_Mars_Explorer_ began her third full day in orbit amid a jumble of
cargo modules.  Each was a solid steel cylinder 50 feet long and 10
feet in diameter, equipped with female mating connectors on both ends.
These were interconnected using circular nodes equipped with six male
mating connectors and about as much interior space as an automobile.
The 767 was docked directly to one end of the ship's bridge cylinder,
which contained mostly with computer equipment, including several
large flat-panel LCD screens along its walls, showing the ship's
position in its orbit, its ground track, and a radar composite
extending two hundred kilometers around the ship.

The other end of the bridge connected to 'A' node, from which modules
A-1 through A-4 fanned out to its sides.  These were the main crew
quarters; each of the four original astronauts had been assigned one.
Continuing along the main axis was 'AB' core, intended to serve as a
crew lounge.  Its far end was docked to 'B' node, from which the
ship's sickbay, in modules B-1, B-2, B-3, and B-4 fanned out.  The
crew's working modules continued in this manner from A to F.  A
hydroponic garden was planned started at node G and continue through
to node R.  The dozen modules around S, T, and U were purely for
storage.  After U, the remaining cargo modules were unpressurized;
they stored fuel and water.  Burns also planned to put some of the
spent fuel modules from the launch on the far end of the chain to help
protect again meteor strikes.

About two dozen of the modules had now been assembled, more were stacked
up in a parking orbit 50 to 200 kilometers behind the craft, and the
rest still sat down in low Earth orbit, their computers awaiting radio
instructions to boost them into higher orbits.  The docking procedures
were going slowly, though this wasn't entirely unexpected.

Alone among the crew, Andrea didn't have any assigned duties, and
today had squirreled herself away into the ship's electronics lab, a
cargo module filled with boxed equipment that had been docked the day
before at C-3.  The boxes she left untouched; her interest lay in a
tablet computer connected to the ship's wireless network.  After
skimming through the hundreds of documents related to the ship's
design, all the result of Burns' prodigious mind, she found her way
into the ship's library.

It was extensive, numbering well over ten thousand books, completely
electronic, and completely illegal.  Every major publisher of
technical books in the English language had been targeted by Burns'
super-hack, and the few books they wanted which Alister couldn't
spirit off electronic copies from the publishers' computers had been
purchased and scanned in by the Mexicans.  Without lauching more than
a few pounds of books, most of these for nostalgic value, the
_Mars_Explorer_ crew enjoyed easy access to major reference works on
every aspect of technology.  There was an entire book, for example,
simply titled _Uranium_, that described almost everything known about
the chemistry of that important element - it's dozens of compounds,
their properties, the reactions used to convert between them, and of
course its nuclear properties, despite the fact that _Mars_Explorer_ carried
only a small sample of uranium in its chemistry lab and Burns had no
intention of using a nuclear fuel source.  In fact, all the major
chemical elements were well represented, with entire books on silicon,
iron, and dozens on carbon and its various compounds.  The ship's
custom navigation software was littered with references that
hyperlinked directly into a book called _Celestrial_Mechanics._ There
were dictionaries, encyclopedias, entire scientific journals.  There
were books on antenna theory, orbital mechanics, geology, hydroponics,
plant pathology, and Mercuriou's hand-picked collection of literature,
both in translation and in the original tongues.

Almost as impressive was the software collection.  Every major
technical product was present, many including all their source code,
stolen from the manufacturer's computers by Burns and Alister.  The
scientific software was second to none.  In addition to _Gaussian_ and
programs like it, there were sophisticated packages to model and
simulate high-frequency microwave circuitry, the most advanced robotic
control software from Japan, including the factory blueprints and
source code to a complete automobile assembly plant, and the most
sophisticated mathematics systems, which turned the complex algebraic
and trigonometric manipulations of orbital mechanics into typing
practice.  Andrea was impressed.  The three-pound computer tablet in
her hand offered the same information that would fill an elite
university library, and the same software packages available at the
most prestigious research centers.  The legal penalties for acquiring
and possessing all of it added up to more than a hundred and eighty
years of prison time.

"We've got a pressure drop," Alister announced on the bridge, as an
amber alert window popped up on the LCD screen to his right.  Burns
was there, sporting a brand new T-shirt that he had custom printed
months before, but had only unpacked once they were in orbit.  "Why
drink and drive," it asked, "when you can bake and fly?"  Mercuriou
floated into from his quarters in A-1.

"We're down to 97.4," Alister informed them, reading off the
atmospheric pressure in kilopascals.

"That's not down much," Mercuriou observed.

"Yeah, but it should be a closed system," Burns answered.

"97.0," Alister stated.

"Let's go to Condition Zed," Burns suggested, using the traditional
nautical term for closing watertight doors, and Mercuriou nodded.

"Captain to crew, set Condition Zed," Mercuriou announced into the
microphone clipped to his shirt, while Alister keyed a command
sequence on his computer.  A audible C-chime sounded throughout the
ship, and the hydraulic doors separating the different modules hissed
shut.

"What's happening?" Dr. Yeats asked as she watched the door hizz shut
on the C-3.  She was at the far end of the module, full of lab
equipment, and didn't have time to reach the door before it shut.

"We're closing the airtight doors, Dr. Yeats, we seem to have a
pressure leak" Mercuriou answered through the com system.  "Vic, where
are you?"

