[Lieutenant Lily Speidel]

The room smelled of sweaty feet and had the slight scent of a hobo living in it's crannies. The purring of the engine echoed around the room, and the heat, although normal, was enough to make a Floridian nearly pass out from heat exhaustion.

Along the walls, information appeared and dissapeared, as if someone were toying with the controls. But, all was normal, it was the daily systems check. Someone had to make sure the engine was at the perfect temperature, someone had to ensure that the ship would remain intact should the sheilds drop. Sure, it was a dirty, gritty job, but someone had to do it.

Along the back of the room, a slim figure lay beneath some panels, head buried in wires and tools lay all around her. An old tune escaped from her lips as she tucked wires together and shifted the panel back in it's place.

Lieutenant Lily Speidel, the Engineering Officer, was that someone who had to ensure the ship was in running condition. It was Lily's job to get down and dirty with Crystal, so to say. Imagine having to dig through wires under a panel, only to have a bit of oil spit out at you...

White tee-shirt stained, blue uniform pants wrinkled from the bending over, laying down, and general wiggling from Lily's hips, she was a mess. Her hair plopped in a bun, and an oil streak across her cheek, she looked like she'd gone to hell and back.

''Don't worry, be happy..'' She sang under her breath as she moved from one panel to the next, unlocking and checking the wires, then moving to the next. The routine would last for another hour or two, then she'd get to do the wonderful mathematics of the engine's fuel and oxygen supply and sheild data.

It was getting late, nearly lunch time, and she knew she'd need another shower before appearing before others. Clean, she got less attention, dirty, everyone seemed to stare at her. She hated it when people stared at her.

Blinking her grey eyes, she popped the last panel in the wall and sat up. Wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist, she left a big grease mark on herself. Sighing and closing her eyes, she stared at the ceiling, sweat dripping from every pore in her body. She lay her tools down on the floor, lifting herself up to a standing position.

Stretching and yawning, she reached over and felt her body creak and snap at every turn. She lifted her shirt above her navel and scratched her lower back, all in the assumption that she was alone...

[Lieutenant Julien Blanchard]

And 87, 88, 87, 86, 85… stable. Lt. Blanchard could hear the others mutter behind him. It peaked at 93 for 13 pulses, but the continuity remained only around 86 Tesla with all their ideas and improvements. That would never work. Without at least 120 Tesla, their detector would not give any conclusive results about Neutrino emissions in this part of space.

They needed a better cooling system for their electromagnets if they want to detect these tiniest of particles. Better cooled they could reach the pulse strength to imitate magnet mass sufficient for neutrino interaction. He had no Antarctica to put a huge kilometer-wide detector underneath, so he had to make the best use of what they had. Fortunately, he had an idea yesterday on how he could get a better cooling, unfortunately it wouldn’t be easy.

Julien turned around and addressed the others. “Colleagues, this is not a failure. It turned out better than reasonable expectations. I came up with a plan to get our magnets some better cooling. As you might remember, due to a system failure the AI woke up some involuntary colonists from their cryo stasis. With all these people awake the demand on cryo gas has reduced, and I will see if I can get our hands on that surplus gas to cool the magnets. It might not be as cold as we need it, but we can use it to cool down the liquid Helium, in a first run. I want you to prepare the magnets for that, and I will see the Chief Engineer about the cryo gas now.”

With the others shuffling back to their assignment, the science officer went on to the Engine Room. They started their experiment early, but noon had already passed. He would find Lt. Speidel there as the AI told him her location through the neural translator after a quick question. At first he thought Crystal might have a malfunction again, as he couldn’t see the lieutenant when he entered the Engine Room.

Then he heard the sound of someone spitting something out with disgust and he recognized the engineer to be underneath one of the machines. Probably an oil leak he thought, and took a step closer to say hello. But the angry voice that was now muttering something down there made him stop. The lieutenant had a quite volatile temper, he remembered, and while she was a bright mind she was nonetheless explosive in nature. So maybe it would be a better idea to wait until she is finished and a bit more relaxed.

Going back now would be useless, came to his mind, so instead Lt. Blanchard decided to take a look at the control panels of the ships systems. One of the screens caught his eyes, as the monitor was displaying the magnetic field of the fusion reactor. It had been too long since he saw one of the Tokamak fields with their distinctive spatial curvature. The plasma flow was perfectly aligned and irregularities were not to be found. As he studied the field, he didn’t realize how the engineer behind him was sighing and standing up.

Julien heard a distant noise, a yawning, and slowly remembered where he was. Awakening from the daze he was in, he slowly turned around to the chief engineer. And with a last glance at the screen of the magnetic field, he spoke aloud, but more to himself than to anyone else, “What a pity that I only see such lovely curves so rarely these days.”