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And with that, he ran out of the closet.

I turned to the rack and took a quick look at the layout in the cage. I found the releases and started pulling them. Some were pretty hot, but I had the cage cleared and even released it from its slides and shook out the residue as best I could. It looked pretty clean except for the scorch marks around three of the sockets and along the upper rails. I was just locking it back down when Mister von Ickles came in with a pile of cards in static-proof envelopes stacked like firewood in his arms. He thrust them at me and slid under the case again.

“Gimme that one right on top, please,” he said, and I handed him the card. He had a belt knife that made short work of the protective covers and he mounted it in the middle of the cage. “Nice work clearing away,” he muttered as he seated the card and clipped the latch down. “Next card.”

I handed him card, after card, after card. Each one he clipped in with precision and efficiency. Slice, position, mount, seat, clip, next. We went through the pile so fast I barely had time to get a grip on one before he called for the next. He reached back, plugged in the power cord, and locked it down. With a nod of his head we grabbed our respective sides and slid the rack back into the bulkhead.

“One down,” he said. “See if there are any more.”

We found four more cabinets with damaged cards but nothing as extensive as the first. It took less than half a stan to go through the whole closet and we were pretty confident nothing else was toasted. We backed out and he pointed to a big green button mounted just inside the door with the word reset on it. “You want to do the honors?” he asked.

“Do we need to take the portable down first?”

He shook his head. “The ship’s system will detect it. It’ll be fine.”

I shrugged and pressed the green button hard.

“Not that one!” Mr. von Ickles yelled.

I jumped about a foot but the button had already lit and glowed green. I could hear the fans powering up in the closet. I looked at him and I’m sure my expression was just as bad as I felt.

“You’re fine, sorry. I was just trying to lighten things up,” he said with a grin and we both started laughing. “Come on, let’s go see how the folks upstairs are doing.”

We returned to the bridge and I could see that things had calmed down. The network displays were all up, and only a couple had blinking red highlights.

“Report, Mr. von Ickles,” the captain said.

“Systems Main operational, Captain. There was some serious burning in the network bus cabinet. Best hypothesis is the EMP started a cascade and the network took it the hardest.”

“I thought we were hardened against that occurrence, Mr. von Ickles,” she said.

“We are but it happened anyway. Either the hardening isn’t as hard as we thought, or the EMP was stronger than the rated specs.”

“ShipNet status?” she asked.

“Cabinet is hot. Net should be live, but I haven’t had a chance to inventory the systems. We may yet find some surprises.”

“Carry on, Mr. von Ickles.”

“Aye, Captain.”

We stepped back to where my portable was taped to the console. I could see in the status display for the ShipNet software that a lot more nodes were up and the main system had taken the load. Almost nothing was being routed through the portable anymore.

I turned to Mr. von Ickles and asked, “Do you want to keep this up here until the repairs are completed, sar?”

He looked at it and then at me. “Actually, I’d feel safer if we shut it down and stowed it in a grounded locker. Say, one in engineering berthing.” He raised his eyebrow at me to see if I understood his message.

“In case that wasn’t the only stray EMP, sar?”

“Exactly so, Mr. Wang. Exactly so.”

I shut down the portable, removed the program cube, and peeled it off the counter. I tried to hand the cube to Mr. von Ickles but he said, “Why don’t you store that with the portable? Just in case.”

“Are you certain, sar?” I asked. “This is important code.”

He laughed at that. “I think it might be safer with you than me. Just keep it locked up. It can’t hurt to have a backup.”

I shrugged. “Aye, sar. Anything else I can help you with, sar?”

“I think saving the ship is enough for one day, Mr. Wang. Why don’t you go stow that, and see if you can give Ms. Smith a hand in environmental. You’re dismissed, Mr. Wang.”

“Aye, sar. Thank you, sar.”

“Thank you, Mr. Wang,” he said.

I headed back to environmental. If nothing else, I would get a few more days aboard while we made the long pass around the back side of the planet and finished our emergency repairs.

