Ariston led the way out of the shuttle bay and into the ship. The two pilots had been the only ones in the lower part of the shuttle, both knocked from their seats and unconscious on the deck. The skulls had also been knocked aside, with a hole blown in one. He’d winced when he’d seen that, knowing he had orchestrated the damage when those skulls should be preserved and handled carefully. But he also knew that seeing them may have stoked the men’s hallucinations, so he couldn’t regret his actions, not when he and Mick had gotten out uninjured.

He glanced back at her as they sneaked through a corridor, the lights dimmed for night, even though the ship should have been on the day shift. He couldn’t see her eyes through her faceplate.

“I’m fine,” she said, somehow guessing his thoughts.

Maybe because he’d asked her how she was earlier and kept glancing in her direction. He couldn’t help it. It creeped him out that a two-thousand-year-old chip that looked like little more than a tiny black jewel had not only levitated itself into the air but then burrowed into her head, into the exact spot it had been on the skull. He knew Wanderer technology had been far superior to what humans had accomplished, and that it was responsible for things his people might easily regard as magic, since they couldn’t understand it. That didn’t make it any less creepy.

“You are, indeed,” Ariston said, keeping his tone light as he turned down another corridor. She had to be worried about the chip, too, and he didn’t want to do anything to fan the flame of her worry. “It’s a shame you weren’t the one to lose our Kapti game.”

Not that he’d minded doing push-ups for her. Especially when she’d come over and started touching him. Those had turned into tantalizingly exquisite push-ups, and he wondered what would have happened if their charged kiss hadn’t been interrupted. He’d definitely had thoughts of pushing her all the way back onto that table and climbing up after her.

But he should make sure her name was cleared and ask her on a formal date before presuming to seduce her, if he could call that seduction. It had been his horny instincts rather than any premeditated act of romance. Maybe she’d been seducing him.

“Perhaps we can find a game to compete at that places me at the disadvantage,” Mick offered as they reached one of the ship’s two lifts. The lights were brighter here. “Something that requires strength and power.”

“I haven’t noticed you lacking in those areas.” Ariston smiled at her as he waved at the controls to order the lift down, and he caught an appreciative look on her face.

The lift doors opened, revealing someone on the deck inside. Ariston jerked his weapon toward the man before his brain caught up to his instincts. A bloody dagger stuck out of the man’s eye, and he was very dead.

“Shit,” Ariston said, recognizing the ship’s chief engineer, Mrook. “That’s my boss.”

Mick looked at him.

“The man I worked under for the six weeks I was a part of the crew. The chief engineer who was planning to retire soon.”

A shout came from the corridor they’d left, and Ariston forced himself to step into the lift.

“I didn’t realize you were here—undercover?—for so long.” Mick stepped over the engineer to stand opposite Ariston.

“Yes. It was a while before the captain did anything except take on legitimate missions for legitimate insurance companies that wanted ships recovered and towed or scrapped for parts.”

The lift doors closed, leaving them with the dead man. Ariston tried not to look down. Smart, quiet, and bookish, Mrook hadn’t been a bad man, despite his dubious choice in employer. About half the crew had been jerks and criminals that Ariston didn’t mind fighting, but half of them had just been people scraping by, taking employment where they could find it and trying not to worry too much about where their paychecks came from. For those like Mrook, who’d worked in the bowels of the ship and kept things running, harming others hadn’t been a part of their day-to-day existence. They’d merely maintained the Pleasant Journey.

“Do you know all of these people then?” Mick asked.

Ariston nodded grimly. “Crazy Eyes with the dreads is named Okereka. He’s on the ship’s security team. I’m surprised he wasn’t sent with the shuttle team to try and take us down.”

The lift doors opened to another empty corridor. Fortunately free of bodies.

When Ariston had realized things weren’t running smoothly up here, he’d been happy, since it would make retrieving the converter easier, but he wasn’t sure he should wish this craziness on anyone.

