"Yes, Mr. w.a.n.g. I did."

"Thank you, sar. Now, if you'll excuse me, sar? I need to see a woman about a pooka."

"Dismissed, Mr. w.a.n.g," he said formally. Then he smiled and held out his hand. "Congratulations, Ishmael, and happy birthday."

"Thanks," I said, and shook his hand.

Rigging the extra speakers did not take long with Francis and I working together. I showed Brill where and how to trigger the audio. I had created three programs for her to use. The first was a few seconds of Sarah's quiet sobbing in various permutations. The crying faded in and out over the course of a full stan and I rigged they playback so that it would run on a random cycle. The second was a collection of please-stop-you-are-hurting-mes again, in various permutations from very faint to a bit louder, but none were very loud. The last was a mix of the sobs with the please-stops interspersed. The volume range on this third one was medium to loud. I had her play a few snippets of each to test them out and both Diane and Francis looked a little shaken by the experience.

"My G.o.ds, Ishmael," Diane said. "That's positively frightful. Are you trying to scare him to death?"

I shook my head. "Just trying to put the fear of Lois in him. I was going to add some threats, but I thought the pitiful sobbing would work just as well, especially as it gets louder."

By then it was time for me to hit the track and get my sauna in before the evening watch. Mr. Colby would be meeting the pooka at the best possible time to make a lasting impression: mid-watch in the Deep Dark.

The plan had been to let the sobbing run for about a week, just to soften him up. Then start the second tier with the please-stops. We hadn't counted on the effectiveness of Sarah's voice. After a couple of days with the sobbing fading in and out during his watch standing hours, CC started to look a little less sure of himself when he showed up on the mess deck. I don't know exactly when it started, but after about four days, I noticed Sarah would lean over to CC and say something to him whenever he was in the mess line. Pip, who stood beside her, grinned. Whatever it was, it spooked CC even more. I made a mental note to ask Pip what Sarah had said.

While the environmental haunting went on, I went back to trying to find the problem that had crashed the ShipNet and almost killed us.

What I needed was more information because what I had from the logs wasn't much help. A week and a half out of Niol, I went to find Rebecca Saltzman in engineering berthing.

Mitch grinned and Rebecca smiled when I stuck my head into my old quad. "You lost?" Mitch asked.

"Well yeah, in a way," I told them. "I'm working on the system failure. Can you two look at something and tell me what I'm missing?"

They both shrugged. "I'll look at anything you wanna show me, big fella," Rebecca said in that heavy-G growl of hers. She had a big grin on her face because she knew what that voice did to me.

"Behave!" I told her with a laugh. "I'm trying to work here."

"Sorry," she said, but she didn't look that way.

Mitch just sighed and shook his head.

I played them the delayed graphic on my tablet a couple of times.

Rebecca watched intently and said, "I've seen this. Mr. Kelley watches it over and over."

"Him and every other officer on the ship. We're missing something obvious."

"Why obvious?" she asked.

"Because as devious as the officers of the Lois are, they'd have spotted something tricky by now."

"What is it supposed to be showing?" Mitch asked.

"Those are all the component failures from five ticks before we went through the EMP," I said. "I plotted them by location and time. I expanded the time scale so every tenth of a second real time is one second on the display."

"That's why it seems so slow," he said, nodding to himself.

Rebecca and I looked at each other. Rebecca shrugged.

"Yes, Mitch, that's right," I said. "That's why it seems so slow."

"Play it again?" he asked.

I shrugged and keyed it.

"So this is what broke?" he asked after it had run its cycle again.

"Yup. Do you see anything?"

He shook his head. "Nope." He laid back down on his bunk.

Rebecca shook her head helplessly. "I don't know what to tell you, Ish. I didn't spot anything either."

"Thanks, guys. I appreciate your time."

Mitch grinned at me. "No problem, Ish. You sure you won't move back?" He nodded at Rebecca. "She's been moping around since you left and asking me if I have any blue jeans. What's that about?"

Rebecca threw her pillow at him, blushing and giggling. For his part, Mitch had a mischievous look and tucked her pillow behind his head.

We all had a good chuckle, even Rebecca. "Any time you want to move back, Ish. You can sleep on top of me!" she said and stuck her tongue out at Mitch.

"Rebecca!" Mitch snorted.

"What?" She pointed to the unclaimed upper bunk above her. " Up there! You've got a dirty mind, Mitch Fitzroy."

Jennifer Agotto, one of the machinists from the power section, spoke from the other side of the part.i.tion, "Well, he didn't have one when he moved in here, ya hussy. You're the one that got it all dirty!"

We all had another laugh. I think Rebecca laughed hardest of all.