The ship was settling down. I could feel it as I left the bridge and headed to drop off the portable and program cube in my locker. It was nothing I could put my finger on—more of a general sense. The passageways were still using emergency lighting, which meant the main reactors and generators remained offline. Given the burning in the data cabinets, I was hoping they stayed that way until everything could be thoroughly checked. I didn’t fancy having a reactor lose containment just two hundred meters away.

I was feeling almost chipper when I stepped back through the hatch into environmental. But the smell hit me the moment I entered.

“What’s the matter?” I asked as I opened the hatch.

Brill, Diane and Francis were gathered around the console. It was still running diagnostics. They looked up when I spoke and Brill said, “What do you mean? The ship’s had EMP damage.”

“No, what smells?” I asked.

Diane laughed. “It’s environmental. It’s supposed to smell.”

Brill frowned and straightened up, testing the air with her nose. “He’s right. The smell is off.”

Diane said, “Can’t be. Most of the smell comes from the scrubbers, and I checked them when I first got here.”

“Check them again,” Brill ordered.

While Diane and Brill went off to check the scrubber cabinets, I turned to the console. “Something wrong with it?”

Francis shook his head. “Nothing. Just waiting for ShipNet.”

“ShipNet is up. I just came from the bridge.”

He looked startled and punched the reset to kill the diagnostic run. The console came up with the standard displays. Water was good. Air was good. CO2 was climbing. Not a lot but definitely on the rise.

“Brill?” Francis called.

I heard Diane say, “Uh, oh.”

Francis and I looked at each other and bolted for the scrubber cabinets.

When we got there, Brill was already on the radio to Mr. Kelley. “Yes, sar,” she said, “all four scrubbers are contaminated. I don’t know by what, but the matrices are already showing deterioration.”

“CO2 levels okay?” I heard him ask.

Brill looked at Francis who nodded but pointed upwards. “Yes, sar, for now, but they’re climbing.” She watched Francis to confirm what she was saying and he nodded.

“Do what you can, B,” he said. “Lemme know if it gets worse.”

“Aye, aye, sar. Environmental, out.” She turned to Diane. “What have we got?”

“Dunno. Never seen anything like this. It’s like they’ve been poisoned by something.” Her face pressed close to the matrix. “Seems like the phycoerythrin is breaking down in the cells.”

Phycoerythrin was the pigment tracer that identified the photosynthesis receptors in the bacteria. No phycoerythrin meant no photosynthesis and no carbon dioxide scrubbing. Normally the algae was a reddish-brown, but presently they were turning a kind of blue.

“Would particulates do that?” I asked.

“What kind of particulates?” Brill said.

“Smoke, burned circuits, melting plastic? I don’t know. When I was on the bridge I checked levels, we were okay on O2 and CO2 but the particulates were high. I bipped it to you, remember?”

“Yeah I do, but that shouldn’t cause this. That’s what the field plates are for. They pull all that junk out of the air mixture before it hits the matrix.”

“True. If they’re running that is,” I said while I crossed to the panels for the field plates on the number two scrubber. I opened the inspection door and looked inside. “Brill? Shouldn’t there be a plate in here?” I asked knowing the answer myself, but not really believing what I was seeing.

“What are you talking about?” she asked coming around the scrubber and crouching down to look in beside me.

“The plate is gone,” I said. “There’s nothing but empty mounting brackets.”

Francis and Diane came to look over our shoulders. “Pixies?” Francis asked.

“Too heavy for a pixie,” Diane said. “Those things mass a good five kilos.”

“Well if they were fast pixies maybe they stole the plate while the gravity was out.”

“That’s it!” I said.

They all looked at me. “Ish,” Diane said, “we were kidding about the pixies.”

I grinned. “I’m not.” I got down and stuck my head in the door so I could look up to where the other half of the field mechanism ran across the top of the intake vent. “Yup. Pixies.” My voice echoed weirdly inside the cabinet.

