DISTRACTIONS

By Heather Hammonds

David Kano looked up from his seat in Main Mission and saw Alan Carter heading towards him. He picked a data disk up off his desk and waved it at the chief pilot.

"Told you I'd have it done," he laughed.

Alan raised his eyebrows in mock amazement and shook his head.

"Shades of the Kano of old," he said. "I didn't expect you to be finished for at least another twenty- four hours."

"Well, Tanya was at Shermeen Collins' baby shower last night, so I had some time on my hands," replied David, handing Alan the disk. "Just be careful with it; I don't have time to do you another copy at the moment, as I'm running an inventory for life support."

"Thanks for this mate," said Alan, handling the small disk with reverence.

"All the new navigation data that we've collected so far is on there," David continued. "I've set it up on the disk exactly as you asked. Our little program should make flying around this star system a heck of a lot easier."

"Yeah, particularly around that damned asteroid belt," grinned Alan. "With the number of mining and exploration teams that are going to be working up there, it's essential that the Eagles are carrying a good map of every chunk of rock that is in the belt."

Alan left Main Mission with his disk, smiling to himself at how happy his friend looked these days. In the four months since Kano been married, he couldn't remember seeing him in a bad mood. Oh sure, his work output had slowed down a little. No longer was he the workaholic who could be found at his post at all hours, readily accessible to all who needed computer information. Nowadays he was behaving a little more like a human than a machine....

David sat back in his chair and stared at the figures flying past on his computer monitor, his mind wandering. He had a mild headache which had been annoying him all shift, and he was looking forward to going off duty. Soon he and Tanya would walk to one of the canteens for a quiet meal together. Married life was everything he had hoped it would be, and more. He'd had his doubts at first- thought it would be difficult to adjust to sharing his life with someone after living alone for so long, with only himself to think of. But Tanya's move into his larger quarters on their marriage had been like the inrush of a breath of fresh Scandinavian air. Apart from her own wonderful presence, she brought with her a beautiful collection of miniature paintings, and a soft yellow pine rocker. He marvelled at how she'd managed to pay the freight up to Alpha on the latter item, back in the days before Breakaway when money still actually meant something. He was very glad she'd done it though, as the rocker seemed part of her somehow- so typical of her personality. She'd brightened his room, as well as his life. Each day he felt closer and closer to his new wife, as he learned a score of little things about her and the way she lived.

He was disturbed from his wool- gathering by Tanya herself, when she came up behind him and put her hands on her shoulders.

"Are you finished here yet?" she asked quietly, well aware of the fact that he hadn't been paying attention to his job. "Doctor Russell will be wanting that inventory soon, you know."

David hit a button on his console and began to shut the program down.

"I'll have it done tomorrow," he smiled. "She won't mind waiting another day."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that," whispered Tanya. "She's been a little crotchety lately; rumor has it that she might be pregnant again."

David stood up and raised his eyebrows. Everyone in Main Mission knew how hard the Koenigs were trying for a baby, and wished them luck, after their first tragic attempt. For some it was so easy, for others.... well.

After leaving instructions for Sandra who had just come on duty, the Kanos left Main Mission, happily planning their evening as they walked slowly down the corridor towards their favorite canteen.

Alan sat back in the pilot seat of his test Eagle and watched a three dimensional image of their star system rotate on the small screen in front of him. The new program was now linked with the ship's on- board navigation systems, providing him with an updated 'street map' of their local area of space. In theory, Kano had told him that auto- pilot should be able to be used more often, but Alan never completely trusted a machine to do the job of a good pilot. He would see to it that that aspect of the program was used only when flying through empty areas of space.

With all his pre-flight tests finally complete, he pressed a button on the ship's control panel and requested clearance for his craft to lift off from launch pad three. Before the program was installed on all the Eagles, he wanted to take his test ship for several flights himself, just to be sure.

Sandra's face appeared on the monitor in front of him, her brow creased in a frown.

"You failed to file a flight plan, Alan; I have got nothing here, other than a note saying you are going to take a test Eagle out."

"No I didn't!" he protested indignantly, trying to remember if she was right or not. He would never forget such a basic piece of protocol... would he?

"Check again Sandra; I intend to head to area 12 over the Mare Crisium, just to put the new navigation program through its paces."

Sandra's head went down and he could tell that she was typing at something.

"Sorry Alan," she said. "There really is nothing here- could you file again please, just for the record. I will be hauled over the coals if I do not follow correct procedure."

"Who's the Chief Pilot anyway?" He muttered testily, doing as Sandra asked. "Me, or the computer clerics up in Main Mission?"

"All clear Eagle Fifteen," said Sandra when he'd finished.

"About time," he grumbled to himself.

The engines of the test Eagle ignited with a satisfying roar, blasting Alan's temporary bad mood away. He lifted his craft off the pad, wheeled around above the base and headed out over the curve of the horizon. Ahead of him lay empty space and the asteroid belt; below him, the craggy surface of the Moon. It would take several hours to fly to the belt and Alan didn't intend to do that alone, on this shift. His tests today were preliminary only. Whistling to himself, he punched away at his controls and activated the new program. An image of the area of space that he was flying towards, together with a bright line that denoted the moon below him, popped up on a little screen.

"Bloody marvelous," he smiled to himself, parodying an upper class English accent. "Absolutely bloody marvelous!"

Wishing he had brought an assistant with him, Alan decided to put the ship on auto- pilot for a minute or two while he checked some figures on the Eagle's on-board computer. Still whistling under his breath, he reached forward and activated it.

A deep vibration shuddered through the Eagle, as if an invisible giant had reached forward and whacked the side of the craft with a hammer. Warning lights began to flash all over the console in front of him.

"Christ!" he swore, as the Eagle began to fly a tight circle. "What the...."

Desperately, he reached forward and shut the auto-pilot off, but the problem persisted.

"This is Eagle Fifteen to Main Mission; I have a major systems fault," he shouted. "I cannot override. I repeat- I cannot override it from here!"

"We see it Alan," responded Sandra. "Hold on and Bill will try to bring you in on remote, from Main Mission."

Alan could imagine Bill Fraser desperately twiddling away with the remote control equipment back in Alpha's operations center, as he felt his craft check it's circling pattern twice, and then continue on it's merry way.

"It's not working," he said. "I'm going to have to try something else."

Bravely he stood up and tore a wall panel off the other side of the command module, counting the circuit boards.

"One, two, three- this better be the right one," he muttered to himself, wrenching it from it's place.

Sparks flew and at last, the Eagle stopped its crazed circling. Alan dove for his seat as it began to descend towards the lunar surface with alarming rapidity.

"Eagle Fifteen! Alan! Alan!" he heard Sandra calling, as he madly tugged at the controls.

At last he managed to activate the back up systems of his craft and lift it's arrowhead nose sufficiently so that when it hit the ground, it did not bury itself directly into the surface of the mare. Instead the Eagle skidded over dust and debris for a full kilometer, before it slammed into a large rocky outcrop and came to a halt. Inside the command module, the unbelted Alan was flung from side to side, first hitting one wall and then the other, before crashing down to the floor.

The staff on duty in Main Mission watched the big screen with shock, as cameras showed them the fate of Eagle Fifteen. Sandra's voice echoed around the silent room, as she called up an emergency rescue team and put Medical Center on alert, before notifying the Commander of the accident. Surely, no one could have survived such a horrendous accident.

"What happened?" asked John Koenig, as he strode into Main Mission, pulling on his jacket. He'd been woken by the emergency, as had Helena, who was by now running to board the rescue Eagle.

"Alan was trialing the new navigation software Sir," Bill Fraser replied quietly.

He was sitting in front of the Eagle remote controls, his face ashen.

"As far as we know, he put the ship on auto- pilot and it went haywire. He couldn't regain control in time to prevent a crash."

"Eagle Fifteen is not registering any life signs Commander," whispered Sandra, her voice threatening to disappear altogether with emotion. "It may just be an equipment malfunction..."

John stared at the image of the ship up on the screen for some time, before speaking again. He wondered if Alan were dead, and felt a wave of sorrow and anger wash over him. Alan had been so keen to set to work improving Alpha's fleet of Eagles, now that they had come to rest in the Loki star system. He'd spoken of the new navigation program he wanted to have developed and John had thought it a good idea at the time, giving him approval to go ahead and do what he wished. With the assistance of Matt Jones, one of Alpha's resident astronomers and the programming skills of David Kano, the project had been pulled together in record time.

"Kano...." John whispered to himself, wondering if he could shed some light on possible causes of the accident.

"David Kano is off duty at present, isn't he?" he asked Sandra.

She nodded.

"Get him up here please; I want to see him in my office. And is Maya back from Loki yet?"

"Yes Commander, I am," Maya replied for Sandra, coming to stand at his side. "I just touched down a few minutes ago and heard the news."

"Good," said John. "I want to have a word with you about this new program that Alan installed on the test Eagle. Come with me to my office."

As John strode away, Maya and Sandra exchanged a worried glance.

"If he has survived, it will be a miracle," murmured Sandra.

"Then let's hope for one," said Maya, before following the Commander.

