Starting from Scratch (14 page)

Chapter
8

On his way to see the scientists, Mike allowed his
mind to wonder where he knew it shouldn’t go. He thought of Bet’s
firm little butt, the swell of her mid-sized breasts, and her
lovely smile. Damn, he chastised himself, I haven’t thought of
intimacy with another woman since Sherry passed away. I wonder if
this has anything to do with being upgraded.

Bambi, is it possible that the upgrade process
enhances a man’s sexual desire?

Sir, it’s unlikely. Probably it’s the new youthful
body. You, for instance, have been without sex for many years and
your old body wasn’t attuned to it anymore. Now, you not only have
your youth back, but it is even better than it was when you were
young. So, as you experience the joy of youth, you have the pull of
sexual desire once more and it seems new and exciting.

Bambi, how do you know so much about human
sexuality?

The need to procreate is powerful in all races. So,
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about human sexuality. Also, I was
in your head; remember? I am aware of your memories with your wife.
While I can’t have sex, I can relate to the emotional enjoyment
humans have when sharing physical pleasure with another person.

And General, you are not the first person to ask
that question.

Without thinking before he pressed for more
information, he asked,
Who was it.

Sir, I respectfully refuse to answer, unless you
make it an official order. Otherwise, I feel I would be violating
the confidence of another crewmember.

Mike felt somewhat ashamed for asking
. OK! You’re
right of course. Thank you for being a person of
discretion.

And thank you, sir, for calling me a person.

You are a person, Bambi. Don’t ever let anyone tell
you otherwise.

Mike gave it some quick thought. Neither Wayne nor
Mary had any reason to ask about it. They had already joined the
ninety three million mile high club. He laughed at his own
joke.

Max asked, “What is it?”

“Oh nothing really. Just a silly thought that doesn’t
apply to anything important.”

Then he did the math. There were only two other
people who had been upgraded, beside himself. It could be Al or
Max. Of course, there were several people who had been through the
first stage of the repair process, which had left them with
improved, somewhat younger bodies. Any of them could have asked,
like perhaps Bet Fulwiler.

He finally admitted that he hoped it was Bet. Damn
it. He knew better than to be thinking this way about a
subordinate. However, he noted with whimsy, technically she wasn’t
in his chain of command. And even if it was her, who had made the
inquiry, her interest might well be directed toward one of the
other scientists. After all, she had known them far longer than the
few hours she had known Mike.

He shook his head and told himself, this is
ridiculous. I’m wasting my time. It would be fun, maybe even great,
but we come from different worlds. She’s an intellectual giant and
I’m just a grunt. It could never work out. I can’t let thoughts of
sex drive my thinking, because the fate of the world hangs in the
balance.

When he arrived at the room holding the scientists,
there seemed to be a lot of excitement. Bambi had given them the
most basic principle of the ship’s intersolar drive. She had
assured Mike that they should be able to figure it out, once they
had a guide.

These experts, had pushed her to explain the
interstellar drive, but Bambi had no idea how it worked. It was not
something the Saurans had placed in her database. The local area
drive engine, which was the intersolar drive, was something that
required her to closely monitor and see to its maintenance, when
necessary.

Al was smiling from ear to ear, as Mike walked in.
The former Corporal told him, “These people are all worked up over
something that’s way over my head.”

Bet ran up to him and announced, “Bambi has been
amazing, Mike. She’s been so patient with us and now we think we’re
beginning to understand the basics of how the local drive works. It
involves gravity manipulation and it requires an advanced computer,
like Bambi, to evaluate the available sources for manipulation,
such as the moon or Mars. Did you know she has a map of the various
tidal pools of gravity for the entire solar system?” In her
excitement, she didn’t wait for him to reply.

“Bambi opened up the design and maintenance documents
for a shuttle. It’s more than we can grasp right now. It’s a very
complex and extensive file and we’re going to need to study it
closely. However, based on what she has tried to explain to us, we
believe we might be able to duplicate some of it. At first, we’d be
producing a much simpler drive engine and it probably wouldn’t be
nearly as fast, although it could be a more maneuverable vehicle
and a great deal smaller.”

She was yanking on his arm, as she excitedly told
him, “If I’m right, with the help of Bambi and the fabricators, we
can produce several of them every month.”

Mike told Bambi,
I guess you’d better give me a
file that uses small words to explain the basics of what you’re
explaining to these guys. I don’t need to know all of the details;
but I’ll need to be aware of the rudimentary system.

