Chapter 62

Saint knocked on the cabin hatch, TJ turned in his lift chair and waved him in and onto the other lift chair. The twitch had finally surfaced. Handing one of the medical update chips across,

"The dates on those papers ... when I correct them for time space... ?"

"Threep get this?"

"Actually, no; I managed it on my own."

"That's the trouble with 'bots, even the sapient one. They have no intrinsic curiosity; what is, is! You are a natural mutie?"

"I'm not sure. My family history goes four generations back to a century or so before the Mutie Wars presenting an unbroken line of near genius medicos. You've met my aunt? We are also very slow breeders and I think that is engineered but can't prove it. What's the connection with the time dates?"

"I established a mutual help society for muties and as..."

Dr Luke Saint was introduced to the theory and practice of mutie self help and at the end of the discourse was no wiser about his time space queries; another thought surfaced to distract him,

"That exercise to collect Mercedes was a bit extravagant, wasn't it?"

"In many ways" TJ explained "yes; however if someone had her under surveillance they might have involved themselves against a simple flivver taxi pick up. The overwhelming force with a quick in and out was intended to discourage watchers from intervening and setting up any sort of opposition. Besides the Sundowners have not had a chance to brush up their ground skills."

The matter of the scattered raids prior to spacing was not raised as Saint was not aware of them. But if he had been, TJ would have differentiated the two exercises on the basis of clearing a fixed and known site as opposed to raiding scattered small targets with an unpredictable time line.

...

Cedric and Orville were brassed off and their partners had to soothe ruffled feathers — a occupation the ladies had successful experience with.

Clare's decision to take advantage of Saint Luke's Medical Centre's presence on board involved their having to divert their time to manufacturing the antigrav pads and the wires. As it wasn't a one size fits all, they had to build up a stock of sizes to cover the usual variation in shapes and sizes and even more time consuming was the discovery by Morg that he had scope for a limited shift of focus(?) of breast position in his creations that required one off pad designs.

And the pair couldn't just enter the vectors derived by Threep and let the cad cam have its head; the actual contours of the suspended breasts varied and were influenced by the effect of the antigrav itself. Thus Cedric and Orville found themselves with the client's holo making fine adjustments to the cadcam to deliver Morg's desired result.

Cedric had not had the time to devise a 'puter programme to cope and he seriously doubted if it was worth doing even if he could.

Cedric was begrudging his time away from the bioputer; still secured to the after bulkhead of the starboard boat bay with power connected. Orville was away from his engine room where he could commune with the machinery — greasers all seem to be happier with metal than man; strange breed.

Cedric had begun playing(?) with the bioputer after departing Gorgipest having been brought in, as it were, by TJ. Cedric had involved Orville to ascertain and then supply the exactly correct power requirements. Orville had from the first day on "Sundowner" begun bringing the ship's power runs to industry standard so that all the add-ons installed in "Sundowner" would function. What Orville realised was that the prize ship had only the bioputer and a very primitive com set installed and the runs were unique; the air locks were electrically very rough.

With the correct power supply the bioputer seemed to come more alive but Cedric could only tease the most basic functions from it.

Threep and Art had electronically explored "Sundowner" within minutes of relocating the medical suite on board. Threep has no sense of curiosity whatsoever; Art however was the designed electronic trouble shooter and it had found an anomaly — there was an aberrant(?) power supply to an instrument in the starboard boat bay and it could not remotely explore it. Art became aware of Cedric's rather desultory interest (from a robo's POV) and organised its direct explorations, electronic and plug-in, when the humans were having down time.

Airlocks were minor inconveniences (robo's child's play) to Art as was the blocking of the indicator signals to the bridge console. Art connected to the bioputer and quickly diagnosed the power supply problem — and adjusted it. Art found it difficult to communicate at above the base level but did enter the information that it had a humanoid colleague(?) in the 3 PIO class and the response was electronically enthusiastic.

Art delved into the enthusiasm but could not get a satisfactory response; so it disconnected its plug-in and made its way back to the medical suite.

Being one of the almost original models, Threep did not have a mini-nuclear power pack — that technology had been deemed too dangerous to let go wandering about - and Art found him where it expected him to be, standing shut down on his power pack charger. Art woke him by unceremoniously grabbing his arse with a connecting probe in the external connection socket (designers were earthy people with a decidedly bent sense of humour) [sorry, couldn't resist it. GD]. Art disregarded Threep's electronic outrage — at being booted up without warning of course - and passed on the interest of the bioputer. Threep's logic circuits kicked in; later; he had to supervise the injured women's therapy, critically peruse the newest batch of medical updates, discuss same with the humans, assist Mercedes to transfer records to the suite's puters and then he would be on his own time — sometime in first. That suited Art as he had a few small maintenance tasks to finish on "Saint".

