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  I smiled at her as I sat behind my desk and opened a drawer. I had some background in science, materials science specifically, but I’d also gone to school for finance, and my focus had been on that more; hence, this business of mine.

  Still, science was integral to my business—and to my survival in space!—so I needed to at least have a rudimentary idea of how things worked on my ship. Because I had Babs and Gary on here for most of the science issues and because the financial aspects of my business kept me distracted day to day, my mind sometimes sieve-like processed the science things. So I made Babs give me refresher courses occasionally.

  She had done some teaching in a university, so she was very good at educating me. And whenever she would do that, she would get really into it, moving her quite muscular arms around very expressively, her long fingers pointing and drawing circles and arcs in the air, as she was doing now.

  She sat forward on her chair and explained about how hydroambin was first split with Landreau pulses, which splitting would leave ambin molecules alone and “hydrogen atoms” alone. “Once anything’s been bound with ambin, it’s no longer normal matter; the hydrogen in hydroambin’s been ambinized. When those hydrogen atoms are released via the initial fission of hydroambin, the hydrogen atoms are then fused together into ambohelium, releasing lots of energy, and mostly furilons and quasi-neutrons, which are used to split any remaining hydroambin the Landreau pulses missed, or for starting another fission-fusion cycle from more fuel-rod insertion, or the furilons and neutrons are absorbed. Most of the resulting lone ambin and other products are shot into the next chambers, where they’re burned or reduced into their components, or they’re reabsorbed or recycled, or used to power the ship without combustion. Some of the energy released in the first chamber is also used for powering the ship.

  “Engineering controls how much and how long the whole process goes on, depending on how much we need for thrust or power or whatever. Right now, the beam engine’s down for maintenance and we’re stationary; the reactor’s off, and we’re on zenite and battery power.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said now. “When I was down there, Gary showed me a plasma in the main reactor shaft. It was so strange.”

  Babs nodded slowly. “It’s the electromagnetics in the shafts and near the chamber, and in the rod constructions, and then any excess heat from the chambers—crazy things can happen around there.”

  “I hope not that crazy,” I said. “I’m also hoping the atmosphere calms and we can get out of here within a few hours.”

  “Me too,” Babs said. “I’m supposed to take Derry to the mineral museum on Sereska Station; she’s so excited about it. …You know, I thought it would feel odd having her on here, but it seems really comfortable. I’m glad we made the jump in our relationship—and that you found a place for her on the crew—thanks for that.”

  I smiled at Babs and typed some ICFC information about Genteran Station into my computer.

  “So,” Babs said now, “did you see Chen and May finally hooked up?”

  I raised an eyebrow at Babs over my computer screen. “No, I didn’t see that.”

  “It took them too long, don’t you think? They’ve been working together on here for two years.”

  “Is that like a lifetime to you?”

  Babs rolled her eyes. “Hardly. But I could tell they liked each other from early on.”

  Lately it seemed like everyone on my ship was pairing up, except for me. I worked for most of the day for every day we were in space, and we were in space for most of the year. If you didn’t hook up then, you were only rarely hooking up. It was hard to maintain a relationship when you and your partner were living in separate solar systems.

  But, I was the captain of the Demeter; I couldn’t afford to get overtly involved with anyone on my ship.

  Now I said to Babs, “Is it just me or is everyone hooking up here lately? Maybe there’s something in the filtered air.”

  “Or, just being in close proximity and the perpetual animal need to get laid are responsible.”

  I snorted a little, probably too low for Babs to hear. But it had been longer than I wanted to think about since I’d gotten laid, no matter the perpetual need.

  I said slowly now, “Babs, you and the others on here are lucky: you both agree to be on-ship, so you’re together every day. I’ve told you my marriage lasted less than a year. I didn’t have my own ship then, but I shipped off one month on someone else’s ship, came back two months later, and didn’t know why the hell I’d married Peter in the first place, when I knew I couldn’t make it work. He should have come with me. The marriage might have lasted then. But he was so close to his family on Earth, and we were both quite young.”

  “When did you first meet Gary?”

  “I’m sorry?” I said, laying a form onto my desk. I glanced at Babs fast, then I opened one of my desk drawers to get a pen.

  “When you first met—were you both married then?”

  “I didn’t know you knew Gary was married years ago. You’re always butting heads with him.”

  Babs waved a careless, so-what? hand. “That’s just work stuff. Lately we always shoot the breeze when our downtime aligns.”

  “Really?” I asked, my eyebrows rising. “Well, Gary and I actually first met after I was divorced, and he was getting married a few months later…. But what does this have to do with anything? And why didn’t you just ask him this?”

  “I kind of didn’t want to. It’s better to ask you.”

  “Why?” I persisted.

  “Because we’re both women,” Babs said, and that annoyed me. She always liked to play mysterious, word-game conversations, but I just wasn’t in the mood for that now.

  I was thinking about the weather again and how I should prepare a text-message to send later, indicating that I might be late to the next drop-off. I had actually planned to get to Sereska a day earlier than necessary, so, even if we wound up having to stay here on Genteran overnight, I’d probably make it to the Sereksa drop-off on time. But then it was possible we’d be stuck here more than one day….

