The End of Lessons, Part 1

 Month 14 Day 3

0759 Hours

Smythe

Smythe entered engineering and started for his office. While on his way there, he realized Wilson was approaching him, a determined look on her face. “You’re relieved, Wilson,” he told her. “Anything to report?” But he kept walking, because anything Wilson was likely to report would already be in her written report about how her shift had operated. If only all his supervisors were so succinct and yet so thorough when reporting the goings-on.

“Yes, sir,” she answered, falling in beside him. “May we talk?”

He stopped walking, wondering what was so important that it needed to be reported in person. Maybe this is about— “Where’s Colleen?” he asked, because he didn’t see her with a quick glance around the room.

Wilson pointed to the tool lockers across the room, where a piece of purple uniform could be seen as the woman in question did... something. She not only seemed busy but engrossed in whatever she was doing. “Making sure all the tools are clean and in their proper place. I told her to find some busy work to do, because I needed to talk to you. And then you will probably need to talk to her.”

It does sound serious. Yet, how serious can it possibly be? Wilson’s been giving her glowing remarks on her knowledge and slightly less glowing remarks on her skill level, which will improve with practice. So what’s happened to upset the cart? He sighed, not wanting to hear anything bad at the beginning of his day. And particularly not wanting to hear anything bad about that particular lieutenant. “Come into my office,” he invited sourly. They stepped inside, and Smitty lowered himself into his desk chair, suddenly feeling very tired. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know that anything’s wrong,” Wilson stated. “Except that I can’t teach Mac, uh, MacDowell any more. I’m done with her.”

“What’s she done?”

“Done?” Wilson looked confused by the question. “She’s mastered all the manuals. All she needs is some more hands-on experience, and I suspect she’ll be as good as me. Or maybe better.”

Now Smitty furrowed his brow in confusion. Why can’t she just give me the bad news and be done with it? “So, are you saying she didn’t make any massive mistake this past shift that might have blown up the entire ship?”

Wilson’s eyes grew round, and then she grinned. “Not hardly! I tell you, she’s a natural. She easily catches every blip or glitch as quickly as I do. All she needs to be a first-rate top-of-the-line engineer is somebody to teach her which parts of the manuals can be tinkered with a bit, and which ones can’t. On this ship, in other words, she needs to be taught by you.”

He felt his face drain, and he couldn’t speak, although his mouth formed the words, “Oh, no.”

Wilson looked confused again. “For example, this past shift, we tinkered with the variable gravity in the gym, just as an experiment, and she had that field tossing basketballs at the hoops. Even got one in, once, to everybody’s surprise. I had to have her explain to me how to do that.”

He remembered how rapt Colleen had been when they were adding variable gravity to her bed. “She’s probably been playing with the variable gravity on her bed,” Smitty muttered to himself, and wondered how he couldn’t have anticipated that.

“If she’s got variable gravity on her bed, it’s a sure bet she’s been tinkering with it,” Wilson agreed. “At least, that explains her skill with one.”

This is terrible. I can’t spend any amount of time with the girl. I can’t trust myself to be within arm’s reach of her! To be around her an entire shift, day after day, is unthinkable! Yet he didn’t seem to have any other options. He cleared his throat, consulted the calendar on his desk. “You’ve just finished your 2 days with her, haven’t you?”

“Yes, sir. I keep expecting her to start telling me how things work. Instead of listening.”

He swallowed. “Could you continue to meet with her again for 2 days next week? That would give me time to figure out what to do with her.”

Wilson blinked. “Well, yes, I suppose I could. If you need the time. I could give her assignments and then just keep an eye on her. But I think she’ll pass with flying colors.”

From the sounds of it, she will. Can I really dump her back into communications and ignore her potential? Normally, it wouldn’t be fair to her to do that, and I wouldn’t think of it. But if I try to give her the training she needs, and things get out of control... “No doubt,” he agreed. “From everything that you’ve told me. But I do need some time. To think.”

“Very well,” Wilson stated. “Oh, but I’m not in any hurry to return to C shift. I’ve got those people trained. The A shift people are still... somewhat sloppy. As for MacDowell, what do you want me to tell her?”

