[ TT ] You are an engineer responsible for maintaining your ship 's ion-propulsion drive . The problem is , you 're a car mechanic . You have no clue how elecrostatic ion thrusters work .

I stood on the catwalk of the engine bay, a machine the size of a very large semi truck humming away about ten feet below. It had a certain elegance to it, plasma intake manifolds glowing a dim red, feeding into a cylinder, maybe twenty feet long, with sweeping power conduits almost completely covering the first half, peeling off one by one, disappearing into the ship until only eight or so, equally spaced, remained, blue lines helpfully identifying them as IGNTR0 through IGNTR7. From there, it exited the hull, and through thick, micrometioroid-proof glass, I could see where the cylinder joined a squat mylar-coated hexagon, at least 30 feet across and ten thick, a flickering blue glow spilling over the sides, and through all seams on the structure. The air was bone dry, blisteringly hot, and was tinged with the harsh metallic scent of ozone. 
 
 I genuinely had no idea what I was looking at. According to the captain, it was the engine. According to the captain, I was the head engineer. According to the captain, the ship was dead in the water, and we'd all sit here until the oxygen ran out, if I did n't figure out a way to get it working again. 
 
 I could n't die here, This was only my second real career. And, with the exception of these last few hours, it has been far more enjoyable than the craptastic desk job designing turbines for General Motors & Electric - Toyota. Why macro-conglomerate's car manufacture arm wanted to stick turbines ( basically, a jet engine, with a electric generator on one end ) in their budget SUV line was beyond me, but that was n't my business, or so I was told EVERY GODDAMN TIME I ASKED. 
 
 After that fantastic experience being one unknowing, unfeeling piece of a huge corporate machine, I decided that a total change in profession would be in my best interests. Noting that a great deal of my workload had been centered around finding clever ways to mount a jet engine onto something *without* it flying away, I decided to do the opposite, and started looking for a aerospace job. Not many people wanted to hire me, because they apparently already knew what I only found out later: Just because it has a turbine in it, it is n't a airplane, and even if it was, airplanes do n't work in space. 
 
 So, the only work I could find was on this guy's cargo freighter. We both knew that I had... limited hands on experience, but I just came out of nearly single-handedly designing some insignificant part of what was probably going to be the engine that would find its way into literally trillions of dollars of car! ( I may have spun things a little differently than that, though ) I told the captain, How much harder can this possibly be? He was dazzled enough by my credentials that he blindly agreed with me, instead of following his better instincts to call me stupid. 
 
 The basics of rocket propulsion are that when you make something hot, it exerts more pressure on the container it is in. If you remove one wall of said container, the pressure is still exerted, but instead of just pushing against the wall uselessly, it begins to accelerate the substance instead If you want to get the most out of your now quickly moving no-longer pressurized stuff, you stick a funny shape called a nozzle at the end, to make sure it goes in the same direction for as long as possible. Fairly simple, Fairly easy. all the complicated bits of a jet engine are about either heating up the fuel, or making sure it does n't pop out the front, before it leaves the back. In this ship, the heating, and the prevention of leaks is mostly the reactor's department. So, what I SHOULD be dealing with here, is a giant nozzle. Okay. Calm down. You've got this. Somewhere in this giant mess of crap is a nozzle, and it works just like the ones that they went over in thermodynamics 201. 
 
 I climb down next to the mass of steel, titanium, and more exotic materials, and with a tap on a well-placed computer terminal, bring up schematics. The diagram is covered with arrows pointing to components, denoting them as resonation compensators, charge grids, and countless other manifestations of that dark magic known as rocket science. Fortunately, it has a search function. With a few keystrokes, I find myself looking at a readout for one `` magnetoplasmic expansion nozzle''. 
 
 Well, judging by all the info readouts about this thing that are red and flashing, there's SOMETHING wrong with it at least. I do n't need a degree to tell me that `` FEILD INTEGRITY CRITICAL'' is probably not a good thing. There's a button, here. `` expose nozzle''. Oh, thank god, finally something familiar. 
 
 boop. 
 
 And, now there are more alarms going off. That's fine, In movies, whenever a big door or something moves, there are always alarms. I'm sure that's fine. Just look at the readout here. Disarming safety interlocks, looking good, retracting blast shield, sounds great! Hey, I can see it over there, right in front of that ring of refrigerator sized whatever-the-fuck-they-ares ( I bet they're pointless giant magnets )! Disengaging vacuum shielding, fantast- wait that's not good 
 
 And that's about where I found myself very distracted. A earsplitting roar, and blinding light filled the cramped space, and I found myself being sucked back by a sudden violent wind. Tumbling, I flailed wildly, managing to grab onto a nearby handhold, not a moment too soon, judging by the searing heat on my back. For a moment, I just clung to handhold in terror, eyes closed, waiting for death. When I managed to open one eye, I looked back to see a roaring inferno of plasma, previously covered with all that fancy shielding. It was so bright, Glowing a violent white-orange, but it was beginning to dim, and the roar was beginning to quiet. 
 
 Now I could think. Why had everything had been sucked into the stream? That's easy. laminar flow. if you get anything that is n't a solid moving fast enough, stuff will get sucked into the stream. If this is anywhere close to the nozzle, the plasma will be going so fast it'll absorb just about everything shoved into it. The vacuum shielding had presumably been preventing it from sucking the air out... of.. the room... shit. Okay, great, deep breath, hold it, ca n't move until the suction dies down, anyway, so might as well try to fix this. 
 
 I look at the plasma flow beneath me. it's shooting down a empty tunnel, but the beam narrows, to a thin neck, then widens out again, all by itself, with nothing I can see making it do that. That's the shape of a DeLaval nozzle, standard rocket stuff. If DeLaval nozzles were made out of invisible freaking fairy dust, instead of ceramic alloys, that is. there's nothing holding it, at all! I can see a side jet, probably a leak of some sort, almost certainly the problem, but I ca n't patch what is n't there. there's a wrench, hurtling around and around the neck of the nozzle. It's orbiting, but that's not how gravity works. You'd need something like a magnetic field or-. 
 
 Thank space jesus, I got it! the nozzle is magnetic! Plasma responds to magnetic fields, and the whatever-the-fucks ARE giant magnets! The nozzle is a magnetic field, forcing the plasma to follow a DeLaval- like path! So I just need to tweak the magnetic field, and the leak should go away! HORRAY! I'M NOT GOING TO DIE!!!!!!! 
 
 I stagger drunkenly over to the control panel, lack of oxygen making my movements lethargic, and tired. Through the intensifying urge to fall asleep forever, I notice that the control panel now has several large buttons illuminated, one of which is clearly labeled RECALIBRATE AND SEAL NOZZLE. I manage to whap it. My last thought before I pass out is that I realy, realy, need to take a online course on space ships, or something. 
 
 

