She holds her drinking cup, her hair wadded inside, upside down over the positive electrode and waits as oxygen rises from the water and collects in the inverted cup.

Konstance, what are you up to under there?

She counts to ten, takes the wires off the cot legs, and rubs their ends together. The ensuing spark, rising into the pure oxygen, ignites the hair.

I insist that you reply. What are you doing beneath your bed?

As she turns over the cup, smoke rises, and with it the odor of burning hair. Konstance sets a crumpled square of dry-wipe on it, then another. According to the schematics, extinguishers are embedded into the ceiling of every room on the Argos. If this is not true in Vault One—if the schematics were wrong, and there are extinguishers in the walls, or in the floor, this will never work. But if they are only in the ceiling, it might.

Konstance, I sense heat. Please answer me, what are you doing under there?

Little nozzles extend from the ceiling and begin to spray a chemical mist onto the cot above her head; she can feel it pattering onto the legs of her suit as she feeds the flames beneath the cot.

The fire fades as she nearly smothers it with more dry-wipes, then surges back to life. Threads of black curl around the edges of the upside-down cot, and into the mist raining down from the ceiling. She blows on the flames, layers on more wipes, then feeds it scoops of Nourish powder. If this does not work, she will not have enough material to burn a second time.

Soon the underside of her mattress catches fire and she has to crawl out from beneath the cot. She pitches in the last of the dry-wipes. Green flames rise from the mattress’s edge and an acrid, burnt-chemical smell fills the vault. Konstance slides across the room beneath the spray of the extinguishers, puts her hands into the suit’s sleeves, pulls on the oxygen hood, and seals it to the suit’s collar.

She feels it catch, feels the suit inflate.

Oxygen at ten percent, says the hood.

Konstance, this is outrageously irresponsible behavior. You are jeopardizing everything.

The underside of the cot glows brighter as the mattress burns. The beam of the headlamp flickers through the smoke.

“Sybil, your prime directive is to protect the crew, isn’t it? Above all else?”

Sybil raises the lights in the ceiling to full brightness and Konstance squints into the glare. Her hands are lost in sleeves; her feet slide on the floor.

“It’s mutualism, right?” Konstance says. “The crew needs you and you need a crew.”

Please remove the cot frame so the fire beneath it can be extinguished.