Good question. What do we tell her? I thought I’d have weeks, maybe even months before I was faced with this. I just have to steel myself and get through it. Maybe she isn’t that interested in joining engineering, after all. He coughed, wondering what he would do if she was interested in a transfer. “I’ll tell her. Send her in as you leave, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

Unexpected Visit & Checking Out the Gossip

 

Unexpected Visit

Month 12 Day 24

2355 Hours

Bugalu

“Lights.”

Bugalu sat up and blinked teary eyes as his bedroom lights came on and woke him. He stared in incomprehension as Mac reached deep into the depths of his closet. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m late for work,” she answered.

“You should go home and—” he stopped as she pulled a purple communications uniform from somewhere, followed by her boots. “What the—”

“Della had a date. I dropped these off earlier, but I thought I’d be here to get them before you went to bed. Sorry for waking you.”

“That’s—” He stared in surprise and then remembered to look away as she stripped down to her panties and then started putting her uniform on. He almost looked back at her when she started cussing in her home tongue. “What’s wrong?”

“I forgot a bra.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t have one. That would fit you.”

“No, of course not. And I don’t have time to go home for one.”

He looked around in alarm, saw her twisting her hair into a bun and somehow fastening it into place with a pair of ornamental chop sticks he kept in his top drawer. “You can’t report to work without a bra! You’ll be written up!”

“I’m going to be written up anyway for being late,” she stated, and turned away from the mirror, started for the door.

“Hey, wait!” He jumped out of bed and grabbed her arm to turn her around just as she was walking through the doorway.

“What?”

“You’ve got to get that tunic fastened better than that,” he told her and deftly unfastened it.

“Hey!”

“Breathe in and hold ‘em up high,” he instructed, then started the fastening at the bottom and worked his way up to the neckline. He frowned in disappointment. “You’re a lot bigger than she is. The uniform alone won’t hold them up as well. But that’s the best we can do right now. You’ll probably be written up twice.” He considered the bun, which already had curly strands trying to escape. “Maybe 3 times.”

“Can’t help it. Gotta go.”

 

 

Checking Out the Gossip

Month 13 Day 1

0832 Hours

Smythe

Smitty realized he’d gotten absolutely nowhere with reassigning Addams to another shift while Colleen was working with Wilson on A shift 2 days a week. He abhorred gossip, and usually gave a royal chewing out to anyone he heard spouting it. But was it gossip if they actually saw something happen?

On his way from the mess hall to engineering this morning, Smitty had overheard a clearing technician say, “I saw it with my own eyes. Mac came tearing out of Bugalu’s bedroom only half-dressed, and he followed, mostly undressed, and stopped her. Ripped her tunic wide open and then refastened it tightly, his hands all over her. It still didn’t fit right, but I’m telling you, those 2 are not ‘just friends’.”

Smitty had been so surprised, he merely walked past the 2 technicians and came straight to his office. Where he’d not gotten anything done.

When did it happen? How did it happen? Even more important, what happened? Well, it’s plain what the cleaning technician thought had happened. But Colleen only wears her uniform when she’s on duty; otherwise, she wears civvies. She would have had to be in uniform when she got to Bugalu’s quarters, and that didn’t seem likely. So... Unless...

Unless she’d had a uniform in his quarters? Had she moved in with him at some point? It’s frowned on, officially, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.

And the uniform—a brand new uniform—hadn’t fit right? Could she be showing already? If she is pregnant, that is. That was, after all, hearsay.

Not that he’d done anything about that piece of gossip, either.

I’m not getting anything done. He got up with his notepad and left his office to consider the duty rosters posted on the screen outside his office. This placed him squarely in the middle of the mild hum of engineering, a place he found comfort in, a place where he could think.

“Looking for someone in particular?” asked a female voice.

He turned to find Harris working at a post nearby. “Trying to find a place to put an engineer temporarily to get him off A shift while Co— your roommate is getting cross-trained.”

“Well, that’s considerate,” Harris stated brightly. “Mac will be thrilled not to have to put up with Adams while she’s training.”

“I didn’t say it was Adams.”

“No, but it makes sense. Problem is, wherever you put him, he’s likely to be a problem, without a strong person in charge to keep him in place.”

“You don’t think Wilson could keep him in place?”

