Chapter 93

"It isn't so much that we can help her Jack. We want to study her and what makes her like she is. We haven't seen other on the spot transformations among earthlings, though I should add we weren't looking for anything of the type. We are very interested in her actions and reactions," Scotty said.

"Well, whatever. Just be polite to her in all cases. She may be a tiger or some such, but remember she is my tiger and if you pull her tail you'd better be able to deal with her without damaging her. I will take exception if she is harmed," I said.

Scotty signed off then, but I noticed he didn't seem his jovial self.

The Alien technology was wonderful - there was no doubting it, and their weapons were awe-inspiring. They weren't really a warlike race, they just had control of everything that was going on in the universe and they intended to keep control.

The new group of bandits, as Scotty called them, was different than others the Aliens had encountered. Scotty hadn't said so, but from the way he told me about them I knew it.

For one thing, the drone which was guarding the system they had entered hadn't immediately disposed of them. In fact the drone had only been able to achieve a stalemate with the bandits. Luckily for the Aliens and for the inhabitants of the system two StarCruisers had been able to come to the drone's aid.

Apparently the bandits had intended to keep pounding on the drone until they wore it down to defeat it. Scotty had been quick to point out if they had entered earth's system Jim, Bones, and he would have been able to take care of them unaided.

I wasn't convinced. I knew the three drones were much more beneficial than one, but from Scotty's report on the matter I knew it had taken the beleaguered drone and both the rescuing StarCruisers to destroy the bandit's attacking vessels. Knowing something, at least, about the power a drone could generate and extrapolating to what a StarCruiser could deliver told me the bandits could absorb a tremendous amount of punishment.

It wasn't really that they could absorb it though. It was the shielding technology. They didn't absorb the punishment - they deflected it. All of the weapons on both sides were in the form of lasers or phasers.

At any rate they were not bombs or projectiles like we on earth were familiar with. They were like the weapons of StarTrek. I had seen Scotty discharge one of his once to destroy an errant asteroid that was approaching him.

To me it looked like a strong purple tinted bolt of lightning. He'd explained it wasn't static electricity, but that it was a similar release of a different type of energy. We ignorant earthlings still hadn't made enough progress to be allowed to know much more about it.

To myself I admitted this attack, though thousands of parsecs from us, had me a little worried.

First, it was the only time I'd heard it mentioned there was an organized group anywhere that weren't completely under the Alien's control.

Second, the attackers had made a good showing in what was apparently their first attack. Even if we had three drones there was nothing to say these bandits couldn't learn from their mistakes and attack in greater force if they chose to attack us.

I don't know where it came from, but the image of a battleship's sixteen-inch guns flashed into my mind. This was patently ridiculous of course, but I couldn't shake it.

Shortly after this I began wondering just what kind of energy one of those sixteen inch projectiles could deliver if it could be accelerated to light speed.

"Scotty, when you destroyed the asteroid, why did you need to?" I asked him.

"It was approaching me and it would have impacted within five or six days," Scotty told me.

"Wouldn't your shields have deflected it? It was rather small wasn't it?" I asked.

"It was small, but it still weighed over one thousand pounds. The shields would have deflected it of course, but it was traveling at over forty thousand miles per hour. It would have been rather jarring to say the least and it would have probably caused some damage, shields or not.

The shields are designed mostly for defense against weapons and while they do provide protection from collision with objects, the asteroid was large enough and had enough velocity to be rather closer to their design limits than I would have been comfortable with," Scotty admitted.

"If the asteroid had weighed two thousand pounds or more and had been traveling near the speed of light would it have damaged you if it had struck you," I asked.

"Certainly. It would have probably traveled right through me and I'm sure it would have caused a considerable amount of damage - depending on which parts it traveled through.

"There is no need to worry about such a scenario though. There is no known technology which can accelerate an object to that speed in normal space," Scotty informed me.

Of course I knew that already. I also knew something Scotty was leaving out. Their vessels could travel faster than light and they did it by entering another dimension or something like that.

I did know when they came back into normal space-time they came back into it at very near light speed and they always used all available power to decelerate as quickly as possible.

I had questioned him about this before and what he was allowed to reveal to me hadn't been much, but I gathered even though they could use sensors from one dimension to another they did not want to be traveling at that kind of velocity in normal space-time because even a collision with a tiny object at that speed could be dangerous.

This all gave me something to think about and I made sure that my virus didn't communicate any of what I was thinking to Scotty. I needed to know more about their method of faster than light travel, but I knew I couldn't find out any more from the drones. I decided to try one more tack though.

"Scotty can you tell me anything else about faster than light travel?" I asked.

"I can tell you it requires moving to another dimension and two opposing fields, of a type I can't discuss, are created within the vessel. Then the vessel is basically ejected from normal space-time into the other dimension and while there the fields must be maintained and manipulated to control the travel. When deceleration is to occur the fields are simply collapsed and then partially reversed, then most power is channeled into normal powered deceleration.