I hadn't gotten around to posting my latest Space Guys installment here. This time, I decided to post a good part of the text along with the link. I worked in what is really kind of a parody of a common scenario. Here's the link:
https://trendytroodon.blogspot.com/2023/03/fiction-space-guys-adventure-part-20.html

And the text for about 2/3rds of this; the setup is a social gathering in a living area inside a drive nacelle in a "gravity ring".

Alek insisted on holding a dinner in her own quarters while they listened to the broadcast. She also invited Jax, Jackie and Sandra. Sandra came with Vasily, while Jax brought Dr. Cahill. The table was set with flares as candles. Tik Tok and Chopper brought plates of rehydrated vegetables, while Scarecrow and the Patchwork Girl prepared soy steaks in the kitchenette. Vasily sat in almost complete silence, while Dr. Cahill chatted happily.

They remained in a good mood as the broadcast continued. Alek became ever more elated, until Jason began to wonder if she had found a way to synthesize alcohol. Then, just as unaccountably, she burst into tears. She rose to her feet, not wobbly but stiff. When Jason moved to follow her, she waved him back. “Wait, wait,” she said. “I am not… no… feeling so… not good.” That was when Jason caught her as she pitched forward. One more word came from her lips: “Argon.”

That brought Vasily to his feet. He looked up and around. In every direction, propellant tanks lined the nacelle. “Is there anything flammable in these?” he drawled.
Donald snorted. “You know chemistry,” he said. “Argon is so non-reactive, we use it in the fire extinguishers.”

“Good,” the Russian said. He picked up a flare and touched it to a page from one of Alek’s notebooks. With significant coaxing, the paper began to smolder. He slowly lowered the sheet. 60 centimeters from the floor, the flame fizzled and went out.
“Alek figured it out when she was about to pass out,” Jax mused. “Figures. She’s the smallest of us. Lana, will she be all right?”
“Certainly, if we get her oxygen or get her out of here,” Dr. Cahill said. “But there’s enough propellant gas to flood the life support ring. We have to find the leak.”
“It’s not that simple,” Donald said. All eyes turned toward him. “The tanks are self-sealing. It would take small arms fire to breach one, anyway. A leak this bad would have to come from one of the lines to the engines. If the fuel isn’t getting through, the simplest explanation is that a thruster is out of the line. If the problem is bad enough, firing one thruster might short the whole nacelle. We have to find out, or we can’t complete the voyage or go home.”

“Then how do we fix it?” Jason asked, not really doubting the answer.
“We go outside, farmboy,” a voice said. He did not recognize the voice, yet he was not surprised to see Moxon in the doorway, already in his pressure suit.

By the time Jason had suited up, Dr. Cahill had brought Alek a breathing mask. When consciousness returned, she became giddy all over again. “Check the diagnostic panel,” she said immediately. “It will show you where short is.”
Donald was in fact doing just that. “It’s in the port thruster,” he said, pointing to the left dot of the five that formed the engine assembly. “I could fix it myself. I just need my pod from engineering.”

“There isn’t time,” Jason said. He knew he could not give a reason why, but no one challenged him.
“He’s right,” Moxon said. He had already opened the airlock in the floor. “If we don’t fix this, we could lose the ship.” He moved to close the hatch as he climbed down. When Jason followed, he simply continued his own descent without comment. Jason met Alek’s gaze before he closed the hatch.

The airlock opened in the middle of the nacelle. The pair emerged tethered against the outward pull of centrifugal pseudogravity. Moxon went left. Jason went right without comment. Between them, a projection ran the length of the nacelle. On very close examination, the edge glowed a dull red. Jason raised his head. Directly ahead was the tail of the ship, seemingly spinning of its own accord. If he twisted his neck, he could see Uranus, circling like the sun in time lapse. He shook his head and continued to crawl, his eyes on the matte white paint of the hull.

By the time Jason reached the end of the nacelle, Moxon was already twisting a wheel that controlled flow to the mixing tank. Jason moved on to the thruster. It was a meter and a half wide, and looked like the bottom half of a nesting doll. He shown a light on the nozzle. There were 6 concentric rings all told. He examined them for any damage or fault. There was nothing to see, nor had there been any reason to think he could see the cause of the problem. For the first time, Moxon spoke over the channel: “You didn’t think it was going to be that easy, did you, farm boy?”

Moxon took out a current meter, consisting of a simple probe, a gauge and a well-insulated handle. Jason saw that the gauge was illustrated with an early version of Sparky. The lowest was the squirrel smiling. The successive measures went from him grimacing in surprise, to sparks between his tufted ears, to his ears smoldering and eyes replaced with X’s. He touched the outermost ring, and the needle stayed at the lowest level. He tested the next ring, and another, with the same result. When he applied the probe to the fourth ring, however, the needle went straight to the highest level and then dropped back. Jason saw that the tip of the probe had melted.

Reaching in carefully, Jason and Moxon undid two of the bots that held the assembly in place. The rings came free, only to be halted by tethering filaments, exposing the circuits, sensors and valves beneath. Now, they could see with their own eyes a blocked valve and its cause, an overloaded insulator that had run like wax across the assembly. That was when the hull resonated with an impact that jolted Jason by sound alone. He looked up and beheld an object like a pill with tiny arms attached. It was Donald in his pod, anchored by a filament launched from a cluster of implements between the arms. Anastasia followed in a second pod, with a tapered shape and faceted surface that made Jason think of a geodesic peanut. She carried a replacement for the ring. “Thanks,” Donald said. “You found out what we could have told you from engineering. Now let’s see if you can actually help.

The repairs took 10 minutes. Jason and Moxon did help enough that it probably took no longer than it would have without them. “There’s going to be more sensor damage, but Alek already has Chopper working on that,” Donald said. “Get back inside.”

Jason made his way back along the handholds that lined the module. Now he could see the front of the ship, from the ovoid science module to the Pegasus moored at the front, and beyond it, the giant planet and its vertical ring. He looked to one side, and froze. Within his reach was a line that had cut across the central projection. For a moment, he was unsure if it was Moxon’s line or his own. A quick check confirmed that his own remained on the same side. He took a closer look, and saw that some combination of heat and friction had cut halfway through the line. He told himself that it would be something to tell the officer when they were both safely inside. Suddenly, the line began to twist and then grow taut. The worn section tore, until it was parted by three-fourths. He grabbed the line and reeled it in, until he gripped the intact length. When he finally looked up, he beheld Moxon reeling himself in, methodical rather than desperate.