“Well, yeah, she could, after she made him aware exactly who was in charge. But how long would that take, and would she manage to get any training done while she was doing it?”

“So I need to get him off A shift completely.” It’s what I intended to do.

“Well, at least for 2 days a week,” she answered, finished what she was doing and moved to another post to conduct diagnostics.

The bridge! I’ll move Adams to the bridge to handle communications for the 2 days a week that Colleen is down here getting cross-trained! Having found an answer to his problem, he almost returned to his office to make those arrangements. Instead, he followed Harris to her new post. “How do you feel about your roommate getting cross-trained in engineering?”

“That’s a loaded question, isn’t it? Do you think I’m going to tell you she won’t fit in? Well, I’m not going to. I think she will throw herself into it whole-heartedly. She’ll want to know every nut and bolt in this ship. Because that’s the way she is.”

“So you still get along with her, even after more than a year of being roommates?”

“Sure. Now that I’ve slowed down my dating, she doesn’t mind letting me have the place for a date for the entire evening. I used to get the feeling she disapproved. Not anymore. She just takes her uniform to the gym, I think, and puts it in a locker until she needs to get dressed for her shift.”

“In a gym locker? Are you sure?”

“Well, no. But where else would she put it?”

Maybe in Bugalu’s closet? But that’s pure conjecture. “You’re right. Where else would she put it, if not in a locker in the gym?” He moved on, back to his office, to assign Adams to communications on the bridge for 2 A shifts a week for the foreseeable future. The lad could use some experience there.

Another Talk

Month 12 Day 24

2251 Hours

Smythe

I shouldn’t have come, Smitty told himself as he made his way up a jeffries tube. There’s no sense in my coming; I’m just going to make a fool of myself. Again. But he had come, after putting it off for most of the evening. He had reached a point where, he told himself, he had to make sure it was her who had sent the message, and not... someone else.

It was the same message, so far as he could tell, as he’d gotten the first time. So who else could have sent it? And why would they? How could anybody else know about... that message?

He saw red curls in the horizontal tube, and sighed, either in relief or frustration, he wasn’t sure which. “Colleen,” he whispered.

She was laying on her back this time, and craned her head around to see him. “Hello, Smit. I was just about to decide you weren’t in your quarters this evening, and go get ready for my shift.”

“Why did you want to see me?”

“I wanted to say thank you. For making arrangements for me to work with Ivy for my training. Even though it does mean we couldn’t work on our project tonight.”

She’s not the only one disappointed that we couldn’t work on the transporter machine tonight. We all are. “It wouldn’t be fair to Wilson—”

“Oh, I know,” she interrupted. “It wouldn’t be fair to Ivy to continue on a project she’s been part of, even for just 1 night. I understand why we couldn’t work on it tonight. But that doesn’t mean I missed it any less.”

“You missed it?” he repeated in mild surprise. Most people look forward to an occasional day off, even from an extra project that they wanted to work on. It’s the equivalent of working an extra half shift a week, and that can get tiring. “What exactly did you miss about it?”

“Oh!” She grinned and turned her head back to looking at the top of her tube, but kept talking. “Everything! I missed working with my hands, with my brain. My Yukoskian language skills, in case we incorrectly translated some phrase or other. I missed being part of a team, the laughter, the camaraderie.” She glanced briefly at him. “I even missed you, Smit.”

“Me!”

“Even you,” she repeated. “The thing is, I don’t think you’re a bad guy, even though I didn’t make a great impression when I first got here. Fact is, if we weren’t superior and subordinate, I think we could be friends.” More softly, she added, “Or something.”

What is she saying? Or trying to say? No, best not to travel down that path. Return to a safer subject and then get away from here. “You don’t see our Monday night get-togethers as another half-shift of work?”

“Work!” She gurgled a bit with laughter. “No, not a bit. I just wish my real work was half as much fun as Monday nights!”

“So, you don’t enjoy your job as a communications officer?”

“Oh, dear, did I say that? That’s not what I meant to say. No, my job in communications is fine, now that I don’t have to put up with Adams and Evans. Thank you for making that happen, too. But I know communications too well, if that’s possible. There’s no challenge left to it.”