Alan lay on the floor of Eagle Fifteen and dimly listened to the sound of escaping gas. Alarm bells began to ring inside his bruised and battered mind, forcing him to open his eyes.

"Oh, shit," he groaned, as he saw the wreckage around him and the pieces of his memory fell into place.

There had been an accident. His test Eagle had crashed. And this hissing sound meant that somewhere, the hull had been breached. With a massive effort, brought about by the knowledge that if he didn't do this he would die, Alan pulled himself off the floor. Pain lanced through his right arm and shoulder, bringing tears to his eyes.

"Where the hell is it?" he wondered out loud. "The noise...."

Then in the dim glow of the Eagle's emergency lighting, he saw it.

A large dent in the side of the passenger module that ludicrously reminded him of an old movie he'd seen years ago on Earth, where a wild rhino had charged at a bus and dented it's side in a similar fashion. But in that movie, there hadn't been a long crack in the dent, through which all the available atmosphere was seeping...

With the very last of his strength, Alan struggled to press the button, which would seal the command module off from the rest of the ship. He knew that if it failed to close, he was finished. There was no way that he could manually close the airlock in his weakened state.

"Come on baby," he whispered, as the airlock door inched forward, shuddering over debris that had fallen in its track.

A fit of coughing overcame him and gasping for air, he eventually blacked out before he had a chance to see if the door shut all the way.

Helena and her medical team waited anxiously for their rescue Eagle to fly them to the crash site. There was still no evidence that Alan was alive and as Helena looked at the images coming in on the monitor in front of her, her expectations of finding anything but a corpse began to evaporate.

"There's a breach in the hull- I can definitely see a breach in the hull," stated Ben Vincent, who had flown with her.

"He could be sealed in the command section," she replied defensively, knowing that it was unlikely.

Ben said nothing further as the team began to suit up in preparation for a short space walk; the wreck was far too damaged to be able to dock with. He watched Helena anxiously, noting the pallor of her face and her worried frown.

God, I hope she's right; I hope Carter has holed up in the command section, because since we came to the Loki system, she's lost a baby and her old friend Professor Bergman. Alan is another good friend of her and the Commander's, and it's a grief she can do without just now.

The door of the rescue Eagle slid back and the team bounded across the rough terrain in slow motion, making for the wreck. It took a small amount of plastic explosive to open the hatch and then, they all breathed a sigh of relief.

"It's sealed off," said Helena, running a scanner against the command module airlock. "He's in there all right. He's got an atmosphere and he's alive!"

Those back in Main Mission who were anxiously listening to her transmission broke into spontaneous applause. The drama wasn't over yet- the command module would have to be separated from the wreck and brought back to Alpha before they could get poor Alan out, but at least he was alive. Hopefully, he would be okay.

David lay beside Tanya and gazed at her smooth white skin, as she slept. He'd woken from a strange nonsensical dream and thought about reaching over and waking her. In the end, he'd decided not to. It would have been wrong to disturb her when she was so obviously exhausted. After they'd finished their respective shifts in Main Mission, their evening should have been perfect. They'd had a quick meal dinner and gone straight back to their quarters, wanting to be alone together. But Tanya had seemed unusually tired and he himself still had a nagging headache. In the end, they'd both tumbled into bed and fallen asleep. David smiled and turned over, telling himself that they could both use a little more time in bed actually sleeping than they'd had lately, anyway.

He had just slipped into a warm doze when the comm post over the other side of the room began an incessant beeping. Dragging himself back to wakefulness, he stumbled out of bed and pulled on a robe. A slight dizziness passed over him and he had to lean against the post for a moment, while he answered the call.

"Yes?" he asked testily, when Sandra's face appeared on the monitor.

"David, the Commander would like to see you in his office immediately," she said. "There has been an accident... Alan has crashed an Eagle."

"What?" he gasped, the last traces of sleep flying away from him with the shock of what he was being told. "Is he okay?"

Sandra nodded.

"He is alive. The ship is a write- off, but he managed to seal himself into the command section. He is being brought back to Alpha now."

"I'll be there as soon as I can," David told her.

"What's happening darling?" Tanya asked in a sleepy voice, propping herself up on one elbow.

"There's been an accident," he replied, pulling his clothes on. "Alan crashed an Eagle. Apparently he's fine, but the Commander wants me back in Main Mission right now, for some reason."

Tanya made to get out of bed.

"I'll come with you," she said.

"No, no- you stay there," David demurred. "I think you've been working too hard lately as it is. Look how tired you were tonight."

Lying back down again, Tanya smiled at him.

"If you're sure then," she sighed.

Although David was concerned about the accident, a part of him wished he didn't have to leave her right now, looking as beautiful as she did. He walked over and kissed her deeply, before heading off to Main Mission.

All was quiet in the operations center when David arrived. The twisted wreckage of Eagle Fifteen was still up on the big screen but apart from that, it was business as usual.

"Where's Alan then?" he asked Sandra. "Is he in the Commander's office, explaining how he managed to wreck that bird, or hasn't the rescue Eagle arrived back at base yet?"

Sandra shook her head and all at once, David noticed that she was having trouble maintaining her professional composure.

"He has been taken to Medical Center," she whispered.

"Hey, I thought you told me he was okay," he said, his stomach beginning to knot with worry.

"No, I said he was alive," Sandra replied.

Looking up at the big screen again, David saw how badly the Eagle was damaged and realized that he'd been a fool. Nobody could walk away from a crash like that without serious injury.

"Will he be all right?" he asked.

"We do not know yet," said Sandra. "You had better go and see the Commander. He wants to speak to you about the cause of the accident."

"He was testing our new program, wasn't he," David said in a flat voice, understanding at last why he had been woken.

"Yes," answered Sandra. "He was."

David put his hands on her desk and leaned forward, close to her face.

"Was it the cause of the crash?"

Not knowing what to say, Sandra didn't answer immediately.

"Was it the cause?" he almost shouted.

Other personnel turned to look at them, and Bill Fraser walked over.

"Kano, at this stage, we really don't know," he said, putting a hand on David's shoulder. "Just go and see the Commander. He's waiting in his office."

David shrugged Bill's hand off and strode over towards the Commander's office, one hand absentmindedly massaging his forehead as his headache began to grow worse.

John Koenig was standing at a window staring out at the moonscape, when David requested permission to enter. He glanced over at Maya, who was leaning on his desk watching a re- run of Eagle fifteen's crash on a small monitor. She switched it off so as to devote her full attention to the upcoming interview.

Both noted the defensive look on the computer operative's face when he entered the room, and the way he was massaging his forehead. Maya wondered if he was feeling guilty about something specific and hoped not, for his sake.

"I guess you know the details of Captain Carter's accident by now," John said.

"Some of them Sir," replied David. "I imagine you're wondering about the new navigation program he was testing, and whether it could have caused the crash."

John nodded.

"At this stage, it appears that when the program was activated and the auto- pilot switched on, the ship went haywire. Can you think of anything in the program that might cause the systems to fail in such a dramatic way?

"N-no Commander," stuttered David. "It's meant to work as a navigation aid only, and should not be able to override the ship's basic flight controls. Besides, any major problems with it would surely have been picked up on the pre- flight tests. Alan would have been thorough..."

John sighed. Kano was a good man and an incredibly gifted computer operative. He knew what he was talking about but- and here was the rub- everyone on the base had noticed that since he'd gotten married, he had not been applying himself to his work with his previous vigor. Now John knew that this was a good thing, as the term 'workaholic' was hardly strong enough for the Kano of old, but the question was, had he slipped too far in the other direction? Had he become negligent, and written some fatal error into the program that affected the Eagle's ability to fly?

"Maya will be heading up a small team looking into the reason for the crash," he said out loud. "I want you to be a part of that team. Your job with be to help her to examine your program and see if there's anything in there at all that could have contributed to it. I know the program was a joint venture between Alan, yourself and Matt Jones but in the final instance, you wrote it."

The buck stops with me, you mean, David said silently.

He opened his mouth to answer his commander but before he could, John held up a silencing hand.

"Nobody's blaming you for the accident, Kano. I want to make that quite clear here and now. But we need to know what happened and if the fault lies with the program, you're the best man to figure that out."

"Of course Sir," David answered quietly.

"The wreckage will be brought back to base sometime in the next few hours," said Maya, moving towards the door. "Why don't we make a start on reviewing the program right now, while we're waiting for that to happen? I've set up an incident room near the Eagle hangar, so that we can work close to the wreck when it arrives."

David nodded, and followed her out of the office. The Commander watched them go, thinking to himself that he'd never seen Kano looking so tense. Why, he had seen beads of sweat standing out on the man's forehead! With a sinking heart, he turned to stare out of the window once more. Guilt could make a person look like that. Guilt could make a person sweat buckets.

Alan's return to consciousness was slow and painful. Red tendrils of agony shot viciously across the inside of his eyelids when he tried to move his head and each breath he took hurt his chest. At first he thought that he must be trapped beneath some wreckage of the Eagle, as one side of his upper body felt as though it was jammed in a vise. He tried to call for help, but the only sound that came out was a cottony "uughhhhhhh". Finally his ears picked up the sound of a beeping monitor and his nose smelt a vague smell of disinfectant. He was in Medical Center. The airlock must have shut in time.

