Arlyis sat with Friar Mendel before the benched circuit board, frowning. A stink of hot solder resin infused the small repair room despite the laboring exhaust fan. While Mendel looked on, she carefully pried six chips from their mounts, and placed each in the IC tester. Every one pegged the continuity needle when activated. Every chip read as shorted out. There were no logic states to verify. It was as if she were testing a handful of washers.

"Something about the components, seems like..." she muttered. "The board traces were OK. Do you have replacements for any of these?"

Friar Mendel took in the scattering of black ceramic shapes, and shook his head. "Too old they are. Most are custom, not standard items, the others, manufactured of antique materials are. Older they are than this ship, or its stores."

Every Gallium-based microchip in the device had tested as being worthless.

She imaged the board traces for breaks, and surface tested it for contaminants, but found nothing. In the end, Arlyis admitted defeat. "All of these components are junk! I just don't understand it. There is no possible circumstance that could account for this. Do you think it was the cold, or radiation damage?"

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Friar Mendel shook his head dubiously. "Dry sealed the case was. Insulated and armored, too. No water frost to cause a short. If the case damaged was, then maybe, but the case was not damaged. And the IC's un-cracked are. Also,they are not burnt. I will run a Mass Spec on them, and perform a construction check." He looked on glumly. "There is nothing else to do."

Arlyis threw up her hands in exasperation. "Best we just mount an output repeater in its place, and I'll write a software emulation program to run on the ship's system instead."

Mendel frowned. "Already taxed the system is, if to this I agree, you must only run the subroutine when at rest the ship is. Slower now will our responses to problems in other areas be."

It was finally agreed, though Friar Mendel was not gracious about the further loss of cycle time this would require. Simmering, he finished fault analyzing the microchips from the box, and sent a complaining report to Joshua.

This time, Colonel Colmer assigned Private Eldon to do the remount.