The Array Goes Dark

The navigation array failed at the start of third shift and Mariam was the first qualified person to reach it, which mattered, because she got to see the fault before anyone could vote on what it was. The array was the ship's eyes. Without it the Adessa was still moving, still on course by inertia, but blind, and a blind ship four generations from port is a ship that will eventually drift wrong and never know. Mariam spent six hours in the array housing with her instruments and came out knowing two things. The first was that she could fix it. The second was that the fix required shutting down the ship's rotation for nine hours, which meant nine hours of weightlessness, no agriculture, no easy medicine, real risk for the elderly and the very young. And the quorum would have to approve it. And the quorum, she already knew, was going to be afraid.