The ship was adrift and would be that way for several more hours. They'd not expected the solar flare to be that intense, and their ship's engine was still unconscious, despite the work trying to restore it. The onboard AI, too, was badly frazzled. Thank goodness for the shielding that had kept the ship from being fried, but that was WAY too close.
To calm frayed nerves, and to cheer up those who were getting upset at the fact they were going to be stuck for a while until the tow ship showed up, the humans aboard ship got together and taught their friends how to do a story-go-round. One person would start a story, the next person would continue it, building on the first, and then the next person after that would continue the story from the first two, until the very last person who got to tell the end of the story. Needless to say, by the time the tow-ship got there, there were no frayed nerves, but a lot of people laughing. -- Anon Guest
A little bit of solder, unheeded, slipped from an overheating circuit that had been put in the wrong place. For want of the solder, the circuit failed. Alas, it was the circuit that controlled the electromagnetic shielding from aberrant solar events. For want of the circuit, the shielding failed. When the shielding failed, all of the more sensitive electronic equipment had a conniption and more or less fell over. For want of the shielding, the ship was lost...
Well. Not lost. They knew exactly where they were. They were adrift and still headed on the last course they had set before getting hit broadside with a load of hyperactive solar plasma.
In brief: sewerage creek, sans paddle, and possibly in a barbed-wire boat.
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