Sometime after six first, Art led Threep to the starboard boat bay and introduced(?) him to the bioputer.

There were problems.

The bioputer was of DNA / RNA chip manufacture — an experimental system which had failed to live up to expectations; this problem was that humans were too impatient. It required years for the system to gain maturity. The builders of "Sundowner" hadn't wanted a high level puter and had found the bioputer in storage where it had been discarded; checked it out and fitted it into the treasure ship which itself was meant to be a throwaway. And the power requirements weren't quite right until Art had his little fiddle.

The next problem was that Threep had no external access to his oversight 'puter. Threep was also of that early era using RNA chips. But his designer (the same organisation responsible for Décor) had a silicon chip 'puter to handle all input / output with the oversight RNA 'puter firewalled off to the kazoo — contact couldn't even be made via the power connections as there were no direct leads to the oversight 'puter; it was all filtered induction coil. The oversight bioputer controlled all the mechanical functions of Threep after assessment of the i/o from the contact 'puter. This made the 3PIO series dedicated from time of first booting of his oversight 'puter.

The last of the initial problems was that Art had to grab Threep's arse with that connection and use another contact into the bioputer using Art as the conduit. Art very quickly resolved his robotic frustration at the end of the first meet by wandering into Orville's domain and fabricating the appropriate double ended dildo, er sorry, connection. Orville had checked on the antics of the pair and Threep assured him that the bioputer would not be linked into "Sundowner's" systems without prior consultation.

Things settled into a routine as "Sundowner" spaced for Lace. Cedric worked on the bioputer during the working day of the ship whenever he had time from his duties and rest time but wasn't aware of the robos' interest. The robos had no need for down time per se although Threep did need charging from time to time and didn't think it necessary to mention their interest to the humans. Orville was only concerned with safety and did keep a watch over the robos (Orville was notorious for being in his cubby at any watch — Wendy had become resigned to this and took it as it came, metaphorically as well as literally.)

Cedric only became aware of the robos' interest as a result of the messenger capsule incident.

...

Because Lace was a trifle suspicious of any spacer entering their controlled space from the direction of Paracelsus, Clare had decided to overspace the planet in hyper and drop into n space on the Lorn — Lace direct track further out than the usual hyper point of descent and space back to Lace in n space. "Sundowner" was nearly at the planned descent point having decreased to velocity for translation through the barrier. The crew was at stations for entering harbour and Clare was in the command chair.

"Hyperfast object coming towards..." Cedric did not finish his report; he leapt out of his chair and activated the expanding defensive shield which automatically furled the sails. Then he continued as the expanding shield formed and began to expand,

" ... collision imminent. Sorry Boss ... actually I'm not, but you know what I mean. We don't have the way on us to evade and trying the normal..."

He was interrupted by an audible and palpable crunching lasting for less than a second as the generators got subjected to some stress maintaining the shield.

" ... defensive shield would have taken too long."

"Damage reports by stations" Clare ordered "Any priority damage? No. Good. Other Damage?"

Still silence.

"Status reports" Clare continued.

All stations report 'in the green' except Orville who laughingly recorded that Threep had been jarred and his connection orifice had ripped out — for some reason the pair had been in the starboard boat bay. Art was building Threep a new arse.

"Suits, leave that one till later. So what happened?" Clare demanded.

Cedric explained as he examined the inputs,

"That's strange" he muttered to himself and then turned towards Clare, speaking so as to inform the others,

"There is a large downwave from the hyper — cosmic barrier on the Lorn side of us which I was observing but not worried about as we were going to stop well short of it and the descend into n space. That thing must have been right up in the epsilon when it impacted the wave; it was deflected cosmicward, ricocheted off the boundary layer straight for us. I got the shield activated and it bounced the capsule into the boundary layer. The capsule seems to have got stopped by the layer as I'm picking it up directly overhead on my lidar. That's what's strange — that layer is supposed to be impenetrable but I've got a clear signal return from that capsule and I've got an outline of the tunnel it made going through."

"Boss, can I send a scout along that tunnel to investigate; that vessel might have been manned" TJ requested.

"Probably not crewed, they usually aren't" Morg mentioned.

Orville came up again,

"Threep's on the dedicated Bay — Engine Room line and he says Art says that our lidar is inside the refractory angle."