"Doctor Russell," he heard a nurse call. "Come quick."

Feet clicked crisply across the floor and pushing through the pain, Alan opened his eyes. Helena Koenig was smiling down at him.

"Don't try to move," she said.

Forming the words slowly, he whispered.

"Smashed up pretty bad, am I?"

"Severe concussion, a fractured right clavicle, eight broken ribs and a punctured lung," she replied. "I'd say so."

"Hurts like hell," Alan muttered.

"I know," Helena said softly, reaching for a pain killing injection.

Moments later, Alan drifted off on a sea of analgesic.

Tanya woke with a start and sat up. Glancing at the bedside clock, she realized that it had been more than four hours since David had gotten the call to Main Mission and he still wasn't back.

"Damn," she muttered to herself, wondering what had happened.

She hadn't intended to sleep so long, but she'd been so tired that she really had no choice in the matter. Wondering if the crash was more serious than David had thought, Tanya got out of bed and decided to go see for herself. As she reached for her uniform, a wave of dizziness and nausea overtook her and she was forced to sit down on the floor, before she fell down. Moaning softly, she put her head between her knees and waited for it to pass. She was positive now. A trip to Medical Center was in order, but she didn't need Helena Koenig or one of her colleagues to run tests and tell her what instinct told her was the truth.

She was pregnant.

Tanya wasn't sure how she felt about having a child. It seemed like everyone on Alpha was trying their hardest to breed, and she and David had also discussed children with enthusiasm. But now it was happening, well...

Gazing at her flat stomach and long smooth legs, Tanya felt a certain amount of revulsion at the havoc pregnancy was about to wreak on them. Would David still love her when she looked like a beached whale. Like Shermeen Collins, or Alibe Ofori? And her body would never look as good again! There would be stretch marks and varicose veins and maybe extra kilos that were going to be hard to shed.

"Damn," she sighed, pulling herself to her feet.

Mentally shelving the whole dilemma, Tanya wearily pulled on her uniform, splashed her face with water and brushed her hair, before going in search of her husband.

Helena and John sat on the sofa in the privacy of his office, sipping coffee.

"Thank God Alan's going to be all right," sighed John. "He's bloody lucky to have survived a crash like that."

Helena nodded.

"He's in a bad way at the moment, but after a few weeks of rest he'll be just fine. Tell me; do you really think that David Kano made some mistake when he was creating that new program?"

John put his coffee cup on the table and ran his hands through his hair.

"I'm not sure," he replied gravely. "He could have, though. He's been pretty distracted lately."

"It would have to have been a big mistake though," said Helena. "And why didn't Alan pick it up when he was still on the ground, if that was the case? It doesn't make any sense. Look, Kano may have been a little preoccupied with his new wife lately, but he's still very good at his job. Besides, he wasn't the only one involved in putting that program together. There was Matt Jones from Astronomy, as well as Alan himself- and I do remember Alan telling me that some of the other flight engineers had a small hand in it. Pete Garforth, for instance."

"Yes, but Kano did most of the final work on it," explained John. "He handled the programming side of it for Alan."

"It's too easy to blame one person," insisted Helena. "I'll bet that in the end, it turns out that there were a whole lot of contributing factors to the accident."

"I hope you're right," said John, putting his arm around her.

But somehow, he didn't believe she was for a minute.

Self- doubt is a terrible thing. It can eat away at a person, changing their personality and warping their view of their world. The seeds of self- doubt had been sown in David Kano's gut from the moment he learned the circumstances of Alan's accident. They began to grow and spread like a cancer, helped along by his crushing headache, as he sat in the small room near the Eagle hangar which Maya had commandeered. Bit by bit he was reviewing his program on one of several computers in the room, trying hard to find something in it that could be linked to the failure of the ship's flight controls. The more he thought about it, the more he certain he became that at some point, he would stumble across a problem. Guiltily he thought of all the times his mind had strayed to thoughts of Tanya when he should have been working. Tanya playing badminton with him in one of the rec rooms, Tanya having a meal with him, her beautiful laughing face teasing him from across the other side of the table; the times they had stayed up late making love again and again, so that the next shift found them both tired and lacking in concentration. It went on and on.

Why couldn't he have kept his personal life in its proper place? Then Alan wouldn't be lying in Medical Center and a valuable test Eagle would still be in one piece!

Sitting nearby, reviewing some of the other data connected with the flight, Maya watched Kano out of the corner of her eye. She saw the pained expression on his normally open and happy face and hoped fervently that they would find another cause for the accident. She liked David Kano and knew him to be a man of integrity. If it turned out that it had indeed been caused by some slip up on his part, he was going to be shattered.

"Where is David?" Tanya asked Sandra, when she walked into Main Mission.

"He is with Maya in one of the flight engineer's workrooms, near the Eagle hangar," replied Sandra. "They have set it up as an incident room to try to establish what caused Alan's test Eagle to crash."

"Oh," said Tanya, noticing the closed look on Sandra's face and wondering what it meant. "Is Alan all right?"

Sandra shrugged.

"He is down in Medical Center in intensive care, but Helena says he should recover after a few weeks."

"What happened to cause the accident?" Tanya asked.

"He activated the new navigation program he and David had been working on and then put the ship on auto- pilot. It went out of control and crashed," Sandra replied quietly. "That is what he is doing with Maya; going over the program to see if there was a fault in it that overrode the Eagle's flight controls."

The picture became all too clear to Tanya. If the program had been the cause of the crash, she knew that David might be in trouble. At the very least, he would rightly or wrongly, be blaming himself.

"I'd better go to him," she muttered, hurrying out of Main Mission.

Sandra felt sorry for Tanya as she watched her leave. The woman looked pale and tired and under stress. Married life could be tough sometimes. With a sigh, she turned back to her work, glad for once that she was single.

It took a while for Tanya to actually locate David in the maze of corridors and rooms that surrounded the Eagle hangar. She was reluctant to use her commlock and contact him, opting to ask a passing member of the flight maintenance crew where he was, instead. Exactly why she felt this way was unclear to her, but something told her that he might be too engrossed in his work to want to see her. Finally she found him, holed up in a small dimly lit room, surrounded by computers. Maya was working at a console opposite him, but tactfully excused herself for a few minutes when Tanya arrived.

"I was worried about you when you didn't return to our quarters," she said after a short silence, in which David kept on typing at his keyboard. "I heard about what happened from Sandra; are you okay?"

Finally stopped what he was doing and looked up at her.

"Yes, I think so," he said wearily, reaching for a jar of analgesics that were sitting on the console.

Tanya could see that several had been taken from the jar already, and frowned. "Still got that headache?" she asked, as she placed her fingers on the back of his neck and began a gentle massage.

David didn't answer, but tensed up from the moment she touched him. She could sense that he wasn't enjoying the massage so feeling slightly hurt, she took her hands away.

"This accident.... it won't be your fault. There will be some other cause. You would have had to make a terrible blunder with the program and we both know that you're too good for that. You will find something else. Perhaps when Alan is out of intensive care you can ask him."

David swung around in his chair and looked up at Tanya. She took a step backwards at the expression in his eyes. It was strangely cold and distant- and furious.

"The thing is Tanya, I don't know that I didn't make a terrible blunder, as you put it," he replied, through clenched teeth. "I haven't been concentrating as well on my work lately. And neither have you, for that matter. I think there's a very good chance that I'm to blame for Alan's accident. Somewhere in this program lies the answer, and I've got to find it."

"Let me help you then," said Tanya. "I could-"

David cut her off in mid sentence.

"No," he snapped. "You're a distraction I don't need right now. I don't want you involved with this; it's my mess and I'll clean it up myself."

Tanya was so shocked at his words and the look on his face that she stood frozen for a moment, with her mouth hanging open. David saw that he had hurt her badly and felt a twisted kind of self satisfaction. In his mind it was a form of self- punishment; hurt the one he loved and he hurt himself.

"I think you'd better leave now," he said, a trifle more gently. "It's going to take me hours, if not days to finish going through this. I'll see you later in our quarters, or in Main Mission."

Tanya gave a quick nod and stumbled from the room, running back the way she had come and heading for her quarters, her eyes brimming with tears. Maya, who was walking back to the incident room after what she felt was a sufficiently tactful absence, saw her flee.

What happened in there? she thought, noting how upset Tanya was. But David gave no indication that anything was wrong when she resumed her seat opposite him. He was once again engrossed in his work. Maya wondered if she should say something, but decided not to. After all, she reasoned, it was none of her business.

As soon as the door of her quarters shut behind her, Tanya threw herself on the bed and cried until there were no more tears left. How can this be happening to me? she asked herself. What is wrong with David? He was like another man back there! Can't he share his worries with me? After all, I am his wife!

Curling up in a miserable ball, she thought about what David would be like if he did find he'd made a mistake in the program. In her over- emotional state, she could only see things getting worse.

"I can't have his baby," Tanya whispered. "Not now. Not after this."

