Diane said, "What?"

"Flash-boom," he repeated. "You ever see lightning on a planet?"

"Yeah," she said, "of course."

"Well, the flash of the lightning is like the high energy particles from our stellar sneeze. The boom is like the actual ma.s.s that's being ejected. It trails it."

I jumped in with, "But we went through the ma.s.s, I heard it hit the hull, and then the EMP took out the generators."

"Well, maybe yes, maybe no," Francis said. "Remember that normally, the energized particles are moving out a lot faster and ahead of the CME residue. Whatever we ran into was not the standard particle front."

"Okay," I said, "but then what was it?"

"Once in a while a CME front gets a charged particle front behind it, either from a second event in the same area or from a kind of secondary splash. We don't really know why, but the effect is that the outer sh.e.l.l of particles forms a kind of magnetic cup that holds those highly charged particles."

Diane said, "Can you translate that?"

"A regular highly charged particle front is like a lawn sprinkler, this other thing is more like a water balloon."

"That doesn't sound like EMP," I said.

"It's not-EMP is just a kind of pop-physics shorthand to tell people what happened to their satellites without having to get into the actual messiness of what really happened."

"And you said, these are rare?"

"Yeah, that's why we know so little about them. We can see them on stellar coronagraphs as they occur but getting in front of them is a matter of luck."

"Bad luck, in our case," Brill said.

"How rare? One in a thousand?" I asked.

"We're not really sure. Could be like one in a hundred or maybe one in ten thousand. We would need to put a sh.e.l.l of detectors around a star to find out and so far isn't enough creds in the galaxy to justify that kind of effort."

"Wait," I said, "What did I hear hit the hull? Sounded like a veil of sand."

"Probably was," Francis said. "Little bits of grit that got swept ahead of the wave. Not the particles that came from the CME itself, which are usually hydrogen molecules and such, but s.p.a.ce is filled with actual dust."

My brain did a kind of two-step as I looked around the table. Francis was more alive and animated than I had ever seen him. It was as if he had worn some kind of disguise, for all those months I had known him and this was his real face. Everybody around the table, except CC, were-if not mesmerized-at least paying very close attention. I got one of those weird flashes and thought, Francis is in the wrong place.

My fork clicked on the empty plate and I looked down, wondering what had happened to my lunch. I looked around to see if somebody had taken it, when I noticed Mr. von Ickles was bussing his dishes. He looked in my direction and I gave him a nod. "Well, shippies, duty calls and I must answer."

As I was walking away from the table, I heard CC ask, "Does he always talk like that?"

I think it was Diane who answered, "No. Sometimes he gets really weird."

Chapter Seventeen.

Betrus...o...b..tal

2352-June-18

We got to the bridge just ahead of the captain and the other officers. Captain Giggone took her seat and waited. It made me think of what it must be like backstage at the ballet. The cast was gathering. I could almost hear the orchestra tuning up in the pit. Mr. von Ickles pulled up the overlay and flashed a snap of the data map. On the right panel on my console he put a status chart showing communications packets in various modes-voice, email, synchronous text, video, control, command, and about eight others I didn't recognize. On the left was a scrolling log of traffic identified as system main status messages. It scrolled too fast to read unless you were completely focused on it. The middle screen refreshed every few seconds, but it was not live.

Mr. von Ickles said, "I leave it on refresh so that we see it if something changes slowly. The pattern changes show up better in a delayed display. In a live feed your eyes adjust to the flows as they change. This way, changes flash into a new configuration and you can spot them."

As I watched the display, first one and then a second smaller blob appeared on the schematic. We had a golden line running from us to each of them.

"The tugs," Mr. von Ickles murmured. "We're getting close."

"Make the announcement, Mr. Pa," the captain said. "Set navigation detail."

"Setting navigation detail, aye, aye, sar," Fong said from his station at the back of the bridge. I heard the announcement from this side of the speakers for the first time.

The director had just stepped to the podium and tapped her baton. A kind of hush settled as the last few members of the team settled into position. While other members of the crew might be reporting to duty stations around the ship, the bridge crew was in place already. The only obvious activity was a trading of places as a few people stepped forward and others stepped back.