As they stepped out, something moved back in the lift.

Ariston spun, thinking Mrook might somehow be alive, after all. He’d thought he’d glimpsed the man’s hand raising out of the corner of his eye. But he realized it had been his imagination. A hallucination.

He hadn’t been immune to the planet’s influence, despite the medical scans suggesting he wasn’t as affected as the others, and he’d noticed more optical wonkiness since leaving the planet.

“You didn’t see anything?” Ariston asked, catching Mick looking at him.

“No.”

“Guess you’re the more reliable one now.” He headed down the corridor, taking the lead again. Engineering was around the corner.

“You think the chip is fixing my brain? Keeping me from being affected?”

“That was your hypothesis, I believe. Have you had any hallucinations since it installed itself?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Huh.”

“Envious?” Mick asked. “We can go back and get you one.”

“I’ll pass since we don’t know the long-term effects. Or if it can be removed.”

Her expression grew bleak, and he wished he hadn’t pointed that out. She had to be nervous about having some ancient alien chip embedded in her skull.

“That’s engineering up there.” He pointed to two yellow-painted double doors at the end of the corridor. “And those are the storage areas for machinery and replacement parts. The last I looked in, the Pleasant Journey was quite well stocked.”

Ariston stopped at the door on the left, and it opened automatically. Not all of the doors on the ship were keyed to open for him, but he’d worked down here, so the ones in this area were.

Screams came from somewhere on their level as he gestured for Mick to walk into a room full of shelves.

“We’ll get the bastards!” someone yelled. The faint squeal of weapons fire followed.

“I don’t suppose there’s an inventory system?” Mick asked, standing with her fists on her hips as she gazed at the deep and packed floor-to-ceiling shelves that stretched along the walls. Crates of all shapes and sizes were also stacked on the deck.

“It was in Mrook’s head.” Ariston started to walk in after her, but paused on the threshold of the room, listening to the chaos of the crew firing at each other. Were they all lost in the same memory? Believing that Zi’i had invaded their ship? Or had a couple of people thought that and put the idea in everyone’s mind, so they were experiencing some mass hallucination now?

“Helpful.”

“Do you mind looking by yourself? I believe you’ll find the converters in that corner back there.”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“Before, I thought it was ludicrous to believe we’d get here and be able to get the part. I didn’t think there’d be a chance of actually capturing everyone and taking over the ship, but...” Ariston spread his hand, palm up.

“That was before you learned everyone up here was crazy?”

“Essentially, yes. My sensors show that people are running around in clumps with hardly anyone at their stations. Even though there are at least thirty people still up here, I might be able to pick them off one-by-one. At the least, I’d like to put the ones we knocked out in the shuttle into the brig. This ship has cells enough to hold everyone until we can fly it back to Talon Station in the next system over.”

“I’m not going to ask why a salvage ship would have a large brig. I’m just going to get my part and get back to the shuttle.” Mick headed toward the corner he’d indicated. “You could stay and help me find it, and then I could help you capture your wayward crew.”

“That’s not your job. I don’t want you to get hurt picking fights that aren’t yours.”

“So instead, I should stay here where a roving group of crazy creeps could find me and kill me because they see me as something fanged and furred that wants to eat them?”

“I imagine you could handle a group of crazy creeps,” Ariston said, but he stepped into the storage room, letting the door shut behind him, instead of heading out into the ship.

It was true that he didn’t want her to get hurt fighting beside him, but she had a point. Nowhere on this ship would truly be safe for her, and splitting up would make them weaker. He didn’t want to leave only to come back and find her in a similar state as Mrook.

“You change your mind?” she asked as he joined her in the back corner.

“About your ability to handle crazy creeps? No, but I realized I’d be a fool to pass up a chance to spend time with you in a private nook on the ship.” He eyed the shelves, looking for labels. Unfortunately, most of the parts were heaped in boxes without them.

“Closets are popular places to make out on Earth.”