I was about to leave when Mitch said, "That's only the stuff that failed, right?"

"Yeah," I said, "why?"

"Well what about the stuff that didn't fail? If you add that in somehow, maybe it'll tell you something."

Rebecca looked at him like he had sprouted a second head. "How can you tag something that didn't happen?" she asked him.

He shrugged. "I don't know, but when we started getting the ShipNet back online, lots of systems were just waiting to be powered up. They weren't damaged at all."

I thought about that for a full tick. "Thanks, Mitch. You're on to something there."

Rebecca looked startled. "He is?"

"Yeah. I just don't know what, or how, but it's something to try besides just running the same clip over and over."

I took that idea with me to the bridge for that afternoon's watch and started going back through the logs.

We were about a week out of Niol when I went to lunch and saw Brill, Diane, and Francis all grinning. Smiling in antic.i.p.ation, I got my lunch and joined them.

"What's the cause of this joyous gathering?" I asked.

Brill said quietly, "Mr. Colby did his maintenance last night."

Diane added just as quietly, "And did a first rate job of it too."

"Excellent. You should probably kill the sob-track for tonight," I said.

Brill nodded. "Already done."

"Think it'll stick?" Francis asked.

"Hard to say, but you can always turn it on again."

Just then CC came through the mess line. He looked horrible, like he hadn't slept in a week. His shipsuit had a big smear of something on it that could have been almost anything. I wasn't sure I wanted to know. He seemed almost afraid of Sarah as he approached the line and, sure enough, Sarah leaned forward and said something to him. Pip's expression changed from a big smile to confusion when CC smiled and thanked her before moving on down the line.

"What was that?" I wondered aloud.

Brill had seen it too. "I don't know but it looked strange."

I got up and went for coffee, swinging by to have a quiet word with Pip. Then I came back to the table and sat down. "Well, I think perhaps it might stick."

"What'd she say?" Francis asked.

"Pip said that for the past few days she's been saying things like, *Remember Matthew.'"

"Remember Matthew?" Diane asked, then comprehension dawned. "Wasn't he on the Matthew Boulton?"

Brill and I both said, "Yup," at the same time.

"How did she know he was on the Matthew Boulton." Diane asked.

"I don't know. Maybe she overheard it. It's not a secret."

Brill asked, "So, what did she say today?"

"According to Pip she said, *Lois thanks you.'"

We all just sat there and ate our meals in silence for a long while.

At one point, Brill said to me, "That girl is spookier than you are."

Diane looked at me for a long time before turning back to Brill. "I think it's a draw," she said.

Chapter Twenty-One.

Niol Orbital

2352-August-15

Those last few days on approach to Niol were both spectacular and frustrating. It seemed like we zoomed in on the planet in a matter of stans and then just hung out there, inching in for days on end. It really wasn't that long, but it seemed it. It had been a long trip from Betrus-eight weeks-and we were all ready to get ash.o.r.e again. The image of Wendy wearing nothing but a satisfied grin and a sheen of sweat kept popping into my brain at odd, and often unfortunate, moments.

Third section had the mid-watch before docking. I had been wrestling with what Mitch had suggested for a week without making any progress. About halfway through the watch, I stood and walked to the bow to look at the orbital creeping in. We would dock before the day was out and after eight weeks of a.n.a.lysis, I was no closer to understanding what had happened, let alone how. Sure, we knew the outcome. We had plenty of burned boards and some crisped out electrical runs, too, but those were just the symptoms. We needed to know what caused that burning and for that we had no idea.

"Problems, Mr. w.a.n.g?" Mr. von Ickles said from behind me.

I turned and rested my elbows on the port combing behind me. "How do you mark that something didn't happen, sar?"

He blinked. "You can't," he said after a moment's consideration. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Logical rule from the dark ages. What are you trying to do?"

"This systems problem, sar. We've been gnawing on it for weeks."

"Yup," he agreed. "Any insight?"

"I've been thinking that the answer has to be something obvious, sar."

"Why?" he asked.

"The four most devious minds in this end of the galaxy haven't spotted anything tricky, sar."

"You make a good point," he said with a considering tone. "But don't underestimate yourself. I hear the maintenance schedule is back on track in environmental."

"Remind me to tell you more about that because I don't think I can take the credit, sar."

"Okay," he said, and startled me by taking out his tablet and actually making a note. "Back to the problem at hand. Why does it have to be something obvious?"

"Well, if it's not something tricky? What's left, sar?"

"Well, that's obvious."

"You see my point, then, sar." I smiled and continued. "Well, the first thing that occurred to me was that, if the data weren't telling us what we needed to know then we either had too much, too little, or the wrong data."

"Obviously," he said warming to the discussion.