Nathan peeked past Vladimir at Deliza standing in the corridor on the other side of the hatchway. “What the hell. I just sent a pair of nineteen year-olds to learn how to fly this ship. I guess I might as well let a sixteen year try to fix it.”
Vladimir turned to motion Deliza to enter. “Deliza, you remember Nathan?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you for allowing me on the bridge.”
“No problem. Vladimir tells me you understand our system quite well. I imagine they must seem antiquated to you.”
“No, of course not,” she said, not wanting to offend him. “Your ship is very interesting. It is true, that the systems are… different. And in many cases some of your systems use a design that we abandoned long ago. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they are not as good. Some of them I find to be far more robust and dependable. Advancement for the sake of advancement is not always a good thing.”
“A very wise observation,” Nathan agreed.
“My grandfather used to say, a flame will provide enough light, without running up a bill.”
Nathan and Deliza both looked at Vladimir.
“Okay, my grandfather was a little crazy.”
“I am most interested in this jump drive that you use for interstellar movement. I understand that it utilizes some combination of expanding and collapsing energy fields to initiate-”
“Whoa, you’re already flying way over my head, there,” Nathan admitted. “Perhaps you should introduce her to Doctor Sorenson,” he recommended, pointing toward Abby.
Vladimir led Deliza the few steps over to the jump control console, where Abby was busy processing the calculations for the next jump plot. “Doctor Sorenson. If I may bother you for a moment?”
Abby turned to face Vladimir, expecting to have another confrontation with the stubborn engineer. Their working relationship had been trying since day one. Though things had improved due to the nature of their situation, both of them still approached one another cautiously.
When she saw Deliza standing next to Vladimir, she was a bit surprised. The last person she expected to see standing next to the arrogant Russian was a demure sixteen year-old girl. Suddenly, her maternal instinct kicked in, as she was reminded of her own daughter back on Earth. She was still far younger than the girl that stood before her, but there was still the same innocence in her eyes.
“Doctor Sorenson, I would like to introduce Deliza Tugwell. She is Tug’s oldest daughter.”
Abby remembered that the rebel leader’s wife, this young woman’s mother, had been killed during the battle on Haven not even a full day ago. And yet here this young woman was, standing proudly on the bridge of a foreign ship, meeting complete strangers-yet she was quite at ease.
“This is Doctor Sorenson,” Vladimir continued. “She is in charge of the entire jump drive project. She is a very smart woman.”
“It is an honor to meet you, ma’am,” Deliza said softly, holding out her hand.
“It is my pleasure.”
“Deliza is also a very smart young lady, Doctor. She has been helping her father maintain his ship for many years. And she has already helped me in engineering. She is very interested in your jump drive technology. Perhaps she could visit with you for awhile? Ask you some questions?”
Abby looked uncomfortable, and looked over at Nathan by the ready room entrance for approval. Nathan shrugged and held up his hand, putting his thumb and forefinger a few centimeters apart, indicating just a little.
“Sure,” Abby said, her frown changing into a smile. “A few. But you will have to wait a few minutes. I am running some calculations for the next jump. When they are complete, I will have more time. Maybe five minutes?”
“Of course,” Deliza answered, stepping back out of the way to wait.
“I must return to engineering.” Deliza waved to Vladimir as he left.
“Hey Vlad,” Nathan said, stopping him on his way out. “If she’s so much help to you,” he said under his breath, “then why are you leaving her here?”
“She is very smart, yes. And very helpful. But she will not stop asking me questions. Why, why, why, all morning long.”
Nathan smiled as Vladimir left the bridge. He was about to return to his ready room when the comm-officer called for him.
“Captain, I’m picking up a lot of communications signals.”
“What kind of signals?”
“Everything. Audio, video, telemetry, even news broadcasts.”
“From where?”
“From everywhere,” the comm-officer reported. My guess is that since we’re sitting right smack dab in the middle of the cluster, we’re picking up signals from every star around us.”
“Don’t we always pick up such traffic?”
“Well, yes, but the signal strengths are usually too low to be of any use. But these are all quite strong.”
“Start recording them,” he instructed. “And call Jessica to my ready room.”
“Yes, sir. But Captain, with so much of our core still down, we’re going to run out of storage space in about twenty hours if I record everything.”
“Understood. I’ll let you know.”
Deliza stood behind Abby and off to the side, twisting and straining to see the displays on the physicist’s console as the numbers danced across the screen, changing every few seconds as the calculations constantly updated. After several minutes, she could no longer control herself. “Are you running those calculations concurrently through the same processing bank, or are you running each stream through a different bank?”
“Excuse me?” Abby asked. She was a bit put off by the child’s question, as well as a bit impressed.
“I’m sorry,” Deliza apologized. “I shouldn’t bother you.”
“That’s all right,” Abby assured her, remembering that the poor girl had recently lost both her mother and her home. “They are running through separate processing banks. Why do you ask?”
“It’s just that the calculations seem to be running abnormally slow.”
“Yes, they are,” Abby admitted. “I’m afraid this console wasn’t really designed for these types of calculations. Spatial equations can be quite processor-intensive. Normally, we would run them on the main frames, but much of that system was damaged during our first battle.”
“The computers in my father’s ship could run those equations in one tenth the time,” she said enthusiastically, “maybe even less.”
“Really?”
“Of course. Even the ones in the shuttles could run them faster. The shuttles are highly automated, and their flight systems use entire arrays of processing banks. They need them to run the auto-piloting systems.”
“That’s interesting,” Abby admitted. “Do you think it’s possible to interface them with our systems?”
“I don’t see why not. They might lose a bit of performance due to the need to translate languages, but the hit should be negligible. I can help you install them,” Deliza offered.
“I’ll speak to the captain about it as soon as I finish plotting the next jump.”
“The next jump? Where are we now?”
“We’re in the middle of the Pentaurus cluster, about halfway between Takara and Darvano.”
“That’s in the middle of nowhere. Why are we out here?”
“Due to our limitations in power generation, the jump drive only has a range of 10 light years. And the captain prefers to jump into a system with enough energy to jump out again in a hurry, in case there is trouble.”
“A wise precaution. Then we are waiting to recharge your energy reserves?”
“Yes,” Abby answered, surprised that she had come to the correct conclusion with so little information. “You catch on quickly, don’t you?”
“My father says I have a gift for science,” Deliza admitted. “It’s really all I do.”
“Don’t you have any other interests or hobbies?”
“No, not really. But I do enjoy science, very much in fact.”
“You remind me of myself at your age. I couldn’t get enough of it. My mother used to tell me to go out and be