Looking at her clock, she saw that she was due back on duty in three hours. If she tidied herself up, she might just have time to go and see Doctor Russell before her shift began. Surely Helena would understand; nobody should be forced to have a child if they didn't want to, even in a situation where every new member of the population was desperately needed.

Alan Carter's second venture into wakefulness was less agonizing. The vice of pain that had engulfed one side of his body had eased sufficiently for him to be able to think with a certain degree of clarity. He began to turn over the events leading up to his Eagle's crash in his mind, searching the reason why it happened. The thought that there might be a fault in the new program surfaced first, but it had been fine on all the pre- flight checks. Besides, something else was nagging away at him. Something that he couldn't quite get a handle on.

"Damn it," he muttered.

"Awake and swearing, I see," said a cheerful voice, distracting him from his train of thought. "Feeling any better?"

Doctor Ben Vincent was leaning over him, a smile lighting up his face.

"I could murder a decent cup of coffee," said Alan.

"Sorry, we're all out of anything remotely approaching decent coffee," Ben chuckled. "And anyway, you're on nil orally for the moment."

"Terrific," Alan groaned.

Ben began to check the monitors attached to him and he drifted into a light doze, promising himself he'd think more about the crash when next he woke.

Helena sat in her office signing a last bit of paperwork, before she went off duty for a well earned break. After working for almost eighteen hours straight, she was utterly exhausted. John had called in and practically ordered her to go and rest. She knew he was right; Alan was in no danger now and Ben Vincent was perfectly capable of supervising him. And she had to look after herself. This time she was sure that the baby growing inside her would be fine, but she was taking no chances. Smiling dreamily, she thought of the child to come. Soon they would allow the news to become public knowledge but at the moment, only Ben and Kate knew. It was a delicious secret....

A timid knocking on her open office door drew Helena back from her reverie and she hastily removed her hand, where it had been resting protectively against her abdomen. She was surprised to see Tanya Kano standing there, looking decidedly wan and miserable. Tanya, who normally exuded an air of self confidence and grace.

"Come in," she smiled. "Did you want to see me about something?"

"Yes," Tanya said in a low voice. "I have a problem. Um, I don't know quite where to begin."

Helena shut her door and then got up and poured Tanya a cool glass of water from the dispenser in one corner of her office.

"Here," she said. "You look like you need this. Now just take your time and tell me what's wrong."

The water in Tanya's glass danced as her hands began to tremble, and she had to put it down on Helena's desktop. Tears filled her eyes again and she had to fight hard to keep them from spilling over. Taking a deep breath, she began to talk. Once she'd started, she found it wasn't hard to keep going. She told Helena everything, from her worries about the changes pregnancy would bring about to her body, right through to David's strange attitude and her conviction that she could not bear a child to him.

Helena listened intently to Tanya's distressed monologue, all the while fighting to stop her hand from returning to her own abdomen.

I've got to be professional about this, she reminded herself. My personal feelings about my own child mustn't enter into this at all!

Finally Tanya finished, wiping the unshed tears away with the back of her hand.

"Will you help me?" she asked.

Helena nodded.

"Let's find out for sure if you are pregnant first," she said gently. "Then we can talk about what to do next. Come with me to an examination room."

Thirty minutes later, there was no doubt. Tanya's suspicions had been correct. Helena stood outside the examination room with the results in her hand and wondered what would be the best thing to do for the troubled woman. She honestly believed that Tanya's jitters about her pregnancy were short term and when she wasn't in such a highly charged emotional state, she would be glad that she was carrying a child. Her relationship with David was under stress because of the Eagle crash, but once that blew over, they would probably be fine.

But what if I'm wrong? Helena asked herself. What if the marriage between Tanya and David doesn't work out, and she really doesn't want children? I have no right to try and sway her from that, just because of my own views. The baby I'm carrying is so important to me- I'd give my right hand for a child. But Tanya?

Helena hovered about the door for a moment longer and then made a decision.

Stepping back inside the room, she put a comforting hand on Tanya's shoulder.

"You were right," she said. "You are pregnant- about eight weeks, I'd say."

Tanya nodded. Her tears seemed to have dried up and she stared wide eyed at the wall in front of her.

"So, I'll ask you again Doctor Russell," she sighed. "Will you help me, if I don't want to go ahead and have this child?"

Helena had to work to keep her voice steady as she replied,

"Yes I will, provided you take a few days to think about it. Maybe you should try to speak to David and see how he feels, once this business with the crash has been cleared up. Think carefully Tanya, as you will have to live with the decision for the rest of your life."

Tanya nodded her agreement and left, after accepting a note from Helena excusing her from duties for one shift.

"I don't know how I can speak to David though," she murmured, as she walked down the corridor towards her quarters. "He is so obsessed with finding that supposed mistake in the program, that he won't want to say two words to me."

John Koenig was sitting in his quarters waiting impatiently for his wife, when the communications panel on his wall beeped. Someone was at the door. At the press of his commlock Mayas lovely face appeared on the video screen.

"Commander, may I come in for a minute please?"

"Of course," replied John, with a smile.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you and Helena," Maya said, as she stepped into the room.

John shook his head.

"Helena's not back from Medical Center yet, although she should be."

Maya smiled inwardly. The Commander's extra concern for his wife lately was obvious to everybody. They may not have made any special announcements about impending additions to their family yet, but she was sure they soon would.

"It's the crash," she said. "I wanted you to know that I'm almost certain that it didn't directly have anything to do with the new navigation program. I've been over the data very carefully, with the assistance of Pete Garforth and we can't find a single fault with it. There are not even any minor errors with it, let alone the kind of glaring one that would be needed to produce a total override of the Eagles flight controls. The fact that the ship went haywire after Alan activated the auto- pilot was probably coincidence.

"We installed a copy of the program on a second Eagle and Pete went through all of the pre- flight checks that Alan would have done. It worked perfectly and I think that it's going to prove to be a wonderful innovation. Alan, David and Matt have done a terrific job with it."

"What about Kano?" asked John. "Has he managed to find any anomalies in his programming? He of all people would know if something wasn't right."

Maya shook her head.

"He's still working on it, but I don't believe he will. Pete says there must have been another cause and we're about to take an in- depth look at the wreck, now it's been returned to the hangar. It would be helpful if I could speak to Alan."

They both looked up, as the door slid back a second time. Helena walked in, dark smudges beneath her eyes revealing her state of exhaustion.

"Here is the very person who can tell you how soon you can do that," smiled John, moving to Helena's side and putting an arm around her.

"How soon you can do what?" asked Helena.

"Speak with Alan," replied Maya. "We think that the Eagle crash may not have had anything to do with the new navigation program after all. Alan could have some answers for us."

"Has someone told David Kano this?" asked Helena, forgetting to answer the question she'd been asked.

Maya shook her head.

"Not yet. I guess I should have, as he's been taking the idea of his program contributing to the crash pretty hard. He even managed to upset poor Tanya when she came to see him. He's utterly convinced that he's to blame for the whole thing."

"Someone needs to tell him he's wrong as soon as possible," said Helena.

Maya looked puzzled, but refrained from asking why.

"Okay," was all she said. "But what about Alan?"

"Oh- you'll have to check with Ben Vincent," Helena said. "He has been drifting in and out of consciousness and is in a lot of pain, but if he's awake, I don't see why not. He would want to help."

"I'll go down to Medical Center now," said Maya.

"No; go see Kano and tell him what you and Pete have found," said John, realizing that Maya must have been working for more than twenty hours straight by now. "Then take a rest period before you visit Alan. That's an order!"

"Yes Commander," smiled the Psychon, secretly having no intention of taking a break. Tired she might be but to her mind, clearing this matter up once and for all was far more important than a few hours of sleep. Besides, Tony was still down on Loki, so her quarters would be a lonely place right now.

"She looked exhausted," sighed Helena, after Maya had left.

"Just as you do," John replied, guiding her over to the sofa and sitting her down. "You shouldn't be working so hard."

"This is rather an unusual situation John," said Helena. "Alan's life was at stake."

John poured her a cup of cold juice and presented her with a plate of soy/cheese sandwiches, which he'd picked up for her earlier, on his way to their quarters.

"Thanks," she said gratefully.

"What's going on with Kano? Has he been to see you?" asked John, as she ate. "You seemed pretty insistent that Maya let him know his program wasn't at fault as soon as she could."

Helena shook her head.

"I haven't seen David myself, but I do know that this crash business has put a terrible strain on his relationship with Tanya. The sooner it's cleared up, the better."

"I'm with you on that," agreed John, deciding not to probe any further. Helena was very big on patient confidentiality and he knew that if he overstepped the mark with her, she would put him in his place, commander or no commander!

David sat back from the computer terminal and ran his fingers through his short hair, feeling nauseous and sleepy. It didn't seem to matter how many analgesics he swallowed, his damned headache would not let up.

I'm overtired, he thought. There's a mistake in there somewhere but I can't find it because I'm overtired.

His fingers passed over the bump on the back of his skull where the tiny port implanted in his head was hidden by his hair. The port that could connect him with Alpha's central computer....

Only once, in all the years they'd traveled through space, had he allowed the port to be utilized. It was dangerous and painful and back then, it had resulted in a sudden trip to the planet Piri. Since then, he'd tried to forget it was there. Now, he had an idea.

