Chapter 14: Rebuild

Rand was half awake, half dreaming. With the surface of his mind, he could hear Berniss using her console to talk to her repair crews, discussing which part of Skryben they would re grow next, and just how they would go about it.

She looked better, younger, now that they weren't jumping every half hour or so. Even short jumps took their toll, if they were too close together. The lighter gravity aboard Skryben probably had something to do with it, too. They had all been tired, worn down simply by the effort of living with three times their normal ship board weight for so long.

A deeper part of his mind was locked solidly into rapport with Skryben, leafing idly through what remained of her patchy memories. Deeply buried, he found images of what she had been like as an infant, an undifferentiated blob of formless flesh, draped around a simplified framework of struts. He was pleased to see that Skryben was feeling better, too. There seemed to be an automatic healing process at work, smoothing over the rough patches in her memories, reconstructing what couldn't be recalled.

He ran idly through the sequence of images, watching Skryben expand and change over a period of months and years. His interest caught by a detail, he reversed the sequence, studying the mass of data that was keyed into the images. Yes, he was right! He opened one eye, waiting until Berniss was done talking to one of her crew.

"Did you know that Skryben's power cables are actually a part of her nervous system?"

"What? Yes, I guess so. Oh, you mean?..."

"I mean that they can be re grown, along with the rest of her. We'll be able to jump a lot more often, once that's been done."

"That will just make things worse, if we can't eliminate those metal flecks." She shook her head tiredly, then looked up from her console. "You're right, of course. That's an important point to consider. I thought you were asleep."

"I was, almost. I was also studying Skryben's memories, what there are of them. She has a complete file of images relating to her childhood. Snapshots, you might call them. They show just how she grew. I wonder..." He fell silent, his eyes focused somewhere beyond her.

"What do you wonder?" She regarded him fondly, as though he was a pupil who had done something to please her.

"Nothing, really..." He shrugged one shoulder, as though uncomfortable under her gaze. "Yes, it is too something. I've been wondering why our Infinite Translocation drive is set up the way it is."

"Why... It's the way it has to be. The way it's always been, since the First Ships. Just what's wrong with the way it's set up, anyway?"

"Think about it, for a minute. There are all kinds of things wrong with it. It's wasteful, for one thing. Every time we make a jump, all of that energy is sprayed out in all directions, and lost. That's what's caused all of our troubles, this trip. Most of them, anyway."

"Caused them in what way?" She didn't really have to ask the question, he thought. She was just using the words to prod his thinking, making him put his own thoughts into order, so that he could take them out and look at them.

"Well, the first encounter with the Vortigen wouldn't have happened if they hadn't caught the flare of our splash after a jump."

"That's true, of course. Go on, what else?"

"Next, we couldn't jump out of trouble because we had to wait until we built back the energy we'd lost."

"Of course we couldn't. After all, it takes energy to jump."

"Does it? Some energy, sure. But, does it really take all that much energy? If that's true, then where does the energy come from that makes up the splash, if it's already been used up by jumping? Sure, the jump takes some energy, but we know that most of that energy reappears at the end of each jump. That's what caused the rest of our troubles. The energy ripples out from where we land, giving Skryben, and everything in her, a jolt. That's what causes jump shock. Now that her flesh is full of metal flecks, they pick up a little more of that energy. Each jolt causes more damage. What would happen if that energy could be picked up, instead, and fed back into her capacitors?"

"Well, sure, I see what you mean. We could jump again a lot sooner, but how could that be done? I'm no engineer, but it sounds like you're trying to get something for nothing."

"It's not something for nothing. The energy is already there. I don't know how to do it, either, but I know somebody who might be able to tell us some of the answers."

Rand got up and came around behind the desk, reaching over her shoulder to press buttons on the keyboard. A view of the bridge appeared on the screen. He glanced at it, shaking his head, then pressed another button.

"Yeah, what's up?" First Officer Tshegh's face appeared on the screen. Behind him, they could see his bed, rumpled. He must have just gotten out of it to answer their call.

"We've got a problem that's really in your orbit," Rand told him. "Are you awake?"

"No, but I will be, if you give me a minute to pull my pants on." He yawned, turning away from the screen for a minute. "All right, what's the problem?"

