Last night while washing dishes I heard a buzzing, sizzling noise. The sink is situated on the side of the Hab where a length of metal conduit goes through the ceiling to the outside. The ceiling is covered in gray insulating foam, and during high winds, the conduit, to which the old anemometer is attached on the outside on the Hab's roof, flexes and squeaks against the foam. Wind gusts had been rocking the Hab all through dinner, and we'd grown accustomed to the creaking noises, as we've grown accustomed to the Hab's entire symphony of groans and rumbles. But this sizzling noise-this was new. I looked up at the conduit and asked Gregorio Drayer what that noise was. He looked at the conduit, too, and his eyes widened. What? I asked. It's static electricity, he said, get away from the sink. Hands still dripping with water, I backed away. Gregorio explained how a static charge could build up in the conduit because the conditions-dry atmosphere, high winds-were ideal. The friction of the wind against the conduit caused a charge to build up until it was loud enough to sizzle. He turned off all the lights on the Hab's upper level and was prepared to shut down the main circuit breaker, but the noise abated after a few minutes.

This morning I awoke in the middle of a strange dream. I dreamt that ball lightning had entered the Hab and had, somehow, rolled through the door of my stateroom and stood glowing and crackling at the side of my cot. I bolted upright. The carbon monoxide alarms were beeping on and off. The emergency lights, which plug into wall sockets all over the Hab, including our staterooms, were blinking orange and white. Outside I could here the generator cycling, first high then low, as the electrical load put on it rose and fell. Something was wrong-short-circuit, complete power failure, I didn't know.

I stumbled into the darkened common area of the upper level just as Gregorio came flying out of his room. Alyssa Rzsezutko, my EVA partner, was already up, working on a laptop. She glanced around in bewilderment. And Commander Frederick shone a flashlight on the dark walls. A faint burnt electrical smell pervaded the Hab. It was around 5:15 AM. All four of us clambered down the stairs to the lower level to find the source of the smell. Something was burning and we wanted to catch it before the whole Hab, or at least it's electrical systems, went up in smoke. Gregorio and Commander Frederick went outside to check the generator as Alyssa and I sniffed around like hound dogs, shining our flashlights into the dark corners and crevices on the Hab's lower level. We located the smell in the area near the gray metal circuit breaker panel near the workbench. Gregorio switched off each breaker, one at a time, trying to locate the source of the short circuit.

Power was quickly restored, but we have yet to figure out what happened. Gregorio is still looking into it. However, we did find that the power cord that plugs into the generator had loosened in the high winds (gusts had reached nearly 90 kilometers per hour overnight). That's what caused the stuttering on-off electrical shortage that had initially awoken me. It might be wiser to send a crew of plumbers, mechanics, and electricians to Mars rather than highly-trained astronauts.