For the Crew!

The message was floating around that the whole crew were going on
shore leave, but Chris couldn't leave just yet! He'd practically just
come aboard! Since he had made a commitment to the ship's crew, he
really should keep it. For a little while at least, can't miss the
trial!
Ten seconds later he was in the hall on his hands and knees,
following the scutters around. It was kind of fun. After several
things were fixed, maintained, re-painted and dry cleaned the ship
looked like brand new. Of course this took a while, but in this time,
Zodar developed a wonderful new skill!
He could now speak fluent Scutter!
Not that it's that helpful, they don't say much. But one Scutter told
him something intriguing. It told Chris that his friend was helping
him out in every way he could.
Chris's mind thought back to when he arrived... Why had he been
assigned and transported to Blue Dwarf before it had arrived at the
Jupiter Station?
Then suddenly the pieces locked into place.
You see, Zodar had a good friend on earth. From an early age, his
friend was always working towards being a spy, cracking encrypted
codes and hacking mainframes at the age of 6.
It is now 5 years after Mr X. (I can't blow his cover, not now...)
last spoke to Zodar with the words "I'll always look out for you..."
Back then, Zodar laughed at him, but what he said was starting to
make some sense.
But then again, it made absolutely no sense.
Chris wasn't in any kind of trouble that he knew of. There must have
been something or someone bad at the station that just after he left.
Something which placed him in some sort of danger...
"I have to contact X!"
Luckily, he had salvaged an old radio and some other gear from the
engineering deck. He set to work on making the Radio's transmission
as strong as possible (It has to reach Earth). This took a while,
because Chris was not thoroughly trained in the area of Inventions.
But after an hour of "trial & error" inventing, (Which resulted in
his desk lamp exploding. Don't worry, he fixed it right away.) the
radio would reach the Sun if needed.
Chris tuned it to Mr X's covert channel. All spies have a covert
radio channel and this was his. Chris knew beacuse the frequency was
always 50hz; X's favortite number.
After establishing radio contact, X told Chris about the reason he
had to leave the Jupiter station so abruptly.
It was because of Father Zodar.
X would have rather died than let his 'ole buddy get bored to death
by his father's ramblings. They were bound to be threatening. You
know the kind; "If you don't pick up your heels and make a good
impression, you're going to soil our family name for eternity!"...
Good thing is that he's gone now, he transferred back to earth as
soon as he heard Zodar wasn't on the station.
Also, Chris's sudden departure was actually a result of X hacking
into the JMC Mainframe. He moved Zodar's required boarding date
forward so the Academy rushed Zodar off as fast as they could, to
meet the deadline; 5 mins.
This was a bit of a let down. Zodar was secretly hoping for something
like 'He forgot to return a book at the academy and a guy was on his
way to break his legs'. He thanked X for clearing that up and signed
off.
Not a very serious issue, but Chris thought it'd be safer for
everyone involved if he kept this a secret. He really didn't feel
like getting busted for such a minor occurance.
(But if his father found out he'd kill him. Darth Vader style...)
But now Chris was in a hurry.
He was late for shore leave!