"Most of our troubles are caused by the energy that's released all through Skryben when we return to normal space at the end of a jump," Rand explained. "All of the flecks of metal in Skryben's flesh are picking up tiny jolts of that energy. If those flecks of metal can do that, without us even wanting them to, why can't we do it on purpose? I would think that it should be possible to recover at least a part of that energy, and feed it back into the system. We'd be able to jump a lot sooner, and we might not feel the effects of the jumps nearly as much. What do you think? Is it possible to set up a built in antenna system within Skryben's flesh to channel that energy back to her capacitors?"

"No way." Tshegh shook his head, punching a few numbers into his console. "The best you could do with that kind of antenna system wouldn't pick up one tenth of one percent of the energy, and it wouldn't shield us from the effects. No, what you would need for that is a tuned field, like the energy shields that protect us from enemy beams. Hey, just a minute..."

They waited while he called up figures from Skryben's memory banks, and punched his own equations into his console. They could see the equations, marching across the face of their own screen. Berniss watched them, enjoying the play of figures without understanding what they stood for. Rand watched, too, but he kept trying to understand what Tshegh was doing. He managed to follow the first few transformations, but that was all. A few more steps, and he was completely lost.

"Yeah, I think that it can be done," Tshegh finally told them, clearing his screen. "Give me a couple of days to figure out just what's needed. It may not be perfect, but it'll certainly help. Now that you've suggested it, I only wonder why nobody's tried it already."

"The system that we use was handed down from the First Ship," Rand answered. "Who'd dare to even guess that it could be improved?"

"Well, maybe." Even Tshegh looked uncomfortable at this heretical thought. "I'll give it a try, anyway. Don't tell anyone, though. I'd rather not be laughed at if it doesn't work. There are some people who're pretty set in their ways, aboard Skryben. They'd be awfully upset if they so much as guessed that we were trying to change how the drive works."

"Just tell us what needs done to start setting it up," Berniss told him. "We're beginning the process of Skryben's reconstruction, and we don't want to have to do any of it over."

"I can do that, I guess. Yeah, sure." He called up a sectional plan of Skryben, tracing a set of lines on it. "Here, run a set of conduits like this, fanning out from her center. Subdivide them in multiples of 3.275 millimeters. No, scratch that. Make a tree structure out of it, with random lengths between nodes. Center the random factor on multiples of 3.275 millimeters, though. That'll cover any variation in wavelength from different length jumps. Use any of the organic superconductors, just like her regular nerves, only heavier. That'll act both as an antenna, and as a projector for the new screen. I'll see if I can design a screen generator that'll pick up most of the loose energy. I'll give you a call when I've got something for you."

He switched off his screen abruptly, leaving Rand and Berniss looking at each other.

"Well!" Rand gave a snort of laughter. "That really set him off."

"Do you think that he can do it?" Berniss looked at him strangely.

"I'd bet on it, once he gets his teeth into the problem. He may not have the greatest imagination, but he knows how to design machines. Anything to do with energy fields or weapons." He glanced down at her, seeing her expression. "Hey, what's the matter? Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You really don't know what you've done, do you?"

"Sure, I do. I've fixed it so that we can get back home, I hope. Even with only a part of one capacitor working, we should be able to jump farther, and faster, than we could when we started out. Let's see, if we can make one jump every three seconds, even a short one... Yeah, about double our original speed. It wasn't that much of a change, after all."

"No, just a small change," she agreed, solemnly, looking down to punch instructions into her console. "A change that should make it possible to defeat the Vortigen. Just think what ships with your new drive could do in a battle!"

"Yeah, now that you mention it. Jump in, landing in the middle of a Vortigen formation. Before they even know you're there, hit them with everything we've got, and jump out again. And, with no splash of energy to tell them you've even been there. Hey, I like that idea!"

"No jump shock, either, to slow you down. You could jump, shoot, and jump again within seconds." She stood up, facing him, and gave him a hug. "This demands a celebration!"

"I think so too!" He returned her hug, but she pushed him away.

"Not that kind of celebration," she chided, but she was smiling. "I was thinking more of something to eat and drink."

"Well, if that's the best you have to offer, I guess that it'll have to do." He offered her his arm. "To the mess hall?"

"To the mess hall. Let's see, it's a little past mid shift. It won't be crowded, right now."

A part of his mind was still tied to Skryben, even as he laughed and joked with Berniss. He could feel the itching, as Artificer medics guided the healing and re growth of her body. It would be no great chore to include the elements of the collector antenna in Skryben's new flesh. When that was done, and Tshegh's collector field was working, she wouldn't have to worry any more about damage from long jumps. Long jumps or short ones, it would all be the same to her!