Ride The Rising Tide (The Maxwell Saga) by Peter Grant

for me, to see if it’s dangerous or contagious or anything like that?”
    Her face sobered. “Mold? Our environmental systems are supposed to automatically filter mold spores out of the ship’s atmosphere. How did it get there?”
    He explained about the newly–delivered lifeboats. “They were sealed at the refurbishment facility. They’ve been in transit, still sealed, probably for months. This stuff could have been growing in them all that time. They were only connected to our environmental systems yesterday, so you may not have detected it yet. How often do you check the filters?”
    “ Every week. We last checked them three days ago.” She looked worried, Steve noted, feeling more concerned himself as he watched her reaction.
    “ The lifeboats were installed after that. Can you test this crud for me, just in case?”
    She frowned. “Sure. Problem is, if it’s something nasty, you’ve already been exposed to it. For that matter, we all have, if it’s in our environmental systems! That’s not good. Hold on a minute.”
    She disappeared through a door, and he heard her rummaging around in a storage unit. She reappeared with a small jar and a plastic tongue depressor.
    “ Use this to scrape off some of the stuff, put it in this jar, then screw the lid on tight. Bring it back here, and we’ll run it through the analyzer.”
    He trotted down the passage, scraped a liberal amount of the brown substance into the jar, and was back at the sick bay in less than five minutes. He was surprised to see that in the interim, she’d put on laboratory gloves and a breathing mask.
    “Here you are, PO.”
    She took the jar from him, peering at its contents, frowning. “I don’t like the look of this at all!” Her voice was slightly muffled through the mask. “Come with me.”
    She led him through a door and down a corridor. “It’s a good thing we’re equipped to serve as a short–term depot ship if necessary. We’ve got more comprehensive analysis and diagnostic equipment than regular transports, because we might have to provide hospital facilities.”
    “ Yeah. When I joined the ship, I couldn’t figure out why we had a twenty–bed ward, a doctor and four orderlies.”
    She laughed. “It’s definitely overkill for a hundred–strong ship’s company! You’re all in rugged good health, so there’s never enough medical work to keep us occupied unless we get a rush of casualties from somewhere. In fact, the Sector Medical Director tries to reserve short–term assignments aboard these ships for those of us who are reading for degrees or studying for the next promotion board. That’s what I was doing when you arrived. It makes the best use of what would otherwise be a boring tour of duty.”
    She led him into a small but well–equipped laboratory. Unscrewing the lid from the jar, she emptied it into a test tube, then plugged the tube into a receptacle on a machine Steve didn’t recognize. Its face was covered with dials and displays. She pressed a button, and they watched as the tube was drawn into the unit. Silence fell as they waited.
    Suddenly a jarring, urgent, repetitive buzz sounded, again and again. A red light began to flash in the same rhythm on the display panel.
    Her face went white with shock. “That stuff’s toxic!”
    “ What do you mean?”
    She pressed a button, silencing the alarm. “The analyzer’s detected something that can cause serious health problems. I don’t know exactly what it is, but Doctor Cellini needs to be told right away — and I want you in our isolation ward right now! I don’t want you going anywhere until we find out how badly you’ve been contaminated.”
    ~ ~ ~
    He heard the rapid click–clack of Senior Lieutenant Cellini’s shoes coming down the corridor, accompanied by a slower, heavier tread. She bustled into the isolation ward, followed by Lieutenant–Commander Wollaston. Steve jumped up from his chair and snapped to attention as he saw his