Brill nudged me so she could get a look. “Damn it!” she said.

When she pulled her head out, I could see she was already calculating. “How fast can we change out all four scrubbers?”

“With all of us working it would take four stans. But it’ll take more than half a day before they begin working again.” Diane confirmed what we already knew.

When I had first come aboard, this practice of stating and restating the obvious confused me. Now I recognized it as a kind of mutual reality check for the group to make sure everyone had an idea of what the other person was thinking.

“Francis,” Brill said, “go run the numbers. How much time do we have? Diane, Ish, start on number three. Pull the frames and strip ’em out as fast as you can.”

He bolted for the console and Brill called Mr. Kelley. “Environmental reporting, you’ll need to see this, sar. It’s serious and won’t take long.”

Diane and I had done this as a team for so long we had three of the matrix frames out before she finished speaking.

Mr. Kelley showed up in two ticks. “Whatcha got, Brill?” he asked.

She took him back to the scrubber and showed him where the field plate was supposed to be. “What the—?” he said as he dragged his head out of the cabinet. “How’d it get up there and what’s holding it?”

“Magnetism,” she said. “Francis, would you kill the power to number two scrubber please?”

“Securing power to number two now.”

When he said “now” the missing scrubber plate dropped with a clank and bounced out of the inspection hatch at Mr. Kelley’s feet.

“How are they normally connected to the base?” Mr. Kelley asked.

Brill answered, “They just sit in those sockets. While the power is flowing, they’re locked down magnetically.”

“So, when we lost power, we lost the lock, grav failed long enough for it to unseat, and when the power came back on, the field kicked in with the plate out of position.”

“No field plate, dirty matrices, dead bacteria,” Brill finished. “How much time, Francis? I need to know now.”

“Ten hours until CO2 reaches critical,” he called back.

“Oh, shit,” Mr. Kelley said.

Francis came in to help me and Diane while Brill conferred with Mr. Kelley. “Can you get me somebody to fix these plates while we clear the matrices? I don’t wanna put good matrix back in a dirty stream.”

He pulled out his comm and started making calls.

With Brill and Francis helping, we got number three stripped down and restarted within a stan. Mr. Kelley fixed number three’s field plate himself and tested it for us to make sure it worked. While he was working, his back up team including Bert Benson, Janice Ivanov, and Arvid Xia came in. He set them to work on the other field collector plates and by the time we’d finished with number three’s frames and had them reloaded, the other ones were ready for us.

Francis, Diane, and I started on number one scrubber while Brill consulted with Mr. Kelley. “We’re going to be desperately close, Fred,” she said. I didn’t like that she was calling him Fred. It meant things were really as bad as I had thought.

“I know, B. We can add more oxygen, but we have to get rid of the CO2. How much calcium hydroxide do we have?”

“About eight tons but how do we get enough air over it?”

Calcium hydroxide was a natural CO2 absorbent. We kept a supply on board but I hadn’t been sure what we used it for. Now it all made sense. The problem was surface area.

I kept slopping frames as fast as I could. Diane was pulling them out and handing them to Francis and I. We were pulling dying matrix out as fast as we could split the frames and we were darn fast.

Brill was asking, “Can we rig up some kind of canister filter with it in it? Like they use on the little ships?”

Mr. Kelley had his tablet out now and was running figures. “Too much air, the canisters would calcify into limestone too quickly. We need some way to expose as much surface as we can.”

I finished stripping out the latest matrix and bent to stretch my back. “Spine!” I shouted.

Diane handed me the next frame and I kept working as I talked. “The spine. It’s like a big straw.” I finished stripping matrix and tossed the empty frame into the
wash me
pile. Diane handed me the next one. “It’s only about two meters wide, but it’s five hundred meters long. Spread the calcium hydroxide on the floor, CO2 is heavier than oxygen and it’ll pool between the hatch combings. If the powder calcifies, we can scrape it up, put down more powder, and drop the limestone out the lock.” Diane handed me another frame.