By the time they made their way back to the airlock the sun side of the ship had moved into shadow and the temperature differential had shifted and the thermal layer in both suits had adjusted accordingly which he noted as one more confirmation that Mei-Lin had built something worth having.

The outer airlock door sealed behind them and the pressurization cycle began and Zedd reached up to break the seal on his helmet and Lindsy did the same and the recycled airlock air came in which smelled of nothing in particular and was one of the more pleasant smells available on a ship in orbit.

The inner door remained closed.

He looked at the indicator panel. The pressurization cycle had completed but the inner door seal was showing a hold status that he had not seen before on this ship and he was about to ask the computer for a status report when the intercom clicked on.

"Captain." T'Vara's voice. Calm and direct and carrying the particular quality it had when she was about to say something she had already processed and was simply relaying. "The environmental sensor on the airlock inner door has detected a Class Two biological contaminant on both of you. The computer is flagging it as an external agent, consistent with atmospheric discharge from a vessel that passed within range of the ship approximately forty minutes ago. You will need to go through decontamination protocol before you can re-enter the ship."

Zedd looked at Lindsy. She was looking at the intercom panel with an expression that was assessing the situation rather than reacting to it.

"What does decontamination protocol look like from here T'Vara," he said.

"There is a decontamination chamber accessible from the airlock on the port side," T'Vara said. "Standard protocol for Class Two contamination requires full suit removal and two hours in the chamber while the decontamination cycle runs. The chamber will handle the agent. Your suits will need to go through a separate cycle in the airlock before they can be brought back into the ship."

"Two hours," Zedd said.

"Approximately," T'Vara said. "The cycle cannot be shortened. The agent is not dangerous at current exposure levels but re-entry to the main ship before decontamination is complete would risk broader contamination of the internal environment." A pause. "There are basic provisions in the chamber. The temperature is maintained at a comfortable level. I will check in at the one hour mark."

The intercom clicked off.

Zedd looked at the port side door that led to the decontamination chamber and then at Lindsy.

"Two hours," she said, which was not a complaint, just an acknowledgment.

"Two hours," he agreed.

---

The decontamination chamber was small and functional in the way of rooms designed for a specific purpose rather than comfort. White walls, a bench along each side, overhead decontamination emitters that cycled through their work in slow passes of barely visible light. A small cabinet on the far wall held water and basic rations. The temperature was, as T'Vara had said, comfortable, which turned out to mean warm enough that standing in anything more than the minimum was going to become uncomfortable quickly.

The decontamination drawer was built into the wall beside the inner door, a sealed unit about the size of a standard storage locker with its own independent cycle. T'Vara had been specific about this part over the intercom before they came through. Thermal undersuits went in the drawer. Everything else that had been in contact with the external environment went in the drawer. The drawer ran its own cycle concurrent with the chamber cycle and nothing came back out until both were complete.

Zedd opened the drawer and looked at it and then at Lindsy and then at the ceiling in that order.

"Practical," he said, about the drawer.

"Very," she agreed, about the drawer.

They managed it the way two adults managed an awkward situation when neither of them was going to make it more awkward by performing awkwardness about it, backs turned, the particular efficiency of people who had both spent enough time on ships to know that privacy was a negotiation rather than a guarantee and that the negotiation worked best when everyone pretended it was not happening.

The drawer sealed and the cycle indicator went green and Zedd sat down on the bench on his side of the chamber and looked at the emitters overhead and thought that the next two hours were going to require a specific quality of focus that he was going to have to locate quickly.

He had located it for about forty five seconds before he looked across the chamber.

Lindsy had taken the bench on the opposite side and was sitting with the straight spine she always had regardless of circumstances, her hair loose around her shoulders from where she had shaken it free of the helmet compression, and she was in a dark bra and underwear that were practical in the way that everything about her was practical and she had the particular quality of someone who was not performing comfort with the situation but genuinely had it and the combination of those two things was doing something to his concentration that he was going to need to address.