"Hours?" Cat made a face, "Well that's just great. Now what are we gonna do?" he looked over at Lister for the answer.
After quite a long moment of silence, Lister, who was now up pacing the floor, and whose mind was elsewhere, didn't get a chance to reply because the lights went out and they were plunged into darkness for a minute, until the emergency back up kicked in.
"It would help if we actually knew why the power went down in the fir-" Lister broke off and scrutinised the floor because Rimmer came marching into the room, straight past him, and up to Kryten,
"Why isn't someone outside and looking at Starbug?" he muttered, "This power loss is playing havoc with my light bee,"
Lister risked glancing at him and saw that he was fading and then reappearing. It was obviously a very strange feeling because he watched as Rimmer reached out a hand towards the pilot seat to steady himself but of course his hand passed straight through it and he stumbled and struggled to redeem balance.
When the hologram composed himself, Kryten took the liberty of explaining the situation, "Unfortunately we cannot go outside Sir for sometime; we're in the midst of a dust storm larger than Mister Cat's collection of suits,"
"Wow! It must be huge!" Cat grinned.
"Other than the fact that you're rapidly shifting between existence and non-existence, is everything alright Mr Rimmer?" Kryten asked.
Rimmer shook his head in disbelief and left the cockpit again, catching Lister's guilty glance on the way and looking back with disconsolate brown eyes.