A third test gave the same results.
Commander Gelrayen was obviously displeased. “Do you have any ideas about the cause of this emission glare?”
“The first indication is that the emission coils continue to radiate uniformly across the achronic range for a brief time after the main pulse, which is emitted along the predicted tight band. This might be an extension of the problem we experienced in the bay.” Even her camera pod looked bemused. “I believe that I just invented self- jamming scanners.”
“The power that holds the coils at stand-by level causes the coils to emit radiation for a short time?” Gelrayen asked. “Can you predict the amount of time that the coils will continue this emission?”
“Yes, the process repeats itself very precisely each time,” Valthyrra said. “I will try re-writing the firing program to cut power to the scanners for the duration of that interval.”
“That was my thought exactly.”
“That is an imperfect solution, since it closes down the cannon entirely for that interval,” Valthyrra added. “Ready to repeat testing. This time I will engage only the main scanner.”
This gave the same results, if to a lesser degree. It was still enough to leave the impulse scanner completely useless, and it still blinded the normal scanners.
“Take us back to the bay,” Gelrayen told her. “The sooner that we get the experts to work on this problem, the sooner we can try again.”
Lt. Commander Pesca was not in his cabin when Captain Tarrel went to check on him, and he did not return for several hours. She had wondered about him briefly during the Methryn’s test run, since there were no acceleration seats in their cabins and the bunk was a poor substitute. Either the Starwolves had remembered him and taken him somewhere for safe-keeping, or else he had survived well enough and he had gone out into the ship in his quest to learn the secret Kelvessan language. Tarrel’s ability to be concerned for him was limited to the hope that he would do nothing to embarrass them both.
She was busy enough herself before long. As soon as the Methryn was safely back inside her bay, the first officer Kayendel took Tarrel down to one of the carrier’s workshops where automated machinery, under Valthyrra’s very precise guidance, fitted armored suits. This was Tarrel’s own turn to get naked, and quite a number of Starwolves came to witness that as measurements were taken for her new suit. Being career military, she was used to being undressed even in social settings; she was not used to being put on exhibition for the curiosity of four-armed aliens who used to be her mortal enemies, but she endured it gracefully. Valthyrra set the machines to work, promising to have the suit prepared by the next day.
Captain Tarrel returned to her own cabin, and was reading when Pesca did finally present himself. He looked rather worn and somewhat beaten up, as if the Methryn’s test flight had been harder on him than it had been on her. She suspected that he had not been adequately protected during the accelerations.
“Are you keeping yourself out of trouble?” she asked without looking up.
“Actually, I’ve been looking for trouble,” Pesca said. “Unfortunately, the joke was on me.”
She glanced at him over the top of her book. “Didn’t they warn you about the test flight?”
“Well, they did,” he admitted reluctantly. “I’ve flown in couriers so often, I wasn’t worried. I spent the first part of the test flight on the floor in various parts of the ship near the fighter bays. Then the Starwolves found me and put me in one of the fighters.”
“Did you learn anything from the controls?”
He shook his head. “No, the power was completely shut down. Besides, I passed out again.”
Tarrel was interested to know that he had passed out, while she had taken those stresses very much in stride. “What did you do after that? Or did the Starwolves let you sleep?”
“Actually, they took me up to the group of cabins shared by their pack,” he explained. “I was hoping to have a look at the books they keep. They do keep books, but every last damned one was in Terran.”
“There probably aren’t enough Kelvessan in existence to justify the printing of books in their own language,” she speculated. “Anything of their own would be kept in the computers, and Valthyrra Methryn has absolute control over those. At this rate, you’re going to get yourself flattened in some back corridor of this ship before you learn a single word. Valthyrra Methryn wants to measure you for a suit anyway, since we didn’t think to bring our own.”
“Have them look in some hold where they throw their loot,” Pesca complained. “They’ve stolen at least a dozen of everything the Union has ever made.”
Tarrel was inclined to laugh. “Now, now. The Starwolves are our good friends, and the only damned thing that can save our butts. You can go back to criticizing their habits once they destroy the Dreadnought, but not one moment before.”
She sent him immediately to present himself to be fitted for his suit, although he seemed curiously reluctant to go for reasons that she could not imagine, as if he considered the suit a threat aimed at him personally. But she was beginning to find his presence increasingly troubling. Since their arrival at Alkayja station, and especially since coming aboard the Methryn, Pesca was becoming increasingly suspicious and sullen. Perhaps it was only his frustration at failing to learn the Kelvessan language. The Starwolves were conspiring against him, and he knew it.
What she found alarming was the degree of his resentment, which seemed to be turning quickly to hate and paranoia. She considered once again whether it would be best to put him off the ship. The Starwolves would take him home soon enough, and he would have human company until then.
Perhaps that, she thought, was the root of his problem, something that she had even seen in the past. Some people simply reacted sharply to a prolonged stay in an all or mostly alien environment, even aliens as human in appearance and habits as the Kelvessan. Then again, she reminded herself, the Starwolves might appear far more alien to Pesca’s eyes. She honestly liked them and enjoyed their company, but Pesca was still very loyal to Union ideals. He had been brought up to hate and fear Starwolves, and a sudden change of policy was not going to influence his deep-seated prejudices that quickly.
The testing of the Methryn presented Tarrel with far more interesting problems to consider, and she forgot about her companion soon enough. Dalvaen and his engineers had come back aboard the^carrier the moment she settled into her bay, and they had the answer to the problem quickly enough. The supercooling of the impulse scanner emitter coils was indeed the problem, as it had been before. lust as superconductivity had caused the cannons to fire prematurely, it was also causing the crystals that those coils influenced to continue to radiate achronic signals even after the coils themselves were no longer under power. The answer was simple. The solid- state super-coolers were removed, and the power needed to fire the impulse cannons was increased to the previous level.
The Methryn was ready to go out again only a few hours later. For the purposes of this second test, she had remained isolated in her bay while the two functional carriers and the Starwolf freighter that were presently in port took themselves to separate portions of the system hidden by stealth-intensity shields. In that way, Valthyrra could not have the slightest idea of where to look for them, and her ability to locate those three ships would be entirely dependant upon the effectiveness of her impulse scanners.
The Methryn backed out of her bay, this time with much greater speed and certainty, and moved slowly into the system to begin her search. If this test was not successful, she would begin to fall behind the schedule that she had been given to keep.
If it was successful, she would not be returning to the station but would turn her long nose toward Union space. Captain Tarrel was once again at the Commander’s station on the bridge, while Gelrayen watched from the surveillance station below.
“The ship is clear and away,” Valthyrra reported. “No contact on normal scan. Are those ships out there?”
“They should be,” Gelrayen told her. “I do not sense them, so they must have their drives shut down and their major power systems at low level.”
“Pardon?” Tarrel asked, mystified, although she had not meant to ask that question out loud.
In fact, she did not know about the hyper-sensitive hearing the Starwolves enjoyed. Seated at the helm station just below, Kayendel had heard her and turned to look up over her shoulder. “We have the ability to sense the size, direction and range of drives and large conversion generators, and without the lag of real-time. It saves us
