second time he had to crawl along the piping to fix this particular pump. Earlier, he had gotten it to work again by loosening the mounting bolts and retightening them using the correct torque setting. The shipyard had installed it improperly. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with it this time. Russell was proud of his ship. The Andromeda Clipper was the newest ship in the Lyman Space Shipping Lines, and he was lucky to be aboard. It was a new fast auto-container ship, designed to carry auto-containers into planetary orbit, where they detached from the ship and automatically landed at the planet’s spaceports. Once unloaded and then loaded with new cargo, the auto-containers automatically joined up with the Clipper or remained dormant to await her arrival. The automation made it a significant improvement on the older cargo lighter carriers. There were several containers to drop off and more to pick up at Rigel, the next stop.