Ariston didn’t consider the large storage room a closet, but he would have been amenable to the activity if they didn’t have other things they needed to do.

“Presumably not between people in full combat armor,” he said.

“Presumably not. I can’t imagine kissing being that exciting when both parties are wearing fish bowls.”

He smiled, clinked his helmet softly against hers, and dug into the boxes.

An alarm went off before he’d searched three of them, a pulsing wroo wroo that assaulted his ears even through his helmet. All the emergency lighting came on.

Ariston ran toward a control panel by the door.

“Tell me those idiots didn’t break the ship,” Mick said.

“I don’t know. It’s something in engineering. I better check.” Ariston lifted his eyebrows, not certain if she would want to stay and search or come with him.

“Go.” Mick waved and turned back to the shelves. “I’ll be here, cursing your dead engineer’s organizational system.”

Ariston ran out, pleased by her independence and competence. He still hoped he’d be able to run in, push a button, and return to her side. He’d meant what he’d said about her handling roving creeps, but he worried about that chip, and who knew what other craziness this ship might hold?

Mick resisted the urge to remove her helmet as she searched through the hundreds of boxes in the corner Ariston had pointed her toward. Enemies might stumble upon her in the storage room and open fire at any time.

A burst of static in her ear made her wince. As if that alarm going off wasn’t obnoxious enough.

“Captain?” a voice whispered.

Mick struggled to identify the owner. “Dev? You’re still on the planet, right?”

Maybe it was a dumb question—where else would they be?—but Mick hadn’t realized the Viper could signal boost enough to reach her comm up in orbit.

“Yes… Are you?”

“No, I’m in orbit, on the salvage ship, shopping for my spare part.” Quite literally. Mick stood on a shelf so she could pull down bins on the top.

“Are you in danger?”

Mick glanced toward the ceiling where an emergency light threw flashing red in with the usual white. “Probably.”

“Oh, I have news, but it can wait.”

“No, tell me. I have news too.”

“Important news?” Dev asked.

“My skull thinks so.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I’ll fill you in later.” Mick doubted the scientists were likely to wander out, drag in skulls, and scrape off chips. Even if they did, it was unlikely they would be foolish enough to make her mistake. “Tell me yours first, especially if it has to do with why the crew of this ship is even crazier than the loons that we left down there.”

“They are? In orbit?” A thoughtful pause followed, during which Mick poked into three bins. She had a fear that she could look right at the converter she needed and not recognize it. She didn’t know what most of this junk was. “That’s interesting and good to know,” Dev said. “Another data point. Yes, excellent.”

Mick thought of the way Ariston had jerked his weapon at a dead body, apparently influenced by a hallucination. Excellent was not the word that came to her mind. So far, Ariston had been unflappable. What happened if he got as crazy as everyone else up here?

“We thought they might have picked up some virus down on the planet,” Mick said. “Then brought it back up here. Not all of them were in armor down there, so maybe they were more exposed.”

“We haven’t yet found evidence of a viral, bacterial, or fungal infection, or intrusion by protozoans, parasites, or prions. That was quite alliterative, wasn’t it?”

Mick twitched a shoulder and replaced a bin holding precisely seven screws. Given how little she knew about how viruses traveled, and medical subjects in general, she probably shouldn’t posit hypotheses.

“I have no idea what’s causing the problem, I admit,” Mick said, “but people up here definitely seem wackier.”

“I would love a brain scan of one of them.” Dev said it in a such a perky, hopeful way that Mick felt she was expected to try her hardest to get one.

“I didn’t bring a medical scanner with me.”

“Maybe they have one on the ship.”

“Dev. What’s your news?”

“Ah, we have made some progress with analyzing the brain scans we took of our team. And your friend.”

“Ariston. He’s your friend too.”