So she likes a challenge. Maybe she’ll fit in engineering as well as Wilson does. “I can only take responsibility for Adams. It was the captain who moved Evans. Once she found out and could prove what was happening. Perhaps you should have piped those conversations to us superiors, and not just your peers. Let us hear for ourselves what you were having to go through.”

“No, I thought it was too dangerous. I wasn’t sure how my superiors might react to being woke up in the middle of the night. For all I knew, all the blame might have landed on me. Again. And having made that decision... well, I can be stubborn.”

“So you chose to torture your peers.”

“Just for half an hour at a time, maybe less. I kept telling myself that perhaps their peers could put some pressure on them to behave themselves.” She heaved a sigh. “Not that it seemed to work.”

“So, have you?” he changed the subject, and then realized that he had. “Incorrectly translated any phrases?”

“There’s been a few that I’ve tinkered with, finding a word that better fit the actual definition or intention of what was in the original manual. But not anything that would have sent us off in the wrong direction.”

“Excuse me” came a soft interruption.

Smitty looked down past his body, to find Wilson standing in the jeffries tube below him. “What?” he asked. How much has she heard? Have we said anything that was... compromising?

“Sir, the #17 shield relay has become inconsistent. I was going to replace it.”

He reached down as far as he could, his face close enough to Colleen’s hair that he could smell lilacs. “I’ll do it. Hand me the new relay and the tools.”

“Will a spanner be enough?” she asked. “I brought a magna-driver, too, just in case.”

“Good. Give it all to me, and then you can get back to engineering.”

Wilson had taken another step up the tube, and must have caught sight of Colleen’s red curls. “Mac? Is that you? Aren’t you working tonight?”

“Yes,” came the inevitable answer. “Why?”

“Girl, you’ve got about 5 minutes to get to the bridge.”

The redhead somehow rolled over onto her stomach and studied the alarm button attached to one sleeve. “What? Oh, no, I set the timer wrong! And I’m still in my civvies!” She climbed to her knees. “Any chance I can get out past you, Smit?”

It was a logical question; the tube she was in didn’t have any other connection for some distance. “Yes, come ahead. Wilson, get out of her way.” He took a couple steps up, trying to clear the path for her as much as he could. He could no longer see Wilson, as red curls came out and rested against his shoulder. A small hand gripped his other shoulder, then her body shaped itself against his. Not in the position he’d anticipated and longed for ever since arriving at this junction, but close enough to send his temperature soaring. It was all he could do not to drop the relay and tools as she hesitated in that position.

“Later, Smit,” she breathed, and then she was gone, moving down the jeffries tube faster than he thought was possible.

Smitty took a few deep breaths while he willed his body to calm down. Finally, he was able to replace the #17 shield relay. He took the old relay and tools back to engineering, where he ran into a familiar face. One he was not exactly pleased to see, following the conversation he’d had only a few moments before. “Adams! Good. I have an assignment for you. This is a #17 shield relay. Rebuild it. I want it on my desk by morning.”

Omen

 Month 12 Day 17

1944 Hours

Abdulla

Abdulla sighed in the silence. “Well, that’s disappointing,” she said as they all stared at the steaming pile of goo inside George’s delivery cage. “Granted, it was goo to begin with, but it was a gelatinous cube of the stuff, not the steaming, oozing stuff we’ve got now.”

“I’ll get the beaker it was originally in, and find something to clean it up with,” Ivy volunteered, turning back to the table near Joe, where the testing samples were lined up.

“Why is it steaming?” Smythe wondered. “What could have happened to raise the temperature while it was... transporting?”

“Wait, wait, let me think,” Mac requested, and a moment later, she got up and raced out of the room.

“Is she giving up?” Ivy asked, surprised by the other woman’s disappearance. “That doesn’t sound like Mac.

“I think she’s gone to double-check something,” was Abdulla’s guess. “Something Kolla said in a letter, possibly. As much as those 2 have in common, you’d think they’d find things to talk about other than transportation units and how to build them.”

“I’m not sure I follow you,” Smythe stated.

“Every time I ask Mac what Kolla said in her last letter, all she ever reports is more details about the inner workings of these machines. It’s how Mac stays at least a step ahead of the rest of us. I just wonder if they ever talk to each other about something more personal. Anything more personal. Or are those letters only about work?”

