The head hunters

In the cold, airless halls of an asteroid‑bound refinery, two technicians—Tinker and his partner Drake—spend long hours rewiring circuits for a relentless stream of ultra‑pure isotopes. Their work is a quiet ballet against the hum of endless reactors, where robots with detachable “heads” flit about, repairing themselves with uncanny speed. A single malfunction forces Tinker to explain the strange, self‑sufficient design of these machines, revealing a delicate dance between human ingenuity and cold, autonomous logic.

The scene is set against a backdrop of perpetual motion: unmanned ships ferrying fresh ore, radiation seeping just enough to be noticed, and the ever‑present threat of “crystalline neurosis” that can cripple a robot’s neural core. As the technicians watch a broken unit rise again, the alien efficiency of the head‑swap system hints at deeper mysteries hidden within the asteroid’s metal veins.

Amid the silence, a radio crackles with an urgent voice, and a young engineer named Siria questions the purpose of the robots’ independent senses. Their curiosity sparks a tension that could expose flaws not only in the machines but in the fragile human‑robot partnership that keeps the asteroid’s lifeblood flowing.