Not long after the rat (who had Orange Yellow identification stripes on its tail, by the way) had been moved to the Recycling Rooms of Building 23, Raymond and Eugene were there alone (well, alone except for Orange Yellow).  They were working on a plan that had occurred to Raymond the first time he had visited Orange Yellow in her new home, when he had seen a broken and unused tablet sitting on the shelves there.  Not only had its screen been broken, but also a good part of its innards.  However, there were a few parts left intact, including the camera, and it had gotten Raymond to thinking.

Could that camera be affixed to a rat-harness?

Now the concept of a portable camera worn on the head, was not a new one.  Mars even had a few, plus there were cameras inside the mechsuits (pieces of construction equipment that were in the form of large bipeds, controlled by a human inside them).  Also, the cameras for the tablets were very small, basically the smallest they could be while still being easily manipulated in manufacturing.  They used very little power, so it didn't take much of a power cell to keep them operating.  The tablets also had a wireless connection to the local Martian network, so it was not difficult (in principle) to remove most of the tablet, and be left with a small camera that fed its output over the network to Raymond's tablet.  All this required was a bit of wiring, and the ability to look up technical specs from the library, both of which Raymond was well practiced at.

What was more challenging, was to find a harness to keep it on Orange Yellow, which she could not chew off.  She made short work of the first two attempts, one made of fabric (there were a number of torn or otherwise unusable garments in the Recycling Rooms), the next made of thin electrical wire.  Raymond had decided on a sort of chain mail, wrapping a thicker wire around a very small metal rod (to help turn it into a uniform circular shape), and then clipping the wire (so that it fell apart into many small rings).  Raymond was using needle-nosed pliers to put together a harness that would keep the camera on Orange Yellow's chest, and the small power cell riding on her back.

Eugene's task, in all this, was to play with Orange Yellow to keep her occupied, and occasionally bring her over for a fitting.  It may also be that it was Orange Yellow's task to keep Eugene occupied.

Raymond had gotten pretty close to the full harness, just a few dozen more rings to loop in and close together using the pliers (which Raymond was quite dextrous with by now), when they heard a conversation in the hallway.  It was, they immediately realized, Lucas and Noah.  One consequence of living in a community as small as the Martian Colony had been until recently, is that everyone could identify everyone else more or less immediately, by sound or by silhouette or by body posture when viewed from behind and across the entire length of Building 3.  Building 23 was mostly empty, but Lucas and Noah still seemed to be keeping their voices somewhat lower than normal, if not quite whispering.  This, naturally, caused both Raymond and Eugene to immediately freeze, and listen very carefully to the conversation, as best they could hear it through the closed door.

"Why on Mars would she care about Building 7 right now?" asked Lucas.  "The nuclear plant's been shut down for 19 Earth years.  The fuel was almost all spent back then, and it was put into a safe mode for long-term storage."

"She claims that it could have been damaged by quakes," said Noah.  "But that's kind of my point.  Why would she care about Building 7 now?  Well, no good reason."

There followed a long pause, which indicated that Lucas was not following.

"Therefore," said Noah, his tone of voice indicating that he was explaining something that he thought should be obvious, "it's for a not-so-good reason."

"Like what?" asked Lucas.

"Stirring up trouble, to discredit Olivia, which seems to be her whole focus," said Noah.  "You've seen her messages back to Earth; her whole focus seems to be on painting events here in the worst possible light."

"Why?" asked Lucas.  "What would be the point of that?"

"I'm not sure," said Noah, "but I'm also not sure it matters.  She seems to be set on steering things towards evacuating the whole Colony."

"By this point, I'm not totally sure I would mind that," said Lucas.  "Some of them are useful, but if losing Jacob and Joshua is the cost of getting rid of Helene, maybe that's a fair price."

"Not just evacuating the Earthlings," said Noah.  "She wants to find an excuse to shut down the whole thing.  Who knows why, but it's pretty clear that's what she's driving at.  That's why the old nuclear power plant interests her; if she can create doubt about its safety, however unfounded, it might convince Earth to order a complete evacuation."

"I'm not going," said Lucas.  "I don't care what she says.  We're doing fine here; better than ever, actually."

"You're right," said Noah, "but that's what I'm worried about."

There followed another long pause, before Noah once again spelled it for Lucas.

"How far is she willing to go, do you suppose, to force people to leave?"