“Because he helped defend the ship? Cecil believes that was an act designed to gain your trust to—”

“He’s a Star Guardian. We may be in trouble because we’re apparently trespassing on the planet illegally, but he’s more worried about the crew of this ship up here, as they’re roaming the galaxy, murdering people and salvaging their ships once there are no witnesses left to see it.”

“A Star Guardian? Like the one that was on TV when Confederation representatives came to Earth?”

“Yes. I’ll tell you all I know once the ship is fixed and we’re flying away from this odious planet.”

“Okay, good. So, here’s my news. We’ve figured out why we’re hallucinating and experiencing other brain-related symptoms.”

“Good. Why?”

Mick was relieved to hear confirmation that the symptoms were all mental—all in one’s own head. It wasn’t exactly comforting to feel like one was going crazy, but that seemed better than dealing with a haunted planet full of the ghosts of dead people who were angry because their resting place was being disturbed. How the hell did one deal with that? At least with a brain issue, there ought to be a solution. She hoped.

“Something is making our adenosine levels go haywire,” Dev said.

“Adeno-what?”

“Adenosine. It’s an inhibitory neuromodulator that links cell metabolism directly to neuronal activity.”

“Naturally, Spock. Break it down, huh?”

“Well, it does quite a few things in the body and in nature as a whole. It plays an important role in many biochemical processes. It’s the A in ATP—you’ve heard of that, right?”

“Uh, I think so.”

“As I said, adenosine is believed to play a role in promoting sleep and in vasodilation to regulate the flow of blood to the various organs in the body. It’s something of a master regulator. When we stay awake, adenosine builds up in the brain. Too much of it can cause hallucinations in susceptible people.”

“Hallucinations?” Mick asked. Finally, something tied in. “So, we’re sure that’s what’s happening to us?”

“It seems likely. Adenosine is also an endogenous anticonvulsant molecule.”

“Anti-what? Wait, like inhibiting seizures?”

“Precisely. When I had my seizures—”

“Seizures, plural? There was another one?”

“Yes,” Dev said, her voice turning grim for a moment. “I wish Dr. Garcia were still with us because his specialty was neurology. I’m basically reading your medical AI’s version of Wikipedia entries here. I’m not quite sure why excess adenosine would have caused me to have seizures, unless that was my brain’s way of trying to get rid of some of the molecules. From what I’m reading here, there are adenosine-based therapies used on Dethocoles to treat epilepsy.”

“How come we’re not all having seizures?”

“You must need a genetic predisposition toward them. As you’ve seen, some people are being affected differently than others. Everyone seems to be experiencing hallucinations, but various members of my team here have reported a variety of symptoms.”

“With Ariston and Safin barely seeming to have symptoms.”

Dev chuckled. “I think Sven can thank his espresso machine for that.”

“Huh?”

“Caffeine keeps us awake by blocking the adenosine receptor pathways. Eventually, your body compensates by creating more adenosine receptors, but with as much as he drinks, he’s probably dulling the planet’s effect on his receptors.”

“So, the answer is for everyone to swig coffee?” Mick asked, thinking of her chocolate-covered beans. She’d munched on a bunch of them before leaving the shuttle. Now that she thought about it, she had experienced about an hour free of hallucinations after that.

“We’re experimenting with that right now, but it’s only partially working. Too bad. The medical AI says it would have been possible to synthesize an adenosine receptor antagonist, even in your limited sickbay. But we would have to be careful with anything we administered. There are adenosine receptors in the heart, as well as in the brain, and low levels might trigger arrhythmias or tachycardia. Or worse.”

“So, we don’t have a solution, but eating chocolate-covered coffee beans could help,” Mick said, wishing she’d brought her stash along. She could have given Ariston some. Did he drink coffee? She’d seen him drink some water and chew on one of his suet bars. Not much else.

“Temporarily, yes.”

“What’s the permanent fix?” Mick touched the side of her helmet. Did the chip affect these adenosine receptors somehow? Had the ancient aliens known that anyone who lived on this planet would need protection against… whatever caused this disruption?