What if he uploaded the navigation program to the central computer and had Doctor Russell connect him? It would be a much more efficient way of checking it out! She would take some persuading, but since it would be the quickest way of finding the problem, she might just go along with it. He decided to test the idea out on Maya when she returned to the incident room and in the meantime, he would keep looking the slow way. Wearily he began to tap away on the keyboard again, but after a few minutes his fingers slowed down. Finally, his head slumped forward and he fell asleep, his head resting against the computer monitor. A bead of sweat trickled down his face and his eyelids twitched, as the headache burned through his skull and into his dreams.

Maya was heading to the incident room to see David, when Pete Garforth came running towards her, from the direction of the Eagle hangar.

"I've found it," he puffed. "Come on, you've got to see this. You'll never believe it in a million years!"

Forgetting all about David for the moment, Maya hurried off towards the Eagle hangar and the wreck, with Pete.

The twisted hull and command module of Eagle Fifteen sat in the hangar, looking like a crushed insect. Scaffolding ran up it's sides and a crane hovered above it's rear engines.

"Up here," said Pete, climbing a ladder into the command module.

Maya followed him, wondering what had him so excited. The interior of the command console had been partially dismantled; panels pulled off walls and electronic circuit boards exposed.

"Here's where Alan pulled a board out to disconnect the flight controls and force the ship to go to backup," said Pete. Take a look and tell me if you notice anything missing."

Maya stared, and then shook her head.

"Sorry Pete, I'm no flight engineer."

"The protective shielding at the back of the boards!" he exclaimed. "It's missing in this area."

Slowly comprehension dawned on Maya and she nodded thoughtfully.

"I see- each section of circuit boards has an extra layer of shielding between it and the outer layers of the ship, as added protection against any freak bursts of hard radiation that might be encountered. Have I got that bit right?"

Pete nodded enthusiastically.

"When the ship is taken in for a periodic major overhaul, the protective shields are removed, in order to get to some of the wiring. It's a tricky job, and one that must be done correctly."

"Hmmm, " said Maya. "So are you trying to tell me that Eagle Fifteen crashed because it passed through a particularly high beam of some sort of radiation that just happened to bullseye on this part of the ship where the extra radiation protection was absent? That's a million to one shot. I mean, the radiation would have to be extreme, like the synchotron radiation we've encountered on occasion in interstellar space. The normal shielding that covers the rest of the ship should be sufficient protection in most cases."

"But it's still a possibility," Pete argued. "It makes sense Maya, and it's something we can check out. You know there's nothing wrong with that program, so it has to be this!"

Maya stared at the wrecked circuit panel and nodded, feeling disappointed. Pete couldn't be right. Stray radiation of that magnitude, just beaming it's way past the Moon at the exact moment Alan flew over the Mare Crisium? And where would it come from?

"I suppose we could ask Helena or Ben to check Alan's radiation exposure. And I can go back to Main Mission and run a scan over the mare, searching for residual radiation," she sighed. "In the meantime, keep looking. You might turn up something more concrete."

Pete shook his head as Maya climbed back out of the Eagle command module. He knew he was right, and Alan would agree with him, once he was well enough to see the evidence. Yes, it was a million to one accident. But it was an accident caused by human error, because if the shielding had been in place it never would have happened. Instead of searching for another reason for the crash, he decided to go to his workroom and access the service record of test Eagle Fifteen. He couldn't quite remember when it was overhauled last and who had worked on it, but it wasn't that long ago.

David felt as though his face was resting on a scattering of pebbles. For a moment he dreamily wondered if he and Tanya were still down on Loki, where they'd spent a blissful three day honeymoon not so long ago. Perhaps he was lying on the moss at the edge of that little lake they'd found, basking in the sun.

Then he remembered.

He sat up and blinked his eyes, which for some annoying reason, were refusing to focus properly. His old friend the headache was still there and he reached shakily for the analgesics again. Dimly he realized that there must be something seriously wrong with him when he saw there were only two left in the jar.

"Damn," he muttered. "I can't afford to be sick at the moment. I'll get checked out later."

The idea about using his implant resurfaced in his mind and his hand wandered back to the small bump on his head. Pulling himself stiffly out of his chair, he began to walk towards Medical Center. If Doctor Russell wasn't available, one of the others would be.

To his consternation, David found Medical Center almost deserted when he arrived. There wasn't a doctor in sight.

"Can I help you?" asked a pretty young nurse, who's name for the moment escaped him.

"Um, I was just wanting to look in on Alan Carter," he replied, not wishing to explain his real reason for being there to the nurse.

"He's in a private room under intensive care," the nurse said. "I'm sorry, but you can't see him without approval from one of the doctors."

"That's okay," sighed David. "I wouldn't want to disturb him. Is Doctor Russell around? Or Doctor Vincent?"

She shook her head.

"Doctor Russell isn't on duty and Doctor Vincent is busy with a patient. Do you want to wait to see him? If you don't mind me saying so, you don't look very well."

"I'm fine thank you; don't bother him," David replied quickly. "It was really Doctor Russell I need to see. I'll come back another time."

The nurse walked away, leaving him standing at the entrance to Medical Center, wondering what to do next. Now that he thought about it, he really would like to see Alan, just to reassure himself that his friend was still alive. The nurse had wandered off somewhere, so it wouldn't hurt to take a quick peek. Swiftly he walked forward towards the private rooms on one side of the complex. Nobody was in the first one, or the second. Alan lay sleeping in the third.

David tiptoed inside, staring at the monitors connected to him. His head was heavily bandaged, as was his ribcage and one shoulder. An intravenous drip hung above his bed, it's thin tube feeding clear liquid into a vein in one arm. In short, Alan was a mess.

The room swam before David's eyes and for one moment he thought he might vomit, or pass out. Then he pulled himself together and stood up straight. At least, he thought he was standing up straight, but he was actually listing quite badly to the left.

"Alan old pal, I'm really sorry," he whispered. "If I could trade places with you, I would. I was negligent, I know that now. All the time I was working on the program, Tanya was never far from my mind. How could I let it happen? Women should know their places!"

The sleeping Alan gave him no response. Head tilted eerily to one side, he tiptoed back out of the room and walked unseen from Medical Center.

Access to the electronics store room was not a problem for David. He punched in the code to the door, went right in and began hunting through a box of cables and plugs.

"I should be able to interface with the central computer myself, without anyone ever knowing," he mumbled, wiping sweat from his face. "All I need is a bit of privacy. It would have been better if Doctor Russell had supervised me, but the original idea with these implants was that the subjects should be able to connect to their computers whenever they wished, without help."

Finding what he wanted in the box, David made his way back to his quarters, sure that Tanya would be back on duty and he would be alone. He planned to connect to the central computer via his own workstation there.

Alan dimly thought he heard a voice, whispering to him. "Alan old pal, I'm really sorry," it said. The voice belonged to David Kano. Sorry? What did he have to be sorry about? The accident? But it wasn't his fault. It wasn't anything to do with him at all.

"How do I know that?" Alan muttered to himself.

He opened his eyes and looked about him. David was nowhere to be seen, but the sound of his voice was still ringing in Alan's ears. He was certain that his friend had been there moments before. While he'd been sleeping, the problem of the Eagle crash had sorted itself out in his mind and he hoped like hell that David really wasn't blaming himself for it. Alan had a clear recollection of ripping one wall panel off in the Eagle and pulling out a circuit board to disconnect the auto flight controls. At that point he'd subconsciously registered the missing protective shielding and at last, he understood what had happened.

"Radiation," he croaked. "No wonder the system went haywire!"

Weakly he reached out with his good arm and pressed a buzzer, hoping a nurse would hear and come running. He had to tell someone what he'd figured out right away. Instead of a nurse, Ben Vincent came running, closely followed by Maya.

"Maya!" he said, trying to summon up a smile. "Just the girl I want to see. The crash... there was some shielding missing. Radiation must have screwed the system. Not the new program..."

"It's okay Alan, we know about that," smiled Maya. "Pete Garforth suggested the same thing and I didn't believe him at first. Then I checked the site you were flying over and guess what- there is evidence to support what you're saying. Really amazing evidence! That's what I'm doing here; I wanted Ben to run some tests on you to see if you've been exposed to it."

"Has someone told Kano?" asked Alan.

"Oh, no!" Maya replied, looking worried. "I was supposed to let him know what was happening, but in all the excitement I forgot."

"He was here just a minute ago," Alan said. "He was blaming himself."

"I'd better go and find him," said Maya, leaving the room in a hurry.

Alan tried to sit up a little, groaning in pain at the attempt.

"You stay right where you are," ordered Ben. "Leave worrying about Kano to us and concentrate on getting well."

His patient slumped back down, knowing that he had no choice in the matter. He couldn't move more than a few centimeters anyway, at the moment.

Clutching his cables and two nine pin plugs, David stumbled into the darkened quarters that he shared with Tanya and moved straight to his computer, which had been relegated to one corner of the room since their marriage. Switching it on, he set to work attaching the plugs to the cable with a small pair of pliers, working by the dim light of the computer screen. Normal lighting was beginning to hurt his eyes. Walking down the corridor, he'd found himself squinting to shut it out.

