Three - Michael Jan Friedman [4]
“Yes, sir,” the ensign responded. “Thank you, sir.”
And he left the captain’s ready room a lot more light-hearted than when he entered it.
* * *
[8] Vigo packed the last of the three uniforms he intended to take planetside with him. Then he closed his gray plastic garment case, latched it, removed it from his bed, and placed it on the floor beside his bedroom door.
The Stargazer’s chief weapons officer took a look around his quarters and decided that everything was in order. With nothing to do until he was called down to the shuttlebay, he sat down on the room’s only chair.
It was a bit too small for him. In fact, all the furniture in his quarters, indeed in the entire ship, was too small. But then, he wasn’t the first Pandrilite who had been forced to overcome that problem in his dealings with other species.
As Vigo reflected on that, he heard a soft, melodic chime. Getting up from his chair, he emerged from his bedroom into the small anteroom beyond it and said, “Please come in.”
The doors to the anteroom parted, revealing his friend and colleague Pug Joseph. The ship’s acting security chief, Joseph, was a stocky, sandy-haired man whose straightforwardness had endeared him to the other members of the crew.
Vigo found it a refreshing quality in a species that often seemed to pride itself on its guile. Not that that was all bad. It made the humans on board some of Vigo’s most challenging sharash’di partners.
“So,” said Joseph, “all packed?”
“As a matter of fact,” said Vigo, “I am.”
Joseph smiled. “Boy, I envy you. I mean, going down to Wayland Prime ... every weapons innovation in the last ten years has come out of that place.”
Vigo couldn’t argue with Joseph’s assessment of the [9] place. The Level One Development Facility on Wayland Prime had become a veritable hotbed of innovation thanks to the handful of brilliant tactical engineers Starfleet had assembled there.
“And,” Joseph added, “as if that weren’t enough of a plum, you’re going to be one of the first weapons officers in the fleet to see the new Type Nine emitter.”
Truly, Vigo was looking forward to examining the new and improved ship’s-phaser emitter, and watching it perform in test mode. But that wouldn’t be the biggest thrill he was likely to encounter on Wayland Prime.
“Hey,” said Joseph, “I heard the guy who spearheaded the Type Nine project is a Pandrilite. Name’s Ejanix.”
Vigo nodded. “Yes.”
“Do you know him?”
The weapons chief smiled to himself. “As matter of fact,” he said, “I do.”
First Officer Gilaad Ben Zoma stood in the middle of the Stargazer’s shuttlebay and considered nothing.
At least, it looked like nothing. It was actually a transparent, semipermeable barrier that separated the atmosphere in the shuttlebay from the vacuum of space.
“So it’s working all right now?” he asked.
“It’s working fine,” said Chiang, the shuttlebay supervisor, “as you can see.”
Ben Zoma smiled. “Or not see, as the case may be.”
Earlier that morning, the barrier had displayed some instability, as evidenced by the pale yellow ripples running through it. Then, about an hour ago, it had actually begun to sputter.
[10] The last thing anyone else in the shuttlebay wanted was an unstable barrier, considering that everyone’s lives depended on how well it worked. Chiang had made note of that to Ben Zoma, who had in turn made note of it to Simenon and his engineers.
The result? A new wave projector and a much more relaxed Lieutenant Chiang.
“Let me know if you have any more trouble with it,” Ben Zoma advised the supervisor.
“Don’t worry,” said Chiang. “I will.”
That promise exacted, the first officer strode across the shuttlebay and headed for the exit. He was just shy of the doors when they slid open and admitted Lieutenant Kastiigan.
“Commander Ben Zoma,” he said happily. “I was told you would be down here.”
“Well,” said Ben Zoma, “you were told right.”
Kastiigan had been with them for just a few weeks—ever since the previous science officer was relieved of her duties and sent back to Earth. In that short time, the Kandilkari