“They are 2 different people, Abdulla. They didn’t even know each other existed a few months ago. And frankly, other than an interest in engineering, I don’t see that their lives are that much alike.”

“Well, we may never know,” Abdulla returned. “If all they ever talk about in their letters is engineering, their lives could be virtual twins of each other, but they’d never realize it.”

Ivy scraped as much of the goo off the floor as she could and placed it in the beaker, then set it down next to another beaker, whose contents were still in a gelatinous cube. “That’s as much as I can get. There’s probably still a thin film of the stuff on the floor.”

“Weigh the sample we transported. See if we’re missing a large chunk or only a thin film on the floor,” Smythe suggested.

“And there was a vapor,” Abdulla reminded him. “We lost some of it to that.”

“Or it might have been water vapor from the air that came over with it? Wait, does it transmit some air with it? Or just the thing we send through?” Ivy asked.

Smythe considered the question. “We left the parameters wide to be sure we included the entire cube, so there should have been some air included.”

As they conducted observations of the sample they had sent through the machine, making notes in an electronic notepad, Mac raced back in and slipped a memory chip into the viewer on the Joe end of the table. “One of these letters mentioned something about elevated temperature when something is sent through the machine. What kind of adjustments need to be made if it happens.” She slid another chip down the length of the table toward the other viewer. “Here, you can practice your Yukoskian, Abdulla, since I haven’t bothered to translate these letters. I’m not sure which letter it’s in, so I’m just going to have to skim looking for ‘temperature’.”

That left Smythe and Ivy to finish their observations on the results of their first test.

Abdulla tried skimming through the letters, and found plenty of odd bits and pieces of personal information inserted at odd intervals, sort as if writing the letter was a long endeavor, and whenever Kolla came back to writing it, she would start with the news of the day. Her mother’s birthday. The beautiful korshtaka—a type of flower, Abdulla surmised—that they saw on a walk through the park. A romantic dinner with S’thyme, where she told him— “Wait. What? Mac, is this right? Am I reading this right? Kolla is pregnant?”

Mac never even looked up from her view screen. “What? Oh, that letter’s about a month old. So far, she hasn’t succumbed to the never-ending ‘I’m so pregnant’ mantra, but she does mention it from time to time. Trouble is, I can’t remember if what we’re looking for is before or after that revelation.”

“Maybe their lives aren’t so much alike after all,” Abdulla muttered, and began skimming once again.

“Got it,” Mac announced a few minutes later, and then her face fell. “Oh, there’s 3 different things that could be off, and they all have to be dealt with and tested separately. If we try to correct all 3 things at once, we might only confuse the matter. I can’t tell if she means ‘matter’ as in the test object, or ‘matter’ as in our understanding of what’s going on.”

“Whichever way she meant it, it means we make one adjustment at a time,” Smythe stated.

Mac frowned in frustration. “But we won’t even know if we’ve done any good by the time we finish our tests. I mean, if we make the adjustments one by one, doing a test after each adjustment, we could still come up with a steaming pile of goo for each of our remaining 2 tests for tonight.”

Ivy gave the redhead a lop-sided grin. “Sounds like engineering to me.”

“Well, it is a disappointment,” Smythe stated. “Or it will be, if we continue to get steaming piles of goo and then have to give up for the evening. But we’ll never know until we’ve tried.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky, adjust the first thing, and have it work perfectly,” Abdulla suggested.

“That’s not the way it usually goes, with a new piece of technology,” Smythe reminded her. “Of course, we don’t usually have an already-written technical manual for a new piece of technology, either.”

“Okay, what piece do we start with, and where is it located?” Ivy asked, eager to get started.

Making Arrangements

 Month 12 Day 15

0728 Hours

Jane Burke

 Jane was half done with her breakfast when Smitty joined her and MacGregor. “You’re running late,” Duck commented.

“Overslept a bit,” Smitty stated as he sat down and cut his omelet into bite-sized pieces. Despite being late and in a hurry, his movements with his dominant hand were slow and deliberate.

“What did you do to your hand?” Drake wanted to know. Jane took a more serious look and saw that it was a bit off-color.

“Tried to turn off my alarm,” Smitty muttered between bites.

“Your alarm fought back?” Jane asked with a smile on her lips.