"David?" asked a shaky voice, from the direction of the bed. "What are you doing?"

David looked up with a start.

"Tanya? You should be on duty!"

Tanya reached over and turned on a lamp, sitting up on the bed. Her hair was in a state of disarray and she had red blotches down her cheeks, where she had been crying.

"I- I wasn't well. Doctor Russell gave me this shift off."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, turn the light off," David snapped, dropping his pliers as he made to cover his eyes with his hands.

Frightened by the tone of his voice, Tanya did as he said.

David's temper began to boil when he thought about the fact that Tanya wasn't at work. She was getting lazy, and laziness put people's lives in danger. If she wasn't careful, there could be another accident. Perhaps she should be punished...

Then he realized that she might actually be useful to him. For some reason his hands weren't working as well as they usually did, and he was having trouble joining his bit of cable to the nine pin plugs. Perhaps she could do that for him, and then plug him in. His fevered mind had begun to see connecting himself with Alpha's central computer as the answer to everything. He would find the fault in his program, Alan would be healed and his headache would miraculously disappear. All problems would be solved by a simple interface.

"You asked me if there was some way you could help me earlier," David said, his voice slurring slightly and his head listing even further to the left.

Tanya nodded, trying not to show the fear she felt at the behavior of this strange man who used to be her husband, but now seemed more like a monster.

"Well, there is a way," he continued. "I'm having trouble locating a fault in the navigation program and so is Maya, but I know there must be one in there. We just can't see it yet. The quickest way to solve this problem is for me to upload the program direct to the central computer and then interface with it, through the port in my head. Since Doctor Russell is not on duty, you can help me connect right here."

"No!" gasped Tanya. "David, no! What is happening to you? Where is your judgment? Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that if you can't find a fault in the program, then there probably isn't one? The crash could just as easily have been caused by something else!"

"Don't be stupid," David growled. "The first time Alan activates the program, the ship goes down. There is no way anything else could have been the cause. Now do as I tell you!"

Tanya stared at her husband in disbelief, knowing that there was something horribly wrong with him. The David she had married would never have spoken to her like this. She knew how dangerous it was for him to be linked to central computer, and thought frantically of a way to stop him. If he attempted this on his own, his brain could be fried in a second. She had to stop him; even if she could just stall him for a few minutes, while she called for help. Taking a deep breath, she could think of only one thing that might hold him back.

"David, do you really think it's worth risking your life to find out if the program caused the crash?" she asked softly. "Will you leave your child fatherless?"

"My child?" frowned David, struggling focus on her. "What child?"

"The one I am carrying," replied Tanya, her voice shaking with emotion. "This may not be the best time to tell you David, but I'm pregnant."

Fearfully, she watched his face as the news sunk in. She hadn't intended to tell him this way- wanted a little more time to think things through before she decided to keep the baby for sure. But the rest in her quarters after speaking to Helena Russell, and the definite medical confirmation of her baby's existence had made doubts creep in. Maybe abortion wasn't the answer, even if she didn't have David at her side. What did it really matter, if her figure changed a little. Wouldn't it all be worth it?

"A baby," whispered David. "You're going to have a baby?"

"Yes," she said.

David shook his head, his thoughts awhirl.

"A baby," he muttered to himself. "A little baby of our own. All the more reason to sort this crash problem out. Got to get on with it. Got to make things right.... A baby.... My own child..."

Suddenly, he leaned forward and vomited.

"David!" Tanya moaned. "What's wrong with you?"

Before she could get off the bed, David began to convulse, his prone body wracked with spasms. Tanya rushed to the comm post.

"Help!" she screamed. "Send someone, quick. David's dying! For God's sake, hurry!"

Maya was standing behind Sandra when the call came through from Tanya. Unable to locate Kano in the incident room or the Eagle hangar, she had returned to Main Mission to see if he was there.

"I think you'd better wake Helena," she said quietly.

"A medical team will be there very soon Tanya," said Sandra, in her most reassuring voice. "Hang on."

Sandra put an emergency call through to Medical Center first, and then woke Helena.

"What do you suppose happened?" she asked, turning to Maya.

"I don't know," replied Maya. "I noticed Kano wasn't looking very well when I was working down in the incident room with him, but I thought it was just worry over Alan's accident. Actually, I've been trying to find him, to relieve his mind. I've now got conclusive proof that the new program had nothing to do with the crash."

Sandra raised her eyebrows. Like most of the staff of Main Mission, she'd assumed it had. After all, what else could have made the Eagle go haywire? Seeing the look of skepticism on her face, Maya quickly enlightened her.

"Oh no," said Sandra, when she'd finished talking. "Poor Kano."

"Poor Kano indeed," replied the Psychon. "I think I'd better get down to his quarters and find out if he's okay."

"I'm coming with you," insisted John, as Helena struggled wearily into her clothes.

Helena didn't argue, as she was glad to have him along for support. David Kano must be really ill, for Sandra to have woken her up. For a second she thought longingly of Loki, and her special valley; then heaving a sigh, she began to run towards the Kanos' quarters.

"If I've been exposed to a burst of hard radiation, will I be okay?" asked Alan, as Ben drew blood from him and prepared to run a small meter over his body.

"I'm sure you will be," grinned Ben. "The exposure to you will be minimal- you know that. Those Eagles are well shielded without the extra protection that some of those delicate instruments are given. Still, we need to check you to try to back up what they've found."

"I wonder who worked on that ship at it's last major overhaul?" Alan said. "Any chance of me speaking to Pete Garforth for a minute or two?"

Vincent sighed, knowing his patient would not rest unless he let him do as he wanted in this matter.

"Okay," he grumbled. "I'll arrange it, but you can only see him for a few minutes. You're supposed to be taking it easy."

Alan closed his eyes and waited. Pete would check it out, and the person who'd been so negligent would be hauled over the coals. He would personally make sure of it!

A medical team was just loading David onto a stretcher, as Helena and John rushed in. The air in the room was filled with the sour smell of vomit and David was muttering incoherently and waving his arms about wildly, as the nurses and two security guards struggled to strap him down.

"He threw a fit," Tanya sobbed, coming to Helena's side as she pulled a monitor from her pocket and performed a quick bioscan on him. "He was acting so strangely; talking about interfacing with the central computer via his implant. His voice was slurred- could it have been all those analgesics he swallowed?"

Helena read the monitor and then looked up at her.

"Analgesics? Why was he taking analgesics?"

"A headache," replied Tanya. "He had a terrible headache that wouldn't go away and Helena, he was tilted to one side somehow, and he wouldn't let me switch on the light, and he...."

At that she dissolved in tears. Helena crooked a finger at one of the nurses.

"Take her down to Medical and give her a mild sedative. Maxepam only please; she's pregnant."

With a quick nod, the nurse put an arm around Tanya and led her away. Helena watched as the team rushed David away to Medical Center, but did not immediately follow, opting instead to use her commlock to issue orders for the isolation unit to be set up.

"Isolation unit?" asked Maya, who had by this time, joined she and John. "What do you think is wrong with him?"

"I'm not certain," sighed Helena. "But the symptoms Tanya is describing are very like meningitis. I'm thinking he could have a form of meningitis."

"But... some forms of that are infectious, aren't they?" asked John, feeling cold as he realized the implications of what she was saying.

Helena nodded.

"Yes they are John and if that's what he's got, quite a few of us have been exposed to it."

"Ben Vincent can treat him. You're pregnant, so let him take the risk," grated John, forgetting all about the fact that Maya was standing with them.

"Congratulations," said the Psychon softly.

"Thank you," smiled Helena. "It's a bit of a secret just at the moment though."

Maya nodded her understanding.

"I mean it Helena- you can't put yourself at risk," insisted John.

Helena reached up and gently touched John's cheek.

"I'm not stupid," she answered. "Every precaution will be taken."

With that, she left the room and followed the stretcher. Kano's illness had looked pretty advanced. If they were to save him, she and Ben Vincent would have to pull out all the stops.

"Commander," said Maya, in the silence of the empty quarters. "About the crash of Eagle fifteen; we found the cause. Well, Pete Garforth found it really; I just confirmed it."

"Definitely not the program then?" asked John.

"Definitely not," she replied. "And I never got the chance to tell poor Kano; I feel dreadful."

"Never mind," replied John, trying to summon up a smile. "There'll be plenty of time to tell him when he is well."

Both of them left the Kanos' quarters wondering silently if David would ever be well again.

Helena was standing outside of the isolation room watching over David, when Ben Vincent handed her the test results.

"You were right," he said. "Meningitis. Take a look at the pathogen that caused it!"

Helena quickly read through the results of David's CSF tap, blood tests and CAT scan.

"My God, it's a tiny unicellular fungus," she whispered. "Maybe he picked this up on Loki because it's the strangest looking fungus that I've ever seen. And see how it's massed around the implant in his brain! That must be why it's taken until now to develop- it's probably been festering away in there since his honeymoon trip to the planet, without causing any serious problems."

Ben nodded his agreement.