I heard Salina Matteo talking into her headset, but I could not understand the words. The captain stood and walked to the back of the bridge, looking out at the stern of the ship. I couldn't see from my angle but I suspected the tugs were out there somewhere.

"Prepare for pull out, Mr. Pa," she said. Her voice was not loud, but it carried all over the bridge.

"Preparing for pull out, aye, aye, Captain," he said in just the same tone.

He spoke into his headset and looked at a ship status screen hanging down from the overhead. "Secure forward locks. Make ready for pull out. Disable docking clamp interlocks," he said.

The status display went red and then green at the bow as the locks were secured. I watched the command and control channel traffic on my display as it scrolled down. A message flashed back from the forward locks and Fong said, "Locks are secured. Docking clamp interlocks are offline, Captain. Ship's board is green once."

"Thank you, Mr. Pa," the captain said, and looked to Salina Matteo who nodded once at some unspoken question.

"Astrogation ready?" the captain asked.

"Astrogation online and running, Captain. Ship's board is green twice," Ms. Avril reported.

"Systems ready?"

"Systems are online and running, Captain. Ship's board is green thrice," Mr. von Ickles said.

"Mr. Maxwell, are we ready?"

"All ship's boards are green. We are ready for departure, Captain," he said formally.

"Log departure at 2352-June-18 13:32."

Somebody said, "Departure logged, aye."

"Make the announcement, Mr. Pa. Stand by for pull out in ten. Mark."

I had listened to the announcement from the galley and from the environmental section but hearing it on the bridge, watching everything as it happened, was like the first time. As he counted down, his eyes fixed on a digital read out of the time, people all around me executed their a.s.signed tasks in an amazing ch.o.r.eographed performance. When Fong got down to one, I saw the docking clamps release in a flash of yellow and red on the screen in front of me and when he said, "Mark," the communication channels to the tugs turned white as they engaged their fields to gently pull us away from the orbital. I felt the normal moving lift sensation in my ear but the feeling was amplified by the surface of the orbital moving away from us. My brain needed some time to convince my eyes that we were moving and the orbital was not.

We eased back slowly at first but gained momentum. The tugs towed us backwards for half a stan then cast us loose. The representations on my screen disappeared as first one, then the other cut out of our network data stream. We drifted backwards on our momentum as the tugs peeled off and went where ever tugs go. Perhaps to help the next ship dock in the now empty berth. Slowly, majestically even, the ship turned away from the orbital and began maneuvering to begin the long climb out of the Betrus gravity well.

The whole process of coming about, firing up the kickers to move us out of the immediate vicinity of the orbital, and eventually extending the gravity keel and solar sail fields took three solid stans but it flashed by in a heartbeat. I did not have time to think of all the people waiting it out in the galley or in environmental or anywhere else. Here, we sailed the ship. I could sense from the pace on the bridge when we were about to shift to normal operations and secure the navigation detail. It was as obvious and inevitable as the arc of a tossed ball. All the pieces came together, more and more of them locking down, until there was only one and then that, too, merged, and the captain said, finally, "Make the announcement, Mr. Pa. Secure from navigation detail, set normal operations, first section has the watch."

"Secure from navigation detail, set normal operations, first section has the watch. Aye, aye, Captain."

"Log it at 2353-June-18 16:35, Mr. Maxwell."

"So logged, Captain."

"Good work, people," she said, then she stood and left the bridge.

I looked over to where Mr. von Ickles watched me, a little smile on his face. "So? Was it good for you?" he asked.

It was all I could do to not burst out laughing. "Yes, sar. That was something."

"They say you always remember your first time."

"I can see why, sar." I chuckled. "Whew."

"Well, you've got time to shower and get a run in before dinner. We're off until mid-watch. Come up here then and I'll work with you on the console and show you some things. We've got the afternoon tomorrow and you can work on the uh-oh box then."

"Sounds good, sar."

