Outpost   Lightning strikes Lucky walks over to the monitor console and selects the view of the stream between the mine and the dome. The waters have risen well over their normal level and at the ford the currents flow swiftly over the rocky underground. 'Not unpassable yet,' Lucky thinks, 'but it will be in a few hours. Crazy should still be able to make it through without a problem.' She switches off her monitor. The high-pitched crack of a thunder streak cuts through the air, at the same time as the entire dome lights up in an eerie greenish gulf of light. For a moment Lucky is blinded by the flames that seem to spring from all of the dome's external frame. 'That was a direct hit,' she thinks as her eyes gradually adjust to the light again. Lucky looks up and it is not for the first time since the start of her assignment that she feels thankful for the flash deflectors. On her wrist the monitor springs to life again and a three-dimensional diagram of the dome skeleton structure appears above it. 'Section thirty-one of the south-east sustaining leg has been hit by a massive electric discharge. Substantial damage was done, reducing the dome's structural integrity to eighty-five percent. No immediate danger is present. Auto-repair will be initiated as soon as the atmospheric conditions allow. Confirm message, please.' 'Message confirmed,' Lucky responds. 'Shit,' she thinks, 'that one was bigger than I thought. Let's hope we have no further direct strikes before repair is complete.' She looks at the monitor and studies the diagram. Section thirty-one blinks red next to the airlock. A marker indicates that the damaged site is close to the ground, probably where the main current of the discharge jumped from the frame to the ground instead of following the deflector path. 'So much for the deflector design. Oh well, nothing's perfect in this life.' Tired of the lightshow outside the dome, Lucky switches the dome's skin from transparent to black. Now only the hammering sound of the rain and the whining of the wind are left to indicate the severity of the storm outside. Due to the low density of the planet's atmosphere the wind does not have much power behind it, so that apart from an occasional shudder when there is an exceptionally strong gust of wind, it does not cause any vibrations inside the dome. It takes Lucky a few minutes before she notices the slight vibration in the air around her. It is hardly noticeable between the other sounds of the storm, but once noticed it can not be overheard. There is a low-pitched sound that definitely has not been there before. She looks around to find the source of the vibration, but the it seems to come from all directions at once without having a distinct origin. 'Margie, locate the origin of the vibration in the dome's atmosphere,' Lucky addresses the dome's main computer. She could not remember why, but at some point in time she and Crazy had decided that the computer definitely had a female nature and should be called Margie. It had probably been after a few beers, but since then they had always addressed the computer as Margie. 'Source of vibration is the damage done to section thirty-one of the south-east sustaining leg.' 'What is the expected effect on the dome's integrity?' 'Without a change in the strength of the current storm the skin is expected to tear up in approximately four hours. If the storm increases as predicted by the meteo module, the skin will start to rip apart in two and a half hours. Auto-repair is currently not possible. Manual repair is not advised either under the current atmospheric conditions. Yellow alert will be raised one hour before the expected breach. Red alert will be raised thirty minutes later.' 'Oh hell,' Lucky mutters, 'just what I needed.'

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