Collective Hindsight (Book 2) - Aaron Rosenberg [4]
Tev turned away from the collection array to glance at his superior. Was Gomez really so dense that she could not figure out the system herself? Then he noticed the look on her face. Ah, it was another test. No, he corrected himself. Not a test—a desire to compare data and conclusions. She was posing the question half-rhetorically and half as an invitation for him to share his own discoveries thus far. It was an odd approach, and not one he would have taken himself, but he had to admit that it was proving to be effective.
“This is the ship’s sole power source,” he replied, and wondered why she bothered to nod. He already knew he was right, or else he would not have mentioned it. Ah, but perhaps it was her way of verifying that she also knew this, and that they were in concurrence. Odd. “Stellar energy is gathered through the collection array on the exterior, funneled through these cables, and then stored in these panels.” He glanced at the panels, which shimmered slightly. “I do not recognize the material, though it resembles both glass and oil.”
“That’s because it’s oil that’s been fused into glass.” She showed him her own tricorder reading. “Very clever—it’s comparable to our transparent aluminum, taking the best qualities of two different materials and combining them into a new structure.”
“Of course. The energy is then drawn from these panels as necessary, either for fuel or to power other systems.” He traced a conduit with one hand, following it back to the thick column at the center of the room, and tapped one of the crystals embedded within it. “This is the ship’s actual engine. Power is pumped into these crystals, which magnify it and emit it through the thrusters placed along the hull. The tubes just beyond this store hydrogen and helium, which is ignited by the heat from the crystals. The sudden ejection of supercharged gases provides velocity, and smaller thrusts allow for course corrections.”
“Right.” Gomez tapped a few equations into her tricorder. “But there’s a problem. If I’m right”—she showed him her calculations and he was forced to admit that she was—“these crystals should only enable the ship to accelerate to warp one. Maybe warp two, if the ship was running at maximum power and drained itself completely. But according to the logs from R5-3791, the Dancing Star was doing warp three when it entered Randall V’s system.”
“Impossible, given this data.” Tev tapped one of the crystals again. “Nor has the engine been altered since its original discovery.”
His superior met his gaze, and they both nodded. Something didn’t add up.
“Let’s get back to the da Vinci,” she told him, “and tell the others. Maybe together we can figure out why this ship was going faster than its engines could possibly manage.”
As they waited to beam back, Tev was surprised to realize that he did not begrudge sharing the puzzle with his teammates. Oh, he knew he could solve it on his own, given enough time, but he found himself curious to see what conclusions the others would suggest.
* * *
Gold shook his head as Gomez sat back down. The entire S.C.E. team—Gomez, Tev, Blue, Stevens, and Soloman, as well as security chief Domenica Corsi, linguist Bart Faulwell, and cultural specialist Carol Abramowitz—was gathered in the observation lounge.
“So you’re telling me that this thing couldn’t have been traveling at those speeds?”
“No, it clearly was—the outpost’s data is very detailed, and their information on later events matches perfectly with our own logs, so we know their equipment was working properly. But those engines cannot produce that much acceleration.” Sonya glanced at the rest of her team. “So, any ideas on how it managed that trick?”
“Could it have had a second engine?” Faulwell asked, but Stevens and Blue both shook their heads.
“We went over that thing top to bottom,” Stevens told his roommate. “Nothing else even remotely like an engine. And nothing in the thrusters themselves that could have amplified the output to that degree.”
“What about outside help?” Abramowitz said. “I know some races use