The next few days flew by in the blur as I attempted to find my way in the new environment. Putting together the portable was easy enough, right up to the point where we had to power it up. Mr. von Ickles had found where I reversed a jumper clip on the main board. After fixing that, we were up and running. We used the basic ShipNet code that I had modified before and loaded it on the portable's drive so that it fired up as soon as the machine booted. We were as close as we could be to being ready, without actually taking down the ShipNet to test it.

"I think we should wait until we're docked for that, okay?" Mr. von Ickles said with a laugh.

"Good idea." I rubbed my chin thoughtfully. "Sar? I have another idea, but I don't know how practical it is."

"What's that, Mr. w.a.n.g?" he asked.

"Could we build a spare main cage? Keep it powered down in a grounded locker. That way if we need it, we can just pull the old cage and load the new one up without playing poker with the damaged cards."

"Spare cage?"

"Yes, sar. The cage is on sliders. If we have a spare one built, we just lift the burnt one out, plug the new one in, and we're up and running. That's the majority of the repairs that we had to do last time. We'd still have to track down the odd board here and there on the other racks, but that wouldn't take much time compared to rebuilding the cage like we did."

He looked at me, blinking mechanically as he processed what I was saying. "So elegantly simple," he said. "We take the initial load with the uh-oh box, swap the cage, and replace the burnt boards. Voila!"

"Yes, sar."

He thought about it for about a tick, before saying, "We have a spare cage, but only one. Let's hold that idea for when we get to Niol. I think I can convince the captain to buy a second one."

"Sounds like a plan, sar."

"In the meantime, let's rig up a grounded locker in Systems Main to store the uh-oh box in, and then get to work on solving the EMP problem."

It didn't take too long and soon we had settled in at a console.

"The first step is understanding what happened," Mr. von Ickles told me. "I want you to pull the system logs and give me a breakdown of everything that happened starting five ticks before the event." He sat beside me and demonstrated how to extract the logs for the time period in question. There was a lot of data and I knew it would keep me busy for a long time. He patted me on the shoulder as he headed out. I melted into the task and started digging in.

Fifteen days out of Betrus, I finally had a list of major events and took them to Mr. von Ickles.

"This makes no sense," he said.

"True, sar, but those are the facts as near as I can reconstruct from the systems logs."

"According to this, all that stuff burnt out after we were through the CME. Some of it as much as a full tick later."

"Yes, sar."

"Let's go see what Mr. Kelley has to say about this."

We headed on down to Mr. Kelley's office. I could see Mr. von Ickles running what I had showed him through his head. He was deep in thought and I didn't want to disturb him while we pa.s.sed through the various pa.s.sageways. When we presented it to Mr. Kelley he got that same confused expression.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

"That's what the logs say. These devices were recording data up to that point, sar," I told him. "They may have been recording longer but when the main hub went off line, a lot of the data collection packets would have been dropped."

"But, Mr. w.a.n.g, this says the hub was online half a tick after the main generators were blown down. At the velocity we were traveling, the whole event should have been over in less than half a second."

"Yes, sar. And I recovered the logs from local data storage aft. Some of those controllers didn't toast out until a full tick after the event."

He held the list and looked at it for a long time, then looked at Mr. von Ickles. "Can you give me a simulation showing the locations by time for when these died?"

"Sure thing, Fred. You think it's significant?"

"Maybe. What I'm seeing here is that we failed from stern to bow and back to stern." He pointed to a reading. "This unit is in the stern, it's one of the first ones that fried. I would have expected to lose one of these up in the bow first. Like this environmental sensor package here." He pointed again. "This time stamp says we lost it almost fifteen seconds later. The main data hub blew after that, and then we really started losing things in a cascade all the way back to the engine room."

"Does that mean what I think, Fred?" Mr. von Ickles asked.

"If you're thinking that the damage wasn't caused by the EMP, then yes."

"Mr. w.a.n.g, can you put together a graphic display of this data? I think Mr. Kelley and I need to talk to the captain."

It took a couple more watches, but I finally got a display I was happy with. When played back at one-tenth speed every second of real time was on the display for ten seconds. The pattern was unmistakable. Just as Mr. Kelley had picked out from the raw data, the failures started in the stern, worked forward, and then aft again.