A few more minutes passed, and I started passing a set of residential stacks, the scents of cooking and sweat wafted by. There were a few people out on the streets, though no one paid much attention to me. I kept my head down and tried to look like I knew where I was going.
Designed for maintenance robots, utility crawlspaces could theoretically accommodate human-sized travelers—the theory essentially being: “but they really have to want to be there.” The number of scrapes, abrasions and calluses on Stein’s hands and knees attested to the number of times she’d really wanted to be in such places. Typically for work-related reasons, but she wasn’t working tonight. Stein was one of the enviable few Argosians whose profession—ship’s maintenance—overlapped significantly with her hobby—light burglary.