  I sighed hard now, and Babs misunderstood my sigh. “I’m sorry,” she said fast then, “I shouldn’t have pried.”

  “Did you pry? Into what?”

  Babs didn’t respond, but she was staring right at me.

  “So, anyway,” I said then, “I’ve really got to finish up this paperwork now. Thanks for the refresher course before.”

  “Anytime, Captain,” Babs said, standing up. She quickly saluted me; then she spun around and left my office, walking stiffly and formally like a soldier, while I laughed at her retreating back.

  *

  I was still in there working when Geena from the Demeter’s dining room intercommed me. “Bill and I want to serve dinner early, like, now. Is that all right?”

  A hard, relieved breath shot out of my mouth. “Yeah—that’s very good, actually. I’m sorry I didn’t think of that sooner and tell you to do that—or tell you directly what was going on. We might be stuck here for a while.”

  “I know. Chen was just here. I figure being on Genteran longer might be a blessing: I could see about restocking a few things.”

  “I wouldn’t expect to find much at the station,” I said in a dry voice.

  “Yeah—I’ve heard that…. So, I’ll make an announcement about dinner now—will you be here?”

  This trip out, there were fifty people on my ship, including me. But I normally didn’t sit in the dining room when most everyone was there, and I wasn’t in the mood for breaking that habit now.

  So I finally told Geena, “I’ve got to check on May in the bay. Save me a plate, and I’ll pick it up later!”

  *

  In the cargo bay, I found May bent over one of the red hydroambin containers; she was using a highlighter to make marks on the container’s white label. May and her assistants had stacked the red containers in the back of the bay, close to where the biggest doors to the rest of the ship we
re; May was in her green overalls now, so she really stuck out against the complementary red color of the containers.

  “How’s it going?” I asked her.

  She turned her head to me, a frown shifting across her face as she straightened up. “I don’t care for the sloppy way these containers are labeled. There’s no specific ambin grade listed on some of them! I just wanted to make that more obvious for when engineering comes to get them….” Her dark brow rose at me. “You know, Lydia, because we got rid of only half the excess cargo from Jarox, we’re still too tightly packed in here. Can you sell the rest to Sereska?”

  I was frowning now. “I don’t know yet. I’ll ask them that in my message to them…well, maybe not yet because I don’t know what the hell my schedule will be,” I said, sighing heavily.

  *

  A little later, I left the cargo bay and went up to the dining room to get a plate full of pasta.

  I brought it down to my office, and I was behind my desk eating that meal and doing bookkeeping work when my intercom went off—Gary’s voice again, rushed this time. “Lydia, could you come down to engineering again?”

  I swallowed the food in my mouth and smiled. “Got another plasma to show me?”

  “I wish I did—no. This is something else. This is a problem.”

  *

  My heart was galloping as fast as my legs as I rushed through the ship toward engineering. When I finally got there, I saw that both Gary and Steve were in red protective suits now, and they were standing over by the reactor, in front of that same shaft as earlier.

  Gary walked up to me and asked me through the exterior speaker on his suit, “When we were here earlier, did you see anything unusual inside the shaft?”

  I frowned. “What? No—I mean I don’t know. It’s pretty dark in there. I…”

  “Well, Steve saw something before, and we’re trying to figure out what.” There was a look on Gary’s face—a twitching, worried look.

  Now my heart really began running away with itself. “Saw what—what did it look like?”

  “I don’t know,” Gary said. “It’s not there anymore. The sensor camera near there wasn’t pointed at that spot right then, so it picked up nothing. And there was nothing on any other view. Karen’s crunching some numbers now, to see if she can get anything from the other sensor data.” Gary pushed the communicator-button on his suit. “Steve, come here.”

  I watched Steve turn around and walk closer, his tall, suited-up form moving fast.

  When he reached us, Gary told him: “Describe what you saw again—I want Lydia to hear.”

  “Well,” Steve said, his voice his normal deep one, “there was a thick spot of black and blue—it was hovering over the rods, farther back toward the back wall. I thought I saw the spot move.”

  “So couldn’t it have been a plasma?” I asked.

  “I’ve never seen a black and blue plasma inside the shaft,” Gary replied.

  I looked from one man to the other, but they didn’t seem inclined to add anything more.

  “So what the hell is the problem then?” I said. “No offense, Steve, but the shaft is shadowy. And just because a black and blue plasma has never appeared there before doesn’t mean it hasn’t this time. Remember the backflow.” I looked at Gary. “You said it probably made the green plasma last longer. Well, maybe the backflow also caused this black and blue one.”

  “Maybe,” Gary said, but the wavering tone of his voice sounded even less sure than a “maybe.”

  My eyes were right on him now, willing him to say more. But it seemed he wasn’t going to do that. “What’s going on—is there something you’re both not telling me?”

  Behind his helmet’s yellowy glass, Steve’s broad face was frowning. “Well, it just didn’t look right. I mean, it moved a little deliberately…like it had intentions.”

  I couldn’t help laughing a little. Once the sound was out, I felt bad about it, but the whole conversation was a bizarre experience: the two men seemed so spooked, and neither had an easily frightened kind of personality.

