Not long after, Noah happened to go to Building 3, late in the evening when no one else was there.  During the daylight hours, as the only place with an abundance of natural light, people had a tendency to go to Building 3 whenever they had an excuse to do so; even after the agrobots had taken over most of the labor involved in tending the crops, it was the natural center of the community.  After the sun set, however, although the view of the stars was often fantastic (when there was not too much dust in the thin Martian atmosphere), it was more comfortable and cozy in one's own apartment, and people tended to go there.

Except for Liam, who stayed in Building 3 long after the sun had set.

Most people took this to be simply Liam, who had become somewhat grumpy and irritable since the arrival of the Earthlings, refusing to accept the fact that the agrobots now did (faster, and more thoroughly) everything that he once did for the crops.  Noah suspected there was more going on.  He did not, exactly, sneak into Building 3, but he did not do anything to announce his presence, either.  He stood at the threshold between the first dome and the rest, looking out over the tables with plants on them, and the robots moving from one to the next to tend them, and in the middle of it all, Liam hunched over the pots on the tables, peering closely at them, one after another.

The robots ignored Liam, and he ignored them.  Noah observed them both, for several long minutes, before walking quietly up to the table Liam was at.

"What's up?" asked Noah.  Liam started, as if caught in the act of doing something illicit, but as far as Noah could tell he wasn't doing anything except looking.  Very closely.

"Oh, hey Noah," he said after turning around.  "Nothing much."

"How are the agrobots doing?  You looking for mistakes they make?" asked Noah with a smirk.

"No, no, they're not making any mistakes," said Liam.

"Not turning over any more tables, like that first night?"

"No, nothing like that."

There followed a long pause.  Noah considered asking again, but then decided to just look, very closely, at the same pot that Liam had just been examining.  He bent over, and looked very closely.  The soil was dark and damp and richly odorous of organic matter.  The lighting was not good, but in the starlight, after he looked long enough, he finally saw what Liam was looking at.

"Oh," he said.

"Yeah," answered Liam.

"I see it," said Noah.  "What is it?"

"Not sure," said Liam.  "Maybe a poppy?  There were poppy seeds in some of the spaceship's foods.  They weren't supposed to eat them until they got to Martian gravity; the in-flight food was all the goopy stuff that didn't scatter crumbs; I guess it's hard to clean up in very low gravity.  Once they got to Mars, they started opening up the foods that had crumbs or seeds or that sort of thing.  It might also be sesame, it's still too small to tell for sure."

"So, you gonna save it?" asked Noah.  The agrobots had been programmed to remove any plants which were not intentionally planted in each pot.

Liam didn't answer.  Noah took that for an answer (which is also how Liam had intended it).  Liam had been saving unapproved plant life since his childhood, before the Evacuation.

"So, how is Olivia doing lately, do you think?" asked Noah.

"Oh, well, it's a little frustrating sometimes with some of the Earthlings, but she likes having her parents around, that's for sure."

"Yeah, that makes sense.  Hey, so, we're going to change the programming of the agrobots, and burn new control chips, to deal with the rat issue.  If they see or hear any rodents, they'll pursue them, until they leave the building."

"That's good," said Liam, "I hope it works."

"Lucas seems to think it could be done," said Noah, "I'm helping him a bit with the programming, but it's pretty straightforward."

Then, he looked up from the plants on the tables and added, "maybe I should also change their programming so they don't eliminate any unintended plants that happen to pop up?"

Liam's eyes widened a bit, and he seemed uncertain what to say.

"But you might want to keep looking, because some people might not like it, and people are harder to reprogram than robots, you know?"

Noah walked out, and Liam looked after him, silent and motionless for some time.  Then, very carefully, he extracted the seedling (poppy or sesame or perhaps something else) from its pot, and put it into another, smaller one, which he placed in his tool case and then carried with him as he left the building.