The main secret to surviving in space is proper maintenance, carried out by engineers and mechanics, sober and in their right minds.  That, plus the ability to get along with people in confined spaces, often for months, even years on end.  Sometimes on the colony supply ship Phoebe, our home away from home, we were out towards the far reaches of the Solar system for up to three years at a time.  Maintenance was pretty routine, and the crew reasonably compatible, so we took the boredom of uneventful days for granted.   On this particular run we had  few passengers, and things were running smoothly.

So, when Drew Bittner, Phoebe's engineer, began acting strangely, we were naturally concerned.  Little things started to go wrong, like mashed potatoes coming out of the food replication unit when rice pudding had been ordered, the cold water in the passengers quarters running hot, and automatic doors sticking in the open position when the specs called for them to automatically close in the event of air loss due to meteor damage.  Sort of like the self locking bulkheads in a sailing ship that prevent total flooding in the similar event of a collision.  Remember when they failed after the big sea going luxury liner Titanic hit the iceberg way back in the twentieth century?

These things weren't too serious in themselves.  What was serious was that Bitty didn't seem to notice these malfunctions until they were pointed out to him, a rare state of affairs for one of the best maintenance man in the fleet.

Something had to be done before an error occurred that could kill us, for instance in the life support systems, though Rob, our navigator, insisted that rice pudding was a vital part of life support.

In the absence of our welfare officer, who'd got drunk and missed take-off time at our last port of call, it fell to me as skipper to tackle Bitty, and find out why he was suddenly acting like he was two feathers short of a duck.  Accordingly, I called him into the wardroom one evening and chased out a couple of loiterers.  Making sure the ship-wide intercom was disconnected for privacy, I sat him down with a mug of coffee.

'Chief Bittner,' I began formally.  He looked apprehensive, as he was only called by his Sunday name when he was in trouble, for instance when he came back from shore leave still too legless to manage the airlock.  'We seem to have been having some technical problems lately.'

'That's why you have me,' he said.  'If you didn't have problems I'd be out of a job.'

'That's just it.  Your job.  Your mind hasn't been on it lately.'

His face started to get red.  'What do you mean, Boss?  Has the ship fallen apart?  I do my job and keep you lot functioning.'

'Yeah, Bitty,' I soothed his ruffled feathers.  'You know we couldn't function without you.  But I've had a couple of complaints that I can't ignore, and Im  a bit worried about you myself.  You used to have a built in alarm system that had you fixing the problem before anybody even knew there was one.  But for the past few days, you haven't noticed anything wrong until somebody has brought it to your attention.  It's not like you, and like I said, I'm worried.  Is there something bothering you?'

His ruddy face grew even redder as he abruptly stood and marched towards the door.  He whirled and yelled, 'There's nothing wrong with my work!  I do my fair share of the work around here, and keep up with the running of this ship.  Now you're getting stroppy just 'cos some other bugger notices a problem before I do!  Geez!'

'Siddown!' I ordered.  'Nobody's getting stroppy.  Wer'e just concerned that you aren't yourself.'

'Well, I'd like to know who you think I am,' he muttered, belligerently.  I resisted temptation, and instead told him that he was the hardest worker I'd ever know, but that his standards had lapsed lately.  Not all of what I said was flannel, as normally I had the greatest respect for his work.

After five minutes of arguing back and forth, I could see I wasn't getting anywhere at warp speed, so I changed my tactics, and invented an Uncle with a birthday, and said we should celebrate.  As expected, Bitty jumped at the chance to bend his elbow, and the next hour passed smoothly in reminiscences and a welter of toasts to my fictional Uncle in Martian Vodkas.  When I judged I had him sufficiently mellowed, I reiterated my concern that something was troubling him.

At first he was still reluctant to talk, but a couple more toasts to my Uncle loosened his tongue, and he admitted that, yes, he did have a problem, and he didn't know what to do about it.

Of course, it was a case of the old old story.  Lust had reared its ugly head aboard the Phoebe.  I was a bit surprised, as our female crew members were already spoken for, and the passengers were all young male technicians being transferred to Jupiter 6 base.  Sympathetically, I asked him which young lady had excited his libido.

'Er... Boss, it's not that easy.'  His voice trailed off as a glazed look came into his eyes.

'Go on, you know that anything you tell me won't go beyond we two,' I prompted him gently, while wishing we had our welfare officer aboard.  'It'll be our secret.'

'Well, you know Charlie Barnes?  He's been making crude advances to me ever since we left Titan base.'

Yellow alert!  I knew Barnes of course, a real trouble maker who'd often been up before me on charges of disorderly conduct.  I'd asked head office to transfer him, but that couldn't happen until we next made planet-fall.

'I wouldn't have thought that would be a problem for you,' I remarked.  'You're big enough and ugly enough to look after yourself.'

'I am.  But trouble is, he's threatened to push Rex Larkin out of the airlock if I don't come across, and if I tell anyone, Ill follow him!   I just can't live without Rex.  Skipper, what can I do?'

Upgrade that yellow alert to red.  I sighed.  It looked like being an interesting trip, and it was a long way to Jupiter 6!