Dark Mirror - Diane Duane [126]
Geordi was aware of someone looking over his shoulder. He turned and saw Eileen and had to stifle his initial reaction. She was smiling at him: the smile was identical to that other Eileen’s.
“Those the replicator stats?” she said. “Good, we can feed them into ours and have duplicates ready to plug in in a few minutes.”
Their glances rested in one another’s, then Eileen turned away. “Don’t forget to run the protect cycle on them,” Geordi called after her. “We don’t want to find out too late that this stuff is booby-trapped!”
“Was I born yesterday?” Eileen called back, then smiled one of those wicked smiles at Geordi and hurried off, shouting, “Cliff, Donna, Maireid, come on, get these checked!”
Geordi breathed out. “It’s the last two percent that’s missing. It had better not be critical.”
“No point in making yourself crazy over it just now,” Hwiii said, reading. “Let’s be busy understanding what we have.”
Geordi glanced around. “Some pretty heavy-duty cabling you’ve run out there, Commander.”
“Well, Commander, if the thing’s going to pull eight hundred terawatts when it’s running, we had better make sure it’s got enough power feed. Be a shame to stop in the middle of our transfer back home because we blew a fuse.”
Geordi laughed, but the laugh was uneasy. “Eight hundred terawatts is an awful lot to take off this warp engine.”
“I know. That’s why your assistant chiefs and I have been adjusting the matterstantimatter “burn” ratio right upwards. We’ve got engine efficiency up to a hundred and ten percent at the moment, and we’re pushing for one fifteen, maybe one twenty.”
Geordi whistled. “We’re not going to be able to hold that for long.”
“We won’t have to. Just long enough to get home. Just enough time to snap the right string.”
“True enough.”
“But once there,” Hwiii said, “we’re going to have another problem.”
Geordi looked at him.
“What makes you think we’re going to be alone?” said the dolphin.
Geordi blinked, then nodded.
“Now, I’m not suggesting that we alter the equipment …”
Geordi burst out laughing. “We haven’t even finished building it! And as for testing it …”
Hwiii gave him a sly look. “We’ll do what we have to. But I was simply going to suggest that we may be able to use it in ways they won’t think of. We may not have an engine the size of theirs, but we have a resource they haven’t.”
“A resident specialist in hyperstring theory,” Geordi said, giving Hwiii the sly look back in kind. “The string vibrates both ways … eh, Hwiii?”
“We have the best engineer in Starfleet,” Hwiii said, dropping his jaw, “and one with a nasty, inventive mind.”
“The “nasty” I’ll leave to others. But between us, I suspect we can come up with something.”
Hwiii glanced down at the console. “Look there—Mr. Data has finished the abstracting.”
“Good. Come on. I want a look at those couplings—then we’ll start getting the replicated boards in place and have a fast look at those abstracts.”
“Very fast. Somehow I doubt those people are going to coast around out there just fanning their fins.”
Hurriedly the two of them squeezed or swam into the equipment bay, past bits and pieces of open matrix-layout, like huge open-celled honeycombs, and chips and boards being slotted into other boards for fitting into the matrix. One piece of equipment, standing off to one side, Geordi didn’t recognize: a bucket. He looked down into it … then laughed at the sight of the fresh, shiny mackerel and went after Hwiii.
It was about fifteen minutes before Picard saw his own bridge again. He stopped long enough for a shower, wanting to wash the dust of that other Enterprise off him, literally and figuratively. And when he swung into the bridge at last, it was such a relief to have eyes turned on him with welcoming looks; no salutes, but people who stood to greet him because they wanted to, not because he would kill them if they didn’t.
“Status, Number One,” he said, and made for his chair.
“Proceeding away from the other Enterprise at warp five,” Riker said. “No