"I'm sure you're right; the evidence is plain on the CAT scan. I've checked with our biological database and it's definitely not one we brought with us. However, it does closely match one that the hydroponics team isolated recently, growing in the soil around some stagnant areas of water on Loki."

"Really?" commented Helena. "That's very interesting. As you know, back on Earth there were certain fungal organisms that could thrive in and around stagnant water, or on the banks of certain rivers. The unicellular fungus Cryptococcus was one- ever see a case of Cryptococcal meningitis?"

Ben shook his head.

"Well I did," shuddered Helena. "Not nice- not nice at all. The patient I saw had picked the disease up from sleeping on the bank of a river. It started with a sore on his nose and in no time at all, it migrated to the brain."

"Well, the good news is that this bug appears to be very susceptible to the simple anti- fungals that we have available," said Ben. "In my opinion, that's more proof that is springs from Loki, as anything that evolved here would probably show a small amount of resistance to simple treatments. With luck, we can knock this thing dead before it permanently damages Kano's brain."

"Start him on the anti- fungals right away," Helena ordered. "And notify me if there is any change at all in his condition. I'm going to try to organize blood tests for everyone who has come into contact with Kano in the last seventy- two hours. We'll screen them first, then I guess everyone on the base should be tested; who knows how infectious this organism might be. I'll get Ed Spencer to give me a hand with this."

"He's not on duty- you'll have to wake him up," Ben called as she walked away.

He heaved a tired sigh and went to begin David's treatment.

Pete Garforth stood at the nurses station in Medical Center, clutching a report in one hand.

"Could I pop in and see Alan Carter for a minute?" he asked a nurse, as she rushed by.

She didn't hear him, and he figured she was too busy treating some emergency elsewhere. He could see that the isolation room at the other end of the complex was in use and briefly wondered what was going on. Then he put it from his mind and walked straight on through to Alan's room. It was obvious that nobody was going to be bothered to stop him.

"Alan, are you awake?" he asked hesitantly, stepping inside.

Some of the monitoring equipment had been removed since his last visit, and Pete thought Alan looked quite a lot better.

"You're a tough so and so, aren't you," he muttered.

"I certainly am," grinned Alan, opening his eyes. "I was only resting, not sleeping."

"Um... I've looked into Eagle fifteen's service history and I thought you might like to know what I've found," said Pete, looking uncomfortable.

Alan raised his eyebrows at the expression on Pete's face, figuring that his flight engineer must be at fault somehow.

"You'll have to hold the report up in front of me," he said. "I can't hold it myself at the moment."

Fumbling with the sheets of paper, Pete did as he was asked. As Alan read, his eyebrows shot up even higher.

"Phew," he whistled. "Major stuff- up!"

"That's what I thought," agreed Pete.

"So according to this report, we don't know exactly who worked on that bird's last major service," Alan continued. "But there is a list of names here that include you, me, young Bob Worcester, Bill Fraser and four other flight technicians. Bloody hell, this is crazy!"

Pete pulled a chair over and sat down.

"The thing is, the service record wasn't filled in correctly, so the computer threw all those names in there. Alan, it could have been any one of us who left that shielding off, but I doubt that it was you or I. We don't even do much maintenance, these days. My guess is that it was Bob Worcester- he only transferred over to us six months ago, from exploration."

Alan lay back on his bed and sighed.

"No, that's not fair," he said. "Bob W. is a conscientious young bloke and he's no more likely to make a mistake like that than we are. We're all to blame; we've been getting very slack about keeping our records straight since we came to the Loki system. I've been preoccupied with the new navigation program lately and haven't given much thought to anything else. Why, when I took Eagle fifteen out Sandra pulled me up because I forgot to file a flight plan with Main Mission. I'm ashamed of myself."

Pete sat in silence for a minute or two, glumly contemplating what Alan had said.

"You're right, I've been slipshod with my repair records lately, filling them in later than I usually would," he eventually agreed. "And I imagine the Commander is really going to kick our asses for it!"

Alan nodded soberly.

"I'm Chief Pilot, so I'll take the rap. But when I get out of here, we are going to have a major shake- up in our department. No more slackness with the paperwork, ever!"

Tanya lay quietly on the bed in a curtained off corner of Medical Center, feeling miserable. The tranquilizer she'd been given had kind of set her apart a little from her feelings- but only a little. Her eyes were still wet with tears. Every now and again she heard feet hurry past on the other side of the curtain and knew that they must be rushing to David. He was gravely ill and she wondered it he would die.

Part of the curtain on one side of her bed was pulled back and someone stepped in. Turning over, she saw that it was Helena Russell- Koenig.

Pulling up a seat, the doctor sat down beside her and smiled an encouraging smile.

"Feeling better?" she asked.

"Not really," answered Tanya. "Just a little calmer, Doctor."

"I understand," said Helena. "The tranquilizer we gave you wasn't very strong, for obvious reasons."

"How is David?" Tanya inquired, groggily sitting up.

"A little better, you'll be pleased to hear," Helena replied. "He has meningitis Tanya and that's serious, but we've isolated the pathogen that's causing it and he's responding well to treatment."

"So his illness was the reason behind his strange behavior?" asked Tanya.

"Yes, definitely," Helena replied, noticing the instant look of relief on the other woman's face. "Any out of character behavior in the last week could be attributed to the disease, I would say."

"I see," Tanya murmured.

Helena paused for a moment, wondering how to best say what she needed to say next. She had relieved Tanya's mind about David's behavior, but the worst wasn't over yet.

"Tanya, there is something we need to do to help David get better," she said. "Bob Mathias and Ed Spencer need to operate and remove the implant in his brain. We believe that the organism that's making him so sick has been harboring there since your honeymoon on Loki. The only way to be sure that he will stay completely free of the disease is to remove it. The treatment we are using can't get right inside the implant..."

Tanya stared at her.

"But that will be very dangerous, won't it Doctor? He always told me that it couldn't be removed, or he might hemorrhage."

"That's true," said Helena. "But I'm afraid we have no choice. As soon as he is a little less feverish, we need to go ahead and do this."

"Okay," agreed Tanya numbly. "I know you'll do what is best for him."

Helena stood up to go.

"I realize this is a bad time," she said, leaning down and taking Tanya's hand. "But have you thought any further about the baby?"

Tanya nodded.

"Whatever happens to David, I know now that he would want me to keep it. And.... and I think I want to keep it too. I was confused...."

"I understand," smiled Helena. "For what it's worth, I think you made the best choice. The very best choice."

She left the cubicle, gently pulling the curtain shut behind her.

A few hours later, Helena stood outside the carefully isolated operating theater, observing the delicate surgery on David Kano's brain. It was an operation she would have felt far happier performing herself, but John had been right. The risk to their unborn child was too great. So far, all the precautionary tests had indicated that nobody else on Alpha had contracted the fungus, but the removal of the implant could cause spores to fly. It wasn't Ben's first brain surgery as chief surgeon, but she could tell that he was extremely nervous, by the way he was snapping at the nurses.

"Your doing fine Ben," she said, talking into a speaker in the theater wall.

"Don't speak too soon; I'm not finished yet," he muttered, as Ed Spencer cauterized off a few leaking blood vessels.

John appeared at her side with a chair as she watched, insisting that she sit down. He disappeared off again, returning a few minutes later with a mug of soup.

"Thanks," she whispered gratefully.

"So far, so good?" he asked.

"So far," Helena replied. "Now that we've got the worst of the infection under control, Kano's brain activity appears to be pretty normal. Provided we can remove the implant, I don't think he'll suffer any permanent damage."

"That's good news," said John.

"Just keep your fingers crossed that he makes it through the surgery," sighed Helena.

Minutes turned to hours and John left to go about his own business. Finally, after four hours, Ben gratefully inserted the last stitches in the skin over David's skull. The implant had been successfully removed and taken away for further study by Alpha's biology department, David's brain activity still looked good, and with luck, he would be fine.

"Be sure to dump all your clothes and go through the sterilizer," Ben warned everyone in the theater, quite unnecessarily.

"That's as fine a piece of work as I've ever seen done," Helena complimented him from outside of the room.

"Thank you Doctor," he replied, allowing a smile of self- satisfaction to escape his lips.

"I wouldn't worry too much about the Commander's reaction if I were you," said Maya.

She and Pete had returned to Alan's bedside in Medical Center, after snatching a few hours sleep.

"Your accident has led me to discover a few fascinating things about this solar system, that never suspected before. It's information that could prove very valuable at a future time and prevent further accidents, or damage to exploration teams working on the Moon or out in the asteroid belt."

"Somehow I don't think John is going to see it that way," remarked Alan.

"After he's read my report he will," said Maya confidently. "There's a round table conference called for 1600 hours tomorrow, to discuss the accident and David Kano's illness. You'll see; everything will be fine."

"I hope you're right," chuckled Pete.

"Did you check the rest of our service records Engineer Garforth?" asked Alan, a mock frown on his face.

"Yes Sir!" Pete replied, giving a salute and clicking his heels together. "Everything's ship shape- Sir!"

The three of them dissolved in gales of laughter.

"Cut it out, you're hurting me," gasped Alan, as his injured ribs protested at his mirth.

