On Day 9—five days before the conference in the Banana when Doc Dubois had told them about the Hard Rain and the president had told them that they were never coming home—she had programmed several of her robots—the ones with the most effective cutting heads—to begin making that hollow deeper. Perhaps she’d had a premonition of what was about to happen. Or perhaps she was just doing her job; mining robots would need to have the ability to carry out programmed activities such as boring tunnels into rock, and it was high time she began experimenting with such tasks.