Orphans - Kevin Killiany [5]
When she stood to greet him, therefore, she expressed no surprise when he came around her desk and took her chair without comment as though she’d relinquished her position. He briskly cleared her screens without glancing at them, not noticing the relevant data she’d organized nor her preliminary sketches, and without a word of greeting, launched into a summation of the problems facing them as though she were a classroom full of freshmen.
“What the Klingons appear to be doing is impossible,” he pronounced, busily adjusting her screens and pulling up some of the same data he’d just removed.
“Therefore what they are doing is not what they appear to be doing.”
Conlon listened with half an ear as he ran through a list of warp and physical principles which precluded a stable warp field at sublight velocities. Moving to an auxiliary panel, she called up an inventory of ship’s stores. It took her a matter of moments to locate the components she wanted and flag them. With a few quick taps, she routed her list and orders that they be brought to engineering ASAP.
“What makes the Klingon feat look impossible is the limitations of human perception,” Tev’s lecture broke in on her consideration of necessary parts they didn’t have. “And instrumentation that assumes the observer is human.”
He was focused on her desktop display and she realized he was drafting a diagram as he spoke. Though she couldn’t see the image, his gestures were quick and sure. Despite herself she was impressed with his ability to multitask.
“Human senses perceive any event which takes less than a fifteenth of a second as instantaneous,” he explained. “Tellarites can discern events as brief as one twenty-fourth of a second.”
And Klingons a thirtieth of a second,Conlon added mentally, and Vulcans something just under a forty-third of a second.
“As soon as I saw real-time data—numbers, not images—I realized what was happening.” Tev spun her desktop display around so she could see his diagram.
She was not surprised to see it was very similar to her own. There was no getting around the fact that for all his pomposity the Tellarite knew what he was doing.
“Not bad,” she said. “But it’s clear you’re not a ship’s engineer.”
“Oh?”
If she had been less sure of herself, the frozen tone of Tev’s single syllable would have stopped her.
“You’ve got the theory,” she said, tapping contacts on the auxiliary board, “but your design assumes unlimited matériel and ideal efficiency.”
With a grin, she rotated her screen, showing him the schematics of her own design.
“We have components for three complete assemblies, which my people are already working on,” she exaggerated slightly. “If you have some ideas on what we can substitute here and here”—corresponding points highlighted—“we can have a fourth.”
Too late she kicked herself for not having a visual recorder going. Tev’s stupefied expression was priceless.
CHAPTER
4
Bart Faulwell was literally two steps from the observation lounge when the meeting was announced. So far there was no need for a linguistics or cryptography specialist on this mission and he’d been prowling, pen and paper in hand, too restless to sit as he worked on his latest letter to Anthony. The process had become more protracted over the years, which suited him fine. The longer he took, composing the letter by hand the old-fashioned way, then recording the actual subspace message, the longer he could hold on to the feeling of spending time together.
He considered a quick dash to drop the pen and paper off at his cabin,