"Sorry," said Pete. "Couldn't help that."

At five minutes to 1600 hours the following day, a small group of command personnel filed quietly into the Commander's office, taking a seat at the round table. Sandra and Maya sat down first, followed by Helena. Bill Fraser was included and he sat down too, eagerly awaiting an explanation for the crash of Alan's Eagle. Visions of the ship spiraling down to the lunar surface while he twiddled with the remote controls flashed before him now and again. He would be happy when the whole episode was closed. Tony Verdeschi was missing as he was still down on Loki. So was Alan, although he would participate via a monitor. David Kano was still too sick to worry about meetings just yet.

Last of all, John Koenig strode into the room and took his place at the table.

"Well," he sighed, looking around at his tired people. "We've been through a harrowing few days, but once again, we've come through it relatively okay. Kano is doing well and Alan's bones are mending."

He looked up at Alan's face on the nearby monitor as he said this, and his chief pilot gave a nod and a smile.

"Perhaps we could start with Maya's report on the crash of Eagle Fifteen?" John asked.

Maya cleared her throat and handed a folder to him.

"I think that we all know by now that Alan's accident was caused by something other than the new navigation program that he, Kano and Matt were developing," she said. "On the face of it, one could assume that the accident was caused by human error, or negligence even. But it goes deeper than that. Let me explain:

"The last time the test Eagle was serviced, somebody forgot to replace two of the extra shielding panels which protect the delicate circuit boards from extra bursts of radiation that can sometimes be encountered in interstellar space. Now this would have gone unnoticed since the service eight weeks ago because the normal shielding in the craft is quite sufficient, except in rare cases. Alan ran into one of those rare cases over the Mare Crisium.

A tiny burst of synchotron radiation, which one wouldn't expect to find here, so close to Loki, powered it's way through two circuit boards. This caused Alan to temporarily lose all control over the craft and made it impossible for Bill to stabilize the situation by remote control. I'm sure you all know the power of synchotron radiation, since we use it in the experimental particle accelerator we have here. It has a small beam size of extremely high intensity and a natural collimation that would allow it to hit the boards in Alan's ship and pass right on through without ever touching him, which from the tests he's undergone, it appears to have done. Synchotron radiation has been documented around the general area of new stars- and here's the part I find interesting- black holes!

"I've conducted a number of tests on the damaged circuit boards from Eagle Fifteen and also, over the area of the Mare Crisium. It's my conclusion that at some time in the distant past, a small black hole may have passed through the edge of the Loki system, trailing the odd burst of high energy electrons in it's wake. In a way, it's lucky we've discovered this now. It could have implications for the way we conduct our business both on the surface of the Moon, and out in the asteroid belt."

There was silence around the table, as Maya concluded her report. The Commander looked grim.

"How serious is the threat it poses?" he asked.

"Not really serious, as long as we are aware that on very rare occasions, we might encounter small bursts of it here and there."

The Commander turned to the monitor and frowned at Alan.

"So who was responsible for leaving the shielding off and almost killing you?"

"Er, we don't know Sir," replied Alan, looking uncomfortable. "There seems to have been a problem with the service record of Eagle Fifteen. It could have been one of any number of people, including myself. I take full responsibility, of course."

"Not good enough," snapped John. "When you're back on your feet, I want a total overhaul of the service records of all Eagles!"

"Already in progress Sir," said Alan.

John shook his head and looked down at the table, trying to control his anger. Accidents were just that. Yes, they were often caused by human error that could have been avoided, but since they'd arrived in the Loki system, there'd been so many new things to think about. So many possibilities. It was to be expected that people would get distracted now and again. Alan was a good man. He'd never make the same mistake twice.

"Right," he said. "Maya, you continue to follow your findings up and see if you can locate any more areas of stray high intensity radiation that we should be aware of. Now let's move on.

Everyone sitting at the table relaxed a little and on the monitor, Alan's face brightened.

"David Kano's illness," Helena said. "The good news is that he is well on the way to a complete recovery and it appears that the disease he contracted has a low incidence of infection. Everyone on the base has been tested and nobody else is affected. Not even his wife.

"However, I think that what happened to him should serve as a careful reminder to us that Loki is not always what it seems. Sure, we can't actually see any threatening forms of life down there- there aren't even any insects. Of course, this is because for a good part of it's year it's climate extremely hostile, but some microscopic life survives on the planet's surface quite well. It has to, otherwise it would be completely sterile. There would be no biosphere at all.

"We are inevitably going to find ourselves coming down with new infections and should be on the lookout for them at all times. Back on Earth, we had thousands of years to call an uneasy truce with the majority of bacteria and fungi there. Here, we might take some time to adjust."

"What do you propose we do, walk around in space suits down there?" asked Bill, rubbing his hands nervously.

The idea of microscopic creepy- crawlies invading him did not appeal in the least.

"No, no," Helena laughed, shaking her head. "Our biologists are slowly cataloguing many of the microbes found on Loki. I just think they should be given extra time and resources to do it faster and that we should be aware that very occasionally, there might be a health problem. Simple things like washing our hands more frequently than we otherwise might, and changing our clothes daily should be enough.

"I've spoken to Tanya Kano and it seems they spent quite a lot of time lying in the shade on the bank of a small lake they found, when they were on Loki for their honeymoon. The bank was damp and covered in green moss. They should have known better! Stagnant warm water and damp soil are great breeding grounds for pathogens. I'm convinced David picked up the disease from there, probably through the port in his head. Tanya has told me the whereabouts of the lake and I've been in contact with Tony. He's sending someone out there to collect soil samples."

"Should we take steps to eradicate this fungus?" asked Sandra.

"No, certainly not," was Helena's reply. "We can't begin to understand what role it plays in Loki's ecosystem yet. It may be a vital one, for all we know. We just have to learn to adapt."

"Are there any further questions?" asked the Commander.

A few minutes was spent on other Alphan business and then the meeting was adjourned. All the participants filed out of John's office except Helena.

"I'm glad you weren't too hard on Alan; he's had a lot of extra responsibilities lately," said Helena, putting her arms about her husband's waist and resting her head on his chest.

"We all have," John replied. "And mistakes can be fatal- or in Alan's case, almost fatal."

"Assign him someone down there to help with the records," Helena suggested. "The last time I was down there, I have to say that I really noticed they were all run off their feet. Perhaps someone from the cross training program. Wendy Harper from Laundry would be a good choice; she would love it."

John sighed.

"If I do that, then Laundry will be short one person," he said. "There just aren't enough personnel to go around, you know that.

Helena smiled and gently patted her stomach.

"In another few years I don't think that will be a problem. I'm doing my bit to solve the staff shortage, in case you hadn't noticed."

John squeezed Helena tight to his chest.

"Now that Kano's okay you're going to finally take a proper break, aren't you."

"I certainly am," she murmured. "Starting now."

Tanya sat at David's bedside, holding his hand.

"Your poor head," she said. "It looks like someone's taken an ax to it."

"Don't say that in front of Ben Vincent," laughed David. "He saved my life, remember.

"I owe him everything," she replied solemnly. "He saved our baby's Daddy."

David stopped laughing.

"Tanya," he said in a low voice. "I don't remember everything I said and did while I was sick, but some of it has come back to me. I'm so very sorry. I hope you know how much you mean to me. I don't think I would want to live without you..."

Tanya reached up and put a hand to David's lips.

"Forget it," she said. "You were sick, and weren't behaving rationally. I wasn't exactly rational myself, you know. Emotional pregnant women, and all that. I even considered not having this child at one point. Thought that if you didn't love me, then perhaps I shouldn't."

David looked shocked.

"What do you feel now?" he asked.

Tanya smiled radiantly.

"Like I said, I was being emotional. I've had a little time to get things in perspective. Being a mother to your child will be the greatest thing I've ever done."

"Marrying you was the greatest thing I've ever done," David replied.

"Isn't that sweet," someone chuckled from the door of the room.

It was Alan, looking battle scarred but cheerful, as he propelled himself forward in a wheelchair.

"I'm not supposed to be out of bed, but I had to come and see my neighbor," he said. "Wanted to check out your new hair cut, to tell you the truth."

"Pretty radical, isn't it," grinned David. "When are they letting you out of here?"

"Not soon enough," Alan frowned. "You?"

"Haven't got a clue," sighed David.

Tanya stood up.

"Some of us have work to do," she said. "Any requests from the invalids?"

"A pack of cards," said Alan, at exactly the same time as David said, "A chess board."

"I'll tell them to send you both," giggled Tanya. "Just don't fight over what you're going to play first!"

She listened happily to their male banter as she walked slowly out of Medical Center.

"Congratulations Tanya," said Alibe, as she passed her at the door. "I hear you've joined the club."

"I certainly have," she replied, staring at Alibe's belly with a new respect. "I think I'm going to need some slightly bigger clothes soon."

Alibe began to laugh.

"Got the first trimester jitters have you? Don't worry, I'm sure everything will be fine."

"Thanks," said Tanya, walking away.

Somehow, she knew that Alibe was right. Everything would be better than fine. It would be perfect.

Copyright 1999: Heather Hammonds