The bright light of the jump encircled them completely. It lasted only a moment. The next one, the light was gone, and they were a whole quadrant away.

“Timothy!” Sornia called, Timothy’s head still resting in her hands.

“Timothy!!” she called him again, but his unresponsive body lay limp in his chair, ready to slide down to the floor.

She felt his pulse, moving her fingers nervously over his arteries, first the wrist, then the neck.

“I feel it. I think I feel it!” She jumped to her station and got her med scanner.

“His blood pressure is very low, heartbeats only forty. His brain waves are just two percent.”

“He's hanging by a threat,” Slicky said.

“Yes, and I do not know how to help him,” she said as she looked at his leg. The green infection has now spread, way over the cast she had placed over it. “I do not know how to stop this. But he still breathes.”

“Maybe that message on that weird blue screen was right. Maybe he does have only a few hours left.”

“And that was like what, two hours ago? We might still have time. If I only knew what to do.”

“Are we alive?” Marv said over the speaker.

“Barely,” Sornia answered sourly.

He instantly felt her uneasiness and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Timothy… he’s out.”

“I’ll be there in a second.”

Sornia turned to Slicky. “Is there anyone here?”

“No. No," he said as he looked at the monitor. "There are no ships in the scanned vicinity," Slicky said with new vigor in his voice, obviously feeling huge relief that he was still breathing. Suddenly, he just felt like talking, finding it almost impossible not to. "We are alone. In all the space here. Everything is dark. Seems we made it. Seems we made it. With only fifty percent chance.”

“Do you think they could follow us?”

“I do not know how. But… I’m learning that there are actually not many things I do know. I do not even know where the hell did we jump to? The maps are all down.”

“Timothy had pre-configured us to jump to someplace where there is nothing around.”

“Makes sense.”

“It’s just a bit off our rote."

“But at least that way we don’t have to worry about drawing unnecessary attention. We can put our shit together here, and then proceed.”

“That was the idea.”

“You think he’s acting it up?” was the first thing Marv said as he walked to the bridge. “Because if he is, I’ll beat him silly.”

Sornia looked at Timothy, her mood brightening instantly, almost expecting to see a little coy smile on his face. But her med scanner did not lie. And her heart sunk again. “I wish, I wish so much.”

“So what do we do?” Marv said towering over her. “We can’t let him die.”

Sornia looked around, took a deep breath. “What would he do in our place? Well, first, let’s take care of the ship. AI, state our condition and how is our life support?”

“The current life support is operational, the quarters that have been compromised have been sealed off, the artificial gravity generator has suffered damage and has a ninety-nine probability of stop functioning in the next seventy-two hours.”

“Don’t talk to me about the gravity generator. Do we have power? Our engines, armor…”

“The power plant is intact. The engine is not operational and will need major adjustments. The positioning thrusters have been blown off the ship and so is every armament.”

“So, we are sitting ducks here? No arms?”

“The missile launching bay is still functional and there are still five different missiles in your inventory.”

“Five missiles? In other words, we are sitting ducks here.”

“We need to fix this place up. But first, what do we do with TImothy?”

“Rummy, we gonna try to take care of Timothy,” Marv said out loud.

“What, what’s wrong with Timothy?”

Marv did not want to go into detailed explanations. “You you’ve got to fix up those transmitters first. Let the bot refurbish them one by one - but do all of them, and then use nine of the best performing ones. And you need to do that fast. When that is finished, then you go and work on the engines,” Marv instructed him.

“That will take hours. You know how slow our bot is.”

“Because we may need another jump rather soon. Timothy had already configured the coordinates of the next jump. So, you do not need to worry about that. But you’ve got to fix up the energy flow.”

“We are hardly flowing in space. Half of the ship is blown off1 And you think we can make another jump?”

“You fix what you can. And be ready," Sornia told him. "And have an eye on the scanner. If those guys show up, you need to let us know.”

Suddeny Rummy seemed even more nervous than normal. “Where, where are you going?”

“To the transporter.”

“Why?”

“Relax, we’re not going anywhere. We're not leaving you behind," Sornia said. "We’ll be in the cargo area.”

“Why? Why are we going to the transporter?” Marv wanted to know.

“I figure the best way to find out how to help Timothy is to get that blue screen up again.”

"And how do we do that?" Slicky asked.

“That I have no idea,” Sornia had to admit.

But that was good enough for Marv. He picked up Timothy gently out of the chair as if he was nothing more than a little child, making sure that his head did not drop down but lean against his huge forearms.

“Place him inside on the floor,” Sornia told Marv when they got to the transporter. “And you, Slicky, get the box and put it next to him.”

Slicky did as was told. “Nothing is happening.”