Smitty’s face turned ruddy. “I wasn’t actually in bed.”

Such an innocent statement, which could mean so much. Did he drink himself into a stupor and pass out on the floor? Not a frequent occurrence for him, to my knowledge, but it’s happened once or twice. I assume it’s preceded by some kind of trigger, but what could have triggered it yesterday? Would I even know what his trigger is?

“What did you hit, if the alarm wasn’t handy?” Duck asked.

“A wall,” Smitty answered, and swallowed a sip of his coffee. “A bulkhead. It doesn’t matter; I’m fine.”

“You should come to sick bay and get it checked out.”

“It’s fine,” Smitty insisted. “It’s a little sore, that’s all. In a couple days, it’ll be back to normal.”

“Make up your mind,” Duck persisted. “Is it fine now, or do you assume it will be fine in a couple days?”

Smitty gave the doctor a dark glare. “It’s doing fine. It’s not worth mentioning. I don’t need any medical attention!”

“Perhaps not,” Jane inserted herself before tempers got too far out of control. “People have been recuperating from bruises on their own for millennia. Still, I don’t like having my chief engineer at anything less than top condition. So if it still bothers you in two days, I want you to report to sick bay and make sure it is just a simple bruise.”

“Yes, sir,” Smitty mumbled.

I’ll have to check on him in a couple days, see how he’s doing, but he’s acknowledged it as an order, so he’ll follow through. Now, what else was I meaning to talk to him about? Oh, yeah, a certain redhead. “Smitty, I’ve been wondering how Lt MacDowell is coming with her cross-training.”

Smitty stopped eating and stared down at his plate for a moment. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that, captain. She’s been studying on her own, and it seems we can’t keep up with what she’s learned, or we can’t keep tabs on what she’s learned.”

“So, she’s got a brain,” Duck commented.

“Of course she does!” Smitty shot back.

What a change in opinion from her first month aboard. “That must be a frustrating situation for you, Smitty. I know you like to be aware of your peoples’ abilities. Any ideas what to do about it?”

He nodded. “It seems obvious I need to assign somebody specifically to keep an eye on her studies. And make sure they can do it while they’re both on duty, rather than make them do it when at least one of them is off duty.”

“I get the feeling you’re about to mess up the communications schedule,” Jane guessed.

He gave a slight shake of his head. “Not at all. I’ve got Ioboni as shift supervisor on A shift. Now, I’ve got no reason to think he wouldn’t get along with Co—MacDowell, but I know Colleen and Wilson get along, so I thought I’d temporarily switch Ioboni and Wilson. That gives the added benefit of showing the A shift that a woman is every bit as capable as a man.”

“But you still want the 2 women to work together. I’m not sure how that would work with one in engineering and the other on the bridge.”

“Just 2 shifts a week,” Smitty stated. “I can pull some engineering ensigns and techs up to the bridge to cover for Colleen while she’s working with Wilson in engineering.”

“And how long do you think this arrangement might last?”

Now Smitty slowed his chewing of his latest bite of omelet, seemed reluctant to swallow it. “I’m not sure. If I’ve read the signs right, she might want to transfer to engineering.”

If he’s reading the signs right. If he’d said that about a man, I’d be ready to start the paperwork. But women confuse him. He said the same thing about Abdulla, and she has steadfastly refused to transfer. Well, we’ll just have to wait and see, then. “Have you talked it over with the people involved? Ioboni, Wilson, MacDowell?”

Smitty sat up straighter in his chair, as if he found the question almost an affront. “I can’t imagine any of them objecting!”

No, of course not. He is their superior officer, and he can assign them wherever he wants them. To be fair, Smitty seldom has a subordinate feel enough rancor about a transfer to cause problems. “It’s usually appreciated if people get a heads up about a new assignment, even if that assignment is only temporary.”

“Oh, well, yes. I’ll communicate with them about it today, and have the changes take effect... ah, in a few days.”

“Good, that should allow them time to make any necessary changes to their personal schedules.”

Drake drank the rest of his coffee. “So you’re considering asking Mac, er, MacDowell, to join engineering, are you?”

Smitty’s face reddened a bit. He glanced at the clock and considered the rest of his breakfast. “She seems to have expressed an interest in it.”

