Unplanned Meeting

Month 15 Day 7

20:30 Hours

Smitty

Smitty's stomach growled as he entered the mess hall. Lunch had had no taste, so he hadn't eaten much. Later, he begged off dinner with the captain, 'to do research'. What he had actually done was sit in his office and write a letter to Stinky, trying to assure his friend that although these periodic changes to their ships were designed by 'desk engineers', they generally wouldn't make the ships less safe for those assigned to them. Stinky had no confidence in desk engineers, and was seriously obsessed with the integrity of the crystals used in the warp engines.

As soon as he sent the letter for transmission, he'd become aware of his empty stomach, and had come here for supper.

He looked around, saw a woman with vivid red hair. Coincidence. I had no reason to think she would be eating this late.

The place was nearly empty, he could have sat anywhere. Instead, he approached Colleen's table. "Would you mind if I join you?"

She didn't look up far enough to see his face, seemed intent on staring at her food, rather than eat it. But she did glance around at all the empty tables. She's going to tell me to go away.

She surprised him by kicking the chair opposite her so that it slid a foot away from her table. "Sit down."

He sat, saw her take a spoonful of soup and make a face. Soup and iced tea was all that was on her tray. Plus a packet of crackers. And a fluffy pile of empty packets that had formerly contained crackers. "You're eating late tonight," he observed.

"Yes," she returned and opened her last packet of crackers. " She glanced up briefly. "So are you."

He nodded. "I've been too upset most of the day to think about food."

She looked up again, a look of interest in her eyes. "You seemed preoccupied this afternoon. Problems with the port warp engine?"

He shook his head and sipped his coffee. "No, that was relatively simple. Should have taken you with me; it would have been good experience for you." And then he heard himself say, "Captain accused me of stalking you."

Her face showed surprise, then guarded wariness as she leaned back in her chair, the cracker resting loosely in her hand. "Have you been?"

Not what I wanted to talk about! Blast me for saying anything about it. Now we have to discuss it. He lifted some cole slaw to his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Finally, "I've thought about the accusation, and I can understand why someone might think it, as often as we've run into each other off shift. But there's only been 2 times I've deliberately looked for you after shift, and that was the 2 times I went to sick bay to make sure you got home okay."

She frowned and took a nip of her cracker. "2 times?"

"You wouldn't remember the 2nd time; you were falling asleep before Dr Davis sent Tall Bear in to collect you."

"You're right. I don't remember you being there."

"Well, I was. But Tall Bear seemed capable of getting you home."

She gave a slow nod. "That's why I asked him to do it." She took another nibble on her cracker while he buttered his roll. "So all the other times... Like the movie..."

"Pure accident. There are only so many types of entertainment on this ship."

"That's true," she agreed, and sighed, took another nibble from her cracker, stared at her bowl of soup.

"Is something wrong with your soup?" he asked.

Her face scrunched in distaste. "It's gone cold."

"You could ask them to reheat it," he suggested. "Or get something else."

She gave a shake of her head. "I don't have any appetite. I should stop wasting time and go re-read Kolla's letters. Again."

His chicken and rice was a little dry, no doubt because he was late having his supper. It still tasted good. "What are you looking for this time? In her letters?"

"Anything that might give me a clue as to how they measure things. Time, distance, anything."

"Oh." He ate one of his brussel sprouts, which had become a little soft. "How much do you know about their measurements?"

"Nothing. While we were there, we each had some memory of the other's terms for time and distance, but we just translated them into our own terms, without knowing if they were anywhere close to the same. I know their term for 'day', but not how long one of their days is."

"25 hours and 16 minutes," Smitty stated. "The astronomy guys always figure that stuff out when we approach a planet. Their year is about 384.27 days. Is that the kind of stuff you're looking for?"

Well, what I really want to know is how broad is a back hair of a wild tzuksha?"

He looked up from his food. "A wild what?"

She grimaced. "I think it's something like a wild boar. Or a predatory turkey? I'm not sure what it is, so when Kolla mentioned a measurement of 'half the breadth of a wild tzuksha's back hair', I took it to mean something really small. Like a human hair. But after reading the results of your last experiments, I'm wondering if I was wrong. Unfortunately, I won't get an answer from Kolla by tomorrow."

He looked at her in confusion. "What does a wild animal have to do with a transportation device?"

"Only that they use the breath of the back hairs as a form of measurement."

"Are you saying we may have built the machine with the wrong measurements?"

"Not really. The manual specified what each piece had to do, and that's what we built each piece to do. Our machines don't look much like theirs, but they should work."

"Now I'm completely flummoxed. Where does the wild animal come in at?"

"When Kolla heard we were about to start experiments, she said something about leaving some distance between the item being sent and the place it was to land. Otherwise, the 2 substances would merge where they touched, and their structural integrity could be compromised."

He stared at her in sudden comprehension. "I thought the contact had merely stained the Petri dishes."

"From the sounds of it, it's more than that."

"Then what we need to do is program the machines to re-materialize the test subject at a point above the Petri dish."

"Yes. How far above is what I'm trying to figure out." She ate the last of her cracker.

"Who cares?" he asked. "I mean, yes, we need to find the optimum distance, but we start with an inch and adjust from there." He beamed at her. "You've done it, Colleen. Now we've got something to try when we meet for more experiments tomorrow."

"Good. But it was Kolla who told me the answer. I got stuck with the details."

"Details are important," he told her. "But at the same time, you have to keep your eyes on the broader picture."

"I'll have to practice that," she stated, and looked around the table, made sure all her empty cracker packets were on her tray. "I'm going to go. Plenty of stuff for me to do."

"I wish you'd stay," he said as she rose to her feet.

She gave him a guarded look. "Mr Smythe, the gossips already have enough lies to say about me, without my giving them anything else to speculate about."

"But we were actually talking."

"Yes. About work," she pointed out. "Excuse me." She picked up her tray and left.

Smitty forced himself not to watch her leave. He could still smell her lavender perfume. A sad loneliness fell over the table. His food wasn't as tasty as before; it seemed slightly overcooked from being on the buffet line for so long.

With this revelation about the transportation machines, our experiments might go better tomorrow night. Possibly so well, we might decide to celebrate. Surely she won't begrudge me that, when we've all worked so hard on this project!