They held their breath, but as the blue screen was not getting activated, Slicky had an idea.

“Maybe I should shake it a bit.”

“Yeah, shake it a bit. But, not too hard," Sornia said, desperate for anything.

Slicky started to shake the box, first gently, then, as nothing was happening a bit harder and harder. Still, no blue screen.

“Hopefully you did not break it,” Marv growled at him in a threatening voice. "Because..."

“I did not break it!”

“Wait, wait,” Sornia said and lifted her hands up. “Let’s just duplicate everything that happened when it was activated the first time. And… what was the last thing we were doing when it shut down?”

“Well, we were in the transporter, and we just landed, and then I shut it off so that Union could not detect us anymore.”

“You shut the transporters off?”

“I… order a complete shut-down… and… Hey, I think the blue screen shut off at about the same time.”

“Well, why don’t you fire the transporter up. And push the power plant to the hundred percent limit.”

“That sounds reasonable,” Marv said with hope in his voice as he got to the controls and started to activate the whole system up.

“They’ll be able to locate us if you start it up," Slicky said with caution. "The Union has spy probes in every quadrant. As soon as the ship is activated, the Union will know in a matter of minutes.”

“Fuck the Union!” Marv said angrily.

“We’ll take the risk with that. But then, shut the transporter down if the blues screen does not-”

Sornia did not need to finish that sentence as the blue screen once again materialized in the air right around Timothy.

“Here we go,” Sornia said, taking a deep breath.

The bright letters displayed above TImothy’s head:

You have category three Lernian Infection

Left untreated, you will die in sixty minutes

Please connect to the MODE

“Why, why only sixty minutes? The last time it was like ten hours. And that was not more than two hours ago, no?” Sornia could not understand.

“Maybe we did him harm by shutting the screen off. Maybe that speed up the progress of whatever is killing him.” Slicky offered an explanation.

“Might be. Might have been the jump too,” Marv added/

“Well, whatever it was. What do we do now?”

“And how do we connect him to the mode?” Slicky asked.

“Place that box you are holding in your hands within the blue screen," Sornia told him. "See what that does, if any."

Thank you for connecting to the MODE.

Your connection fee has been waived.

You have 10 free connections left

“How do you cure Lernian Infection?” Sornia asked.

We can procure the antidote for Lernian Infection.

The cost is 700,000 credits.

Your balance is 0 credits.

Do you prefer to make a deposit or look for a donor?

"Even if we had all those credits, how would we deposit it in?" Slicky asked. "This thing does not come with a manuel."

"Let me look around it a bit. I think it’s some kind of advanced communication system," Marv said, finally summoning the courage to stand close to the screen.

"Interactive for sure."

Marv touched it, and it felt soft, welcoming. "Never seen a tech like this before."

"It’s a sort of tech the gamers can only dream off."

“His pulse is weakening, only twenty per minute,” Sornia interrupted them.

“Fuck, now the green shit is starting to come out of his mouth?” Slicky said with disgust.

"Let's 'Look for donors'," Sornia said. "What else can we do?"

The list of names suddenly started to be displayed, moving slowly along the screen.

"Look, his family is here," Marv said. "Fairline Family."

"Select Fairline Family. I hope it's his family."

"You know how he feels about his family," Marv said. "He’ll be pissed if we ask them for help.”

“Good,” Sornia said. “I hope he lives to be pissed,” she said with a fierce determination.

"You're right. Let him be pissed all he wants to," Marv was saying, not really ready to accept that his friend might die in less than an hour. "And if he gets bad, I'll smack his stupid head, and that should give him some new perspective."

Sornia sighed and tapped Marv on his shoulder. "Marv, you've been a good friend to him."

"I'm going to tell you something you already know," Marv answered, shaking his head. "It ain't fucken' easy."

Sornia was ready to chuckle, but then the screen blinked with a new message. It said,

A member of Fairline Family has been contacted. Standing by, waiting for the answer

"How long do you think that will take?" Slicky asked.

"Hopefully less than an hour," Sornia said and nervously started to tap her foot.

"What if..." Marv started to talk, but then the blue screen suddenly turned golden.

But only for a second before going blue again with a new message:

The payment has been authorized for the operation.The healing will start shortly...

Estimated time of recovery twenty-four hours

Please do not disconnect from the MODE during this period or the healing will stop

You will not be reimbursed for the cost

"Is that it?" Marv asked, seeing how nothing was happening for a while.

Then a flow of sparks started to come from somewhere inside the screen right into TImothy's mouth.

"I think so," Sornia said, unable to stop smiling, her lips suddenly quivering. "I bet it is. I bet we did it!!"

“Oh, boy,” Marv said with huge relief. “That was fucken’ close. Let's not do that again.”