"You sure we got time for this?" said Do-Wop.

            "All the time in the world," said Sushi, bending over an open panel behind which could be seen complex circuitry. "Quiet, now, I need to concentrate. And make sure nobody's watching."

            "Yeah, right," said Do-Wop. He scratched himself and pretended to goof off, gazing back down the little alley next to the casino offices. Night never fell on Lorelei, but it was early evening by Galactic Standard Time, which was the system observed on the space station. There were a few people on the streets-those finishing an early dinner, or casino workers coming off shift-but nobody seemed to pay much attention to a couple of men in maintenance uniforms crouching by an open panel with tools spread around. Just act like we belong there, Sushi had told him, and it was apparently working.

            "Nobody payin' attention," he reported. He peered back to see how Sushi was doing. The job involved removing a particular chip and replacing it with a slightly more complex one designed to fit in the same slot. That sounded easy, but sometimes the installation didn't resemble the pictures in the manuals. An easy job could become impossible if you only had limited time. There was a wire from some previous repair that was going to have to be disconnected, moved aside, and reconnected when the job was done. A few minutes longer. Well, that's why they always told you to allow more time than you thought you needed to pull off a job.

            And now there was somebody looking at them. "Soosh!" he hissed, and tried to act as if he wasn't nervous. "Casino guard."

            "Act calm," said Sushi, snapping the new chip into place, and pocketing the old one. "Now all I gotta do is reconnect the repair wire."

            "So hurry up and do it. He's comin'!"

            "Oh, in that case..." Sushi took his soldering laser and quickly played it over the base of the chip they'd removed. He stood up and said loudly, "Look at this piece of crap."

            "What the hell?" said Do-Wop, and then the security guard was looking over his shoulder.

            "They had the wrong value in. No wonder the bastard burned out so soon. Some guy was too lazy to go back to the shop for the right one." Sushi took up the obligatory repairman's critique of his predecessor's shoddy work.

            "You guys workin' late," said the guard.

            "Yeah, Liverakos told us finish up this last job," said Sushi. Of course he'd found out the casino maintenance chief's name. "They got a new kid on next shift, and he's late already."

            "Yeah, I seen him around," said the guard. There were always new kids around. "Guess he won't be here long."

            "Unless he's related to somebody," griped Do-Wop.

            He and the guard went on about the ills of nepotism and favoritism on the job for a couple of minutes while Sushi quietly knelt down and finished reconnecting the wire.

            "OK, we can close her up," he said. "And then I can find out if my wife's gonna kill me for getting home late."

            "Lucky guy, you got a wife," said Do-Wop.

            "You call that lucky?" said Sushi, and the guard laughed. They wrestled the panel back in place while the guard kibitzed, and Do-Wop tightened the fasteners. Sushi started packing the tools.

            "OK, see you boys around," said the guard, wandering back down the alleyway.

            "See you," said Sushi. It probably wouldn't be too soon, though. Unless something suddenly went very wrong, they'd be in deep space less than an hour from now. They finished packing up their tools, cleaned up the small amount of debris the "repair" had generated, and walked casually out of the alley.

            Across the street, the security guard was standing, looking completely uninterested in them. They walked away quickly.