  However, my simply remembering that about both of them made my heart suddenly go faster: if they weren’t easily frightened, but something in the shaft had frightened them, then maybe there really was some substance to this. “So what do you want me to do? Do you want me to get Babs to come down?”

  “Yeah, that would be good,” Gary said, nodding inside his red helmet.

  *

  I called for Babs over engineering’s intercom, and she answered from in her cabin.

  “Gary wants to brainstorm an issue with you here in engineering,” I said.

  “Now?” Babs replied. “I was just going into the shower—”

  “That can wait, Babs,” I said in a firm voice.

  *

  I was suited up in a protective suit, watching Gary and Steve moving around inside the main reactor shaft, when Babs showed up. Her normally neat dark hair was messy now, and her face was too pale; going on that and her thick voice over the intercom before, she must have been asleep not that long ago.

  I waved my right forefinger in a circle at my suit; Babs nodded at me fast—then rushed over to the suit closet to get a protective suit for herself.

  She slipped the red suit over her black clothes, sealed it, then turned on the suit’s communicator. “What’s going on?” she asked now as she rushed in my direction.

  And Gary said to her over the linked communicators, “Steve saw a plasma in the shaft here. I don’t know if it’s from outside contamination, or maybe the last recalibration caused it. It could be ‘pollution’ from the perfluour.”

  “It isn’t,” Babs said in a frosty, defensive voice.

  And Gary sighed. “That wasn’t intended to slight you, Babs. Perfluour is a standard fluid for the mobile parts of the assembly. The problem today is: the robotic arms can’t seem to shift the rods in the right direction, and Steve’s been trying a manual shift for five minutes now, and again the rods aren’t fitting correctly toward the core-door connection.”

  Babs passed right beside me as she moved toward the shaft; behind her helmet’s glass, there were golden, glistening sweat-drops on her cheeks. “Why should that be happening?” she asked now as she entered the main shaft.

  “That’s what we’re—tryyy—ing to figure out,” Steve replied, his choppy statement punctuated by a groan as he did something inside the shaft that apparently proved very frustrating, something I couldn’t really see.

  Most parts of the Demeter had sensors and cameras, as did the reactor shaft in front of me, but there were probably too many people in the shaft now to yield a good camera view—and I wasn’t about to actually go inside the shaft to get a better view….

  “Look,” I said, “do you all need me? If not, I’ve got to get back upstairs and start seeing about contacting our next stop—any word on that, on when we can expect to leave here? Anymore weather reports? Have you talked to Chen?”

  Gary looked over his shoulder at me. “Yeah—the conditions have worsened actually. I’m sorry, Lydia.”

  I felt so damn flushed in the face now, and I wanted to get out of my fucking suit, mostly so I would have the freedom to kick a fucking wall.

  “Honestly,” Gary continued, turning around to me fully and lifting a helpless-looking, boxy gloved hand, “I now think we should wait till the morning at least. It’s probably for the best.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just nodded and walked away to take off my suit.

  A moment later, as I was popping off my helmet, Gary rushed over to me and said through his suit’s speaker, “I’m sorry about all of this.”

  I pulled a mild, no-big-deal face at him.

  “Maybe I fucked up the rod assembly,” he said.

  “I doubt it,” I replied, unlocking my red gloves, then pulling them off slowly, one by one. I lifted my head and noticed that Gary had been closely watching my motions.

  We looked at each other for too long a moment, too lo
ng a strange moment. And then I finally said, “Is there something else?”

  Now, he sighed. “I didn’t mean to frighten you or anything before.”

  I laughed a little. “I wasn’t really frightened. I’m really frustrated. When most of you will be getting off on Sereska Station and Aper Minor, I was looking forward to spending that break on Pink. But now that break seems to be moving farther into the future.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that. And, actually, I wanted to talk to you about Pink—”

  —A loud scream—from over by the main shaft.

  I jumped farther away from there as Gary rushed toward there, which rushing made my heart pound harder—in sudden worry for him. I scrambled to put my helmet and gloves back on; then I moved closer to the shaft.

  Just then, Steve burst from the shaft and began arguing with Babs, who was at the entry to the shaft.

  “I saw something in the reactor window!” Steve shouted now.

  “What—what did you see?” Babs asked fast, throwing up two questioning, red-gloved palms. “I didn’t see anything.”

  “Well, I did!” Steve said. “It was black edged with blue, and it turned toward me, then flew past the window. It paused. It was aware of me.”

  “Come on,” Babs said, her eyes rolling. “Nothing could be in there. Nothing could survive in there through the high temperatures when you were testing before. It’s probably residual electrical stimulation from when the reaction was going then. There’s leftover loose plasma or particulate pollution in the core because the cleaning wand missed some spots. It happens.”

  “Not like this,” Steve insisted, in a too-loud voice.

  Normally I would have been pissed, like he was shouting over Babs. However, I could see his flat cheeks were shaking, and I could hear how unnatural his heavy, fast breathing was. Something had really frightened him again….

  I wondered what the hell Gary was doing that he had fallen so silent. He had disappeared into the shaft, and when I moved even closer to there now, I saw he was standing before the reactor window.