Cooper couldn't help but smile when she thought back to the three days of rest that Lieutenant Commander Marshall had arranged for her. 'I sure wish that I was still serving in engineering. As tiring as the work was, I had a connection with the crew in that department,' she thought as she robotically ate what the cook had left for her.

While the taste of the food had mattered when they first boarded the Lexington, it didn't matter anymore. 'Heck, I've lost five kilograms of mass over the past three months. That's even though I force myself to eat two full meals a day,' Cooper thought.

It had not pleased Captain Wilson when he had learned about the three days of 'light duty' that Marshall had assigned to her and Simmons. In fact, by all accounts, he had gone nuclear when he read the weekly personnel reports. It wasn't long after that incident occurred that the daily rotations began for the six candidates. 'As if two shifts in a single day could give us a handle on how things work in a given department,' Cooper thought as she shoveled another fork of food into her mouth. 'I can barely remember the names of the crew I work with, much less what they do.'

It didn't help that they were now located in the outermost group of Jupiter's trailing Trojans. That meant that all the crews were busy doing their jobs. 'They simply don't have the time to train someone as green as we are.'

When she realized her plate was empty, Cooper quickly got up and put her tray away before heading to the drone control room. Since it was in the opposite Arc, she had to hurry if she was going to make it in time. 'Of course, it couldn't be on this Arc today,' she thought as she rode the lift to the hallway with the connecting lifts. Then she entered another elevator to take her to the main hull. Once there, she had to hop in the elevator opposite of her to take it to the secondary Arc. Finally, she had to change over to the local lifts to take her to the proper level.

'Four separate elevator rides just to get from the mess hall to the drone control room,' Cooper thought while carefully walking in the somewhat lower gravity. Unlike the bridge and the mess hall, this level was closer to the main hull than to the outer rim. 'We're lucky that Hope only has a single ring. We won't have to struggle with changes in gravity like they do on this ship.'

As she entered the office, she could hear Lieutenant Smith on the comms, apparently with the bridge. "Commander Jaques, I agree the trojan is a class C type and that it probably contains water. My concern is that the low mass of the rock in question means that it is probably a rubble pile just waiting to shatter."

Cooper winced at the thought of trying the mine water from a rock like the one in question. 'Rubble piles' were a pain to mine since they fell apart easily. They were basically mountains of little rocks that were held together by each other's gravity. 'One wrong move and the asteroid in question could disintegrate, scattering bits of itself throughout the Lagrange point,' Cooper thought.

"Yes, sir, will do," Lieutenant Smith said as he shut off his headset. He then hurled it across the room in the low gravity. "Shit!"

"Umm, pardon my intrusion, but I'm Cooper. I'm supposed to report here for the day," she said in a friendly manner, hoping to defuse the situation.

"Oh, that was today?" Smith looked at his daily calendar via his workstation. "Yep, today is the day."

Cooper held out her hand for a shake.

After shaking her hand, he said, "Nice to meet you. I'm Lieutenant Smith."

"Nice to meet you. Now what can I do to be of assistance?"

"Well, first of all, you can help me find my headset."

---

The reason that Smith had gotten so upset was a mid-sized carbonaceous asteroid.

Unfortunately, it was too large to be 'bagged and baked.' This was the slang used by most mining crews to the process of enclosing a small asteroid in mylar and heating it. Eventually, the heat rose high enough to turn the frozen moisture to a gas, which was then vented into a containment tank for cryogenic distillation.

At the same time, the asteroid in question was probably way too easy to disrupt with more conventual methods.

Normally, a miner would just curse and move on to the next rock. However, it lay almost directly in the Lexington's course. That was why Commander Jaques insisted Smith do another spectral survey of the slowly rotating asteroid.

"That's eighteen and a half hours of drone time that we could be using to look for a better target," Smith said.

"Does the Lexington have any spare drones? We could use the spare to survey other asteroids, couldn't we?"

"We have them, but they require a spacewalk to prepare. The drones are being stored near main engineering."

"Give me a half hour and I will be out of the airlock," Cooper said with a grin.

---

Three hours later, Cooper was finished with the drone's preparations and was sitting in the drone control room. "She's ready to go."

"Yes!" Smith said, a broad smile on his face. "Now we just have to figure out where to send it."

"Okay..." Cooper replied. "Don't you have any ideas?"

"Actually, I have three candidates in mind, but we can only explore two of them without refueling the drone."

"So, how did you decide on these three?" Cooper asked.

"I checked to see what asteroids were roughly on the Lexington's course and then I removed all the class M rocks. That left us with two class C and one class S asteroids."

"Do you have any information about their sizes?" Cooper asked.

"I have a rough idea, but the class C's are so dark that it is hard to get an accurate reading. The class S one is very bright even for a stony asteroid and is much larger than the other two."

"So the class S might even have a large layer of ice under a surface of dust-like regolith?" Cooper asked.

"That is what I think, at least. We won't know for sure until I can get some more information with a drone."

"Have you talked to one of the astronomers about it?"

"They want me to send probes to all three since they are less interested in mining water than getting as much data about the asteroids as possible."

"Well, that's no help," Cooper commented as she tried to come up with more ideas.

"After the latest survey requested by the Commander could you repurpose that drone?" Cooper asked. "After all, the three asteroids in question aren't that far off of our course now, are they?"

"No, they are not," Smith said as he started typing into his workstation. "I can get a drone to visit all three of the rocks in question. The only thing is the repurposed drone will be entirely empty of propellant once it limps back to the Lexington."

"It is possible though, isn't it?" Cooper inquired.

"Yes, it is possible," Smith admitted as he ran some more numbers through his workstation. "Thanks for the idea."

"You are very welcome," Cooper said as Smith became deeply engrossed in his calculations.

---

After working the rest of her shift, Cooper went and got her tray in the galley. Then she went and took a seat at her normal table.

For a change, Watanabe and Anderson were eating as well. "So, what are we having for dinner?" Cooper asked as she took the top off her entrée. Sitting there was a 'baked fish' dinner. "Why couldn't it be fish and chips?" she complained. "Well, it isn't that bad with catsup."

"You can have my catsup if you want. Personally, I prefer it with tartar sauce," Anderson said with the ghost of a smile.

'She doesn't look good at all,' Cooper thought as she took Anderson's catsup. 'The poor girl looks like she is sick. All these double shifts were really wearing on her.'

"Anderson, do you feel alright?" Watanabe asked her. "You look a little pale."

"I'm okay," the gaunt girl replied. "I just need some rest is all."

"Do you want me to take you to med lab?" I offered as I tried to devour my meal.

"No, I will be fine." Anderson said.

"Look your are positively gaunt," Cooper explained. "Even if it is just lack of rest, the doctor can write an e-mail to Captain Wilson to let you have the rest that you need."

"Can the doctor do that?" Anderson asked and then smiled at Cooper. Unlike the earlier smile, this was an honest to goodness grin.

"Yes, she can."

"Okay let's go," Anderson said almost falling over in her haste.

---