“Leaving the planet, I’d guess.”

“Does this mean you won’t be recommending it for colonization?”

Dev snorted. “It doesn’t sound like that’s an option, anyway, if the Confederation has claimed it. I don’t know. If we could figure out what’s causing this, maybe there would be a solution.”

Mick wondered how many chips were down there, embedded in the two-thousand-year-old skulls. Could they be reverse-engineered and reproduced? She knew the Dethocoleans had attempted to figure out the technology used in the wormhole gates without much success.

“We’ve technically left the planet up here,” Mick said, “and people are still being affected. Like I said, it seems even worse up here.”

“Yeah, we’ll take that into consideration. We’re running more experiments.”

“Hey, does Ariston’s brain have fewer of these receptors, or what’s going on with him? I haven’t seen him eat or drink hardly anything. He definitely hasn’t been swigging coffee. He curled a lip at my beans, even though they’re extremely excellent. I suppose it’s possible he’s got some caffeinated gum stashed somewhere, but it’s rather tough to toss food in your mouth when you’re kitted out in armor. There’s a water tank, but that’s it. Unless he’s injecting himself with some of the onboard drugs.”

“It may actually be simpler than that,” a man said in the background. Was that Dr. Lee? “When we further studied his brain scans, we found high levels of beta-hydroxybutyrate.”

Beta-what?

“I knew he was special,” Mick muttered.

“Not really,” Lee said with a sniff. “It’s likely he follows a ketogenic diet or is fasting. Any of us would have similar amounts of beta-hydroxybutyrate after a few days without carbohydrates. Regardless, BHB binds to the same anxiety-reducing receptors in the brain as gamma-hydroxybutyrate, which you may be familiar with in its synthetic form. It’s the recreational drug known as liquid ecstasy.”

“Why would I be familiar with that?” Mick shoved another bin back, frustrated with how long this search was taking, with the alarm continuing to blare, and with Lee’s insinuations.

And what was taking Ariston so long? Wasn’t he right next door in engineering?

Lee grumbled something indecipherable in the background, probably that she was a heathen. A drugged heathen.

“Are these anti-anxiety receptors the same thing as the adenosine receptors?” Mick asked, having only a vague notion of what a receptor was.

“It is possible adenosine has an effect on anxiety,” Lee said. “Your sickbay’s medical AI is telling us that it does and also that it affects seizures. I’m not sure if that’s proven back home, but the Dethocoleans presumably have a more advanced medical understanding than we do.”

“Yes, we are an un-advanced people,” Mick said.

“Speak for yourself. Anyway, your boyfriend being fat-adapted is probably helping him modulate his adenosine levels and keeping his brain in a less excitatory state overall.”

In the ninety-ninth box Mick checked, she found what she sought, the JY-converter.

“Finally,” she whispered. “Good news.”

“Hm?” Dev prompted.

“I think I have what I need to get us flying again. Also, just in case I don’t, I may have a solution to the adeno-wonkiness,” Mick said. “Though it may be unpleasantly permanent. There were these skulls, and—”

The thunder of footsteps interrupted her.

Mick turned toward the doorway, her converter clutched in one hand and her bolt bow in the other.

Ariston ran in alone, and she lowered the weapon.

“Aren’t you supposed to sneak stealthily around when you’re aboard an enemy ship?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No point. We have a problem.” He pointed at the flashing alarm lights. “Someone has removed the flash cards for the shields and the thruster power unit.”

Flash cards? She assumed the translation chip meant something other than the 3x5 = ? kind.

“We have no means of propulsion without it,” he added. “That’s going to be a problem very soon unless we can find spare cards.”

Ariston ran toward the shelves on a different wall from where Mick had been looking.

“If the thrusters are offline,” she said, “does that mean…”

“Our orbit is already decaying. Without shields for protection or thruster control to decelerate, we’ll burn up in the atmosphere as we fall.”