“Congratulations,” Duck said dryly, gathering his items onto his tray for disposal. “It only took you a year to figure out that’s where she belongs!” He turned from the bewildered engineer to Jane. “Although I do wonder what she’ll do with herself when she’s mastered all the engineering technical manuals.”

“Perhaps she’ll start borrowing your medical books,” Jane suggested.

Duck gave a gentle shake of his head. “I doubt it. I haven’t seen any signs of interest in medicine in her. Not a speck.”

Altered Reality

 

Month 12 Day 14

2212 Hours

Smythe

 Smitty walked onto the bridge slightly before shift change, cleared his throat and walked over to the communications station. “Colleen.”

“Yes?” She turned her chair to face him, and he stared at her huge belly.

“What happened?” he heard himself ask, even though the answer was obvious.

She rubbed her roundness. “MacG says it’s twins. One from each of them, I suppose.”

“It doesn’t work like that!” he exclaimed.

Green eyes looked up at him intently. “Doesn’t it?”

“Even I know better than that,” he told her.

She stepped closer, until she was only inches from him. “Why don’t you show me how it does work?”

There was a sudden lump in his throat. “What do you mean?”

She leaned closer, pressing her delectable body against his in the moonlight. “You know what I mean,” she whispered, and raised her face to be kissed.

A gentle ping intruded.

“Oh, yeah.” His hands found her firm derriere. “I have a lot to show you.”

“Let’s get started,” she suggested just before their lips met. He gave in readily, pulling her close and preparing to enter her.

A gentle ping intruded.

“Don’t answer it.” She pulled him back. She was obviously ready for him, and—

“Blast!” He slapped the button on the alarm in aggravation, and then lay in the darkness again, breathing heavily, the dream still fresh in his mind. Another wet dream about her. What did I expect? That’s the only kind of dream I have anymore.

A gentle ping came from his living room.

I turned that off! No, wait, that wasn’t my alarm clock. What in space is it?

A gentle ping came from his living room.

He asked for, “Lights, one quarter.” As his bedroom lightened, he sat up, realized he had fallen asleep fully clothed. Probably right after supper, which he hadn’t even tasted. He stared forlornly at his clock. At least there’s no dance tonight for me to be missing. Hard to celebrate Valentine’s Day when you officially have to discourage fraternization.

A gentle ping came from his living room.

What is that? He went to the doorway to his living room, realized his computer screen was on. When did I turn that on? “Lights,” he requested, and blinked when they came on full force.

A gentle ping came from his computer.

That’s a message has arrived! I’m seldom here to hear it, and it isn’t supposed to ping but once. He sat down at his desk and acknowledged the message, then studied the screen in confusion. There’s no indication who sent it. There’s only 2 or 3 people aboard who know how to do that. But why would they?

A gentle ping came from his computer.

“Blast!” He opened the message in frustration, stared at it. There were no words, just a piece of the ship’s schematics with an ‘X’ shown blinking at a junction of 2 jeffries tubes. “What in space?” he muttered to himself. Is something going on there that I should know about? Why not send me some word about what’s wrong? Wilson knows better than to play games.

He punched for engineering. “Wilson!”

“Good evening, Mr Smythe. How can I help you?”

She doesn’t sound distressed. “Did you send me a message? Several minutes ago?”

“No, Mr Smythe. I don’t have anything to report. No reason to send a message.”

“I see. Thanks.” He broke the connection. Which jeffries tubes are these? It took him a few minutes, but before long, he left his quarters and headed for the junction he had identified.

It was a T-junction, where a horizontal tube met and stopped at a vertical tube. Smitty was climbing down the vertical tube, but as he approached the horizontal tube, he saw no one, nor anything indicating repairs were needed. “What in black space is going on?” he wondered.

He caught a glimpse of movement in the vertical tube, and as he continued down to see what it was, a soft voice said, “Hello.”

He knew that voice. Recognition made him race down the next few steps until he could see her face. And her cleavage, for she lay prone on the floor of the vertical tube, raised up on her elbows. “Colleen,” he breathed as lilacs tickled his nose.

“Evening, Smit,” she greeted him with a smile. “I wasn’t sure you’d get my message before I had to report for duty.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Hoping to talk to you.”