"I'm in sickbay, of course," the doctor answered, stopping his
inventory of the drug supply.

"He's got a spacesuit in there if he needs it," the captain noted.
"What about Dr. Yeats?", he wondered aloud.  Burns was shaking
his head, no.

"I don't think there's a spacesuit in here," she answered.  "Nothing
but oscilloscopes and silicon wafers."

"We're down to 90 in C-4," Alister declared from his computer
terminal.  "Looks like the rest are holding."

"That's right next to where Yeats is," Mercuriou noted.

Burns nodded in agreement. "It's probably a micro meteor strike.
We're not fully assembled yet, so C-4 is in front.  But if we lose 'C'
node, she'll be cut off, so we probably want to get her out of there."

"OK," the captain concurred, keying his microphone, "Dr. Yeats, why
don't you exit the module you're in and come back here to where we've
at least got a spacesuit for you, then we'll check on the problem, it
looks like it's in C-4."

"I can open the pressure door from here," Burns added, "or you can
use the control panel in the node to do it."

The NASA engineer drifted to the pressure door and examined its
touchscreen controls.  Sure enough, there was a menu option for the
door.  Although she had seen it before, she had never had reason to
use it.  Meanwhile, Burns selected a control sequence in the bridge
and the door opened automatically.  Andrea pulled herself through it
and into 'C' node. Burns opened the door to 'BC' core, which lead back
towards the bridge.

But Andrea didn't go there.  Instead, she went to the door leading
into C-4, and was about to ask what it's pressure was, when she saw it
displayed on the LCD panel by the door.  87 kilopascals.  She knew as a
rough rule of thumb that supplemental oxygen wasn't needed until the
pressure dropped to 70 kilopascals.  She keyed the sequence on the
panel that opened the door.  Designed to seal its pressurized contents
against an exterior vacuum, it popped open under the force of the
higher pressure outside, accompanied by a whoosh of air flowing into
the damaged node.  Andrea's sinuses popped under the pressure change.

"I'm going to take a look at the problem in here," Andrea informed
the others as she pushed herself into the node.

On the bridge, the door changed colors on the computer animation of
the ship's layout.

"She just opened the door to C-4!" Alister declared in surprise.

"That node appears to be damaged, it's loosing pressure, Doctor!"
Burns told the NASA engineer through the intercom.

In C-4, Andrea could hear a quiet whoshing of air.  The node was
definately loosing pressure, but not very fast.

"First of all," she told Burns as she passed into the center of the
node, "no matter how much reserve oxygen you've got now, this is the
beginning of the mission, so trust me, it's not enough.  And second,"
she continued, removing her water bottle from her belt, "it's a lot
easier to find the problem with air in here then with a vacuum."
Carefully, she squeezed the water bottle and released a stream of
liquid aimed straight down the center of the module, then watched to
see where it went.

"She's got some good points, there," Burns mussed aloud on the bridge,
"but I don't like the fact that she doesn't have a spacesuit."  Behind
him, Mercuriou dove to the rear of the 767 and grabbed a spacesuit.

"What's going on?" Vic asked over the radio.

Mercuriou flushed red, clenched his teeth, and smacked his fist into
his palm.

"We've got a pressure leak, Vic, and Dr. Yeats, _as_usual_, is
_EXACTLY_ where we don't want her to be!"

"Aren't you going to prep?" Alister asked.

"I don't have time!" he exclaimed, exasperated.  "What if she gets
stuck in there?  Open the door."

"Opening bridge airlock," Burns stated in a resigned tone of voice as
he keyed the computer panel to his left and Mercuriou dove into A core
with the packaged spacesuit under his arm.

Andrea released the harnesses on several large packing crates and
moved them aside to follow the trail of the water droplets.  A wave of
fear swept over her.  _You_have_no_spacesuit._ Calming herself, she
said a silent prayer, _Father,_watch_out_for_me_in_here._

"Alister, keep reading the pressure off to me," she told the assistant
engineer.

"It's at 82 now," he answered from the bridge.  "It came back up for a
second when you opened the door, but now it's dropping again."

"Opening 'B' node," Burns dryly noted as he continued to open pressure
doors in front of the captain, now moving down the central chain of
cargo modules.  Mercuriou bumped against several walls as he went, and
pushed off roughly from them, partly because he hadn't fully learned
how to maneuver in zero-gee, but more because his mood grew ever more
irate the further he went.

Meanwhile, Andrea had found the pinhole leak at the root of the
problem.  Unlike the space shuttle, designed for manned spaceflight
operations from the beginning, the cargo modules were just large
pressure tanks with cargo containers secured to their side.  At times
this meant an inconvenient jumble of conduit that could have been
better designed, but in this case it meant easy access to the
punctured wall of the module.  She began looking around for
something to plug the hole with.

Just then, Merceriou opened the door and propelled into the module.

"Doctor Yeats, we've got to get a few things clear right now,"
he began.

"Excuse me... sir," she interrupted as she reached for the spacesuit
and pulled out one of its gloves.  Turning back to the puncture, she
slapped the glove against it.

"That'll hold until we can patch it permanently," she announced, then
put her left hand on her hip while still holding a cargo strip with
her right.

"Now you wanted to get some things clear?" she asked.

Red-faced, Merceriou stared at her for several seconds, then left the
cargo module without saying another word.