“Why here? There’s plenty of other places where we could... talk.”

She sighed. “That hasn’t worked out. Either I get distracted, or someone interrupts us.”

There’s not a lot of chance we’ll be distracted here, he thought.

“That’s what I was hoping,” she stated. Apparently, he had spoken out loud.

“Was there something specific you wanted to talk about?”

“Engineering.”

“What about it?”

“Well, I—” She stopped to raise a hand to the back of her neck. “Sorry. I didn’t realize how... painful it would be to talk for any length of time in this... configuration.”

No, craning one’s neck to speak to someone is never comfortable. He took another step down the tube. Their heads were nearly even now. He could see every faint freckle on her face, could almost taste her lips, they were so close. “Is this better?”

“Some,” she admitted.

“What did you want to say?”

“Umm.” She lowered her eyelids and licked her lips, caught the lower one momentarily between her teeth. “What would you suggest I study next?”

“Next! You’ve finished the manual on the engines?”

Now she seemed flustered, embarrassed. “Some time ago,” she admitted.

“Who tested you on it?”

“Well, nobody. I figured it wasn’t anything that I officially needed to know.”

“I like my people to be cross-trained.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion. “But how does one get trained? If I go back to the Academy, I might not be able to return to the Fireball.”

“The Academy! You don’t go to the Academy for cross-training. You do it here. Hands-on training.”

She raised her head in surprise, ducked as it hit the top of her tube. “Oww!”

This isn’t working. “Come out of there so we can talk properly,” he decided, and grabbed her upper arms to pull her forward.

Her face was next to his, her hands on his shoulders... and then her mouth was pressed against his and the temperature of the tube steadily rose as more and more points of contact between them were made. Eventually, their lips parted, and she had completely emerged from her cross-tunnel, was pressed against him as much as she could be. One of his legs was bent to use a higher stepping point than the other, and she was actually sitting on that bent leg. Both his legs were beginning to ache from the weight they were supporting.

“I think—” he began, but then his mouth found hers again, and there were no more thoughts, only emotions, and plenty of them.

This isn’t real, he realized. This is all a dream.

A strident buzz intruded.

See? There’s my alarm, my blasted alarm, trying to wake me up for another bleak day of— Oh, this feels so good, so right. Forget the alarm. I’ll just be late.

A strident buzz intruded.

He fumbled at her uniform, trying to get her out of it without losing his balance on the foot rests in the vertical tube. It was one of the new uniforms, with the new closing mechanisms, which he hadn’t entirely mastered on his own uni—

A strident buzz intruded.

Her mouth muttered against his. He could hear the words, but didn’t understand them. Small cool hands found their way under his shirt, and he didn’t care what she was saying.

A strident buzz intruded.

Smitty threw his hand out to slap the button on his alarm, but that hand met a lot of hard resistance and pain! “What in space,” he declared, but her mouth covered his again.

A strident buzz intruded.

That’s not my alarm, he realized, and wondered what it was. “What is that noise?” he managed to ask, and tried to push her away a bit, but was hampered by a painful hand. Plus, the tube’s size didn’t leave much room for her to go. “Colleen,” he whispered.

“Yes,” she whispered, and surged forward, kissed him again.

A strident buzz intruded.

Now he insisted on pushing her as far away as he could. “What is that noise?” he asked. “You do hear it, don’t you?”

A strident buzz—

Her face red, she pulled her hands out from under his shirt and touched a small button on one sleeve. “My personal alarm. I didn’t want to be—” Her eyes grew huge and her face went white. “—late for work!” She looked around, as if determining where they were, and how best to leave, then started lowering herself down the tube.

“Wait!” He grabbed her arm before she got completely out of reach. “Do you want to learn engineering?”

She stared up at him in incomprehension, then grinned blissfully. “Yes!”

“I’ll take care of it,” he promised, and let her go.

Long after she left, long after the sound of her boots faded into the distance, he stayed where he was, waiting for the fire of their encounter to cool. It had been fiery, had nearly consumed them in a mesmerizing tangle of heat and lust and—

And she wanted to learn engineering.

And he had promised that she could.

Obviously, he could make the arrangements. And just as obviously—after what had just happened—he could have nothing to do with teaching her.