Got it, Boss. Small words.

Mike grinned and said, “That’s great, Bet. If Earth
gets involved, is there a possibility that these new vehicles could
be mass produced, without using the fabricators?”

“But, why would we bother, when we have the
fabricators?”

“Because those things are going to be needed to
manufacture thousands of items that the Earth isn’t ready to make,
as yet. So, if we can have the industries on Earth make additional
shuttles, we won’t tie up a fabricator that is working on something
beyond Earth’s industrial capabilities. Then again, I suppose a
fabricator might have to produce some of the parts you’re going to
need.”

She looked at him with wonder and quietly said, “I’ll
be damned. You’re right, of course.” Then she poked him in the arm
and quietly told him, “You’re not just some old military war horse,
are you. I believe you’re a hell of lot smarter than you
think.”

She gave his shoulder a squeeze and it sent a shiver
down his spine. “Oh shit,” he thought. “She ain’t making it easy
for me to keep my mind centered on facing off against the
Saurans.”

He stepped forward and in a loud voice, he said,
“Listen up, people. I don’t mean to rain on your parade. This idea
is one of many we will need, in order to make it to the next level
and the level after that.

“Right now, we need something that will help us with
the most immediate problem, which is, how do we prevent the damaged
ship from sending an alert out of system. If they get it off, we’re
going to have an armada of warships coming for us and we won’t
stand a chance.”

A tall man, with a hooknose asked, “Is there anyway
we can find out how the alert transmission works. If we did, then
maybe we could fashion some sort of jamming device.”

Bambi gave them the bad news. “I am not programmed
with the details of how it works. It’s very reliable, because it
never breaks down.”

Bet asked, “Bambi, apparently you can send an alert.
From what part of the ship does it emanate? Also, would it be
possible for you to generate a weak signal that couldn’t leave the
solar system, so we can try to find out how this transmission
works? There must be some kind of radio wave, or something we can
track.”

“No ma’am, there isn’t. I do know it works similar to
the interstellar drive and has something to do with folding space.
That’s all I know about it.”

The tall man said, “Yes, of course. That makes sense.
If they generated a transmission, as we do, it would travel at
light speed, but no faster. It would have to be much faster than
that, in order to be of any real use for them.”

Bambi added, “If I sent an alert message right now to
our former location, it would take approximately five weeks to
arrive. A ship responding to my signal would take seven to eight
months to get here. A signal has practically no mass to it; whereas
a ship has billions of tons to be shielded and folded. I’ve heard
the Saurans talk about how important it is to do it slowly, so they
can monitor the progress and keep the mass of the ship aligned
within the fold and properly aimed at the destination.”

Mike wasn’t into the finite details of this and was
becoming impatient. He told her, “Bambi, can you do a test signal,
without actually sending it, or not.”

“Sort of, sir. There is an internal check program,
which I can utilize to be certain that a signal can be sent
properly, although it doesn’t actually transmit. But, I don’t see
how that could help.”

The scientists were excited and frustrated at the
same time. A short chocolate skinned man said, “If it involves
folding space, we are way over our heads here. All we have is some
speculative theories about how it might be done. One thing for
sure, it would take an enormous amount of power. But then, this
ship must be capable of generating that much energy, otherwise it
never could have traveled here. Obviously, Bambi can fold
space.”

The tall man asked Bambi, “Young lady, can you give
us any idea at all how you generate the energy needed for
interstellar transportation.”

Bambi explained, “All I know is that when we produced
the fold, it took a great deal of power, more than I have
available. We had to travel far away from solar systems, in order
to have ‘Clean Space’ the Saurans called it. That was where gravity
was smoother than in the tidal gravity pools that develop closer in
to solar systems.

“Also, I was tasked with monitoring and collecting
the alternative energy, as we travelled out to our transfer point.
That’s how I built up additional power for the move.”

Bet asked, “What do you mean by alternative
energy?”

Oddly, Bambi hummed, as she thought before she
answered. Finally she responded, “I’ve looked at a lot of the
scientific work being done on the Earth and I think this involves
what you might call dark matter.”

The room exploded, as the brainiacs went wild with
questions.

Mike shouted, “Calm down everyone. I don’t know much
about this stuff, but I do know that dark matter is very big, if we
can figure it out.”

Bambi commed him.
Sir, once we get them through
the upgrade procedure, I can answer their questions as fast as they
can ask them and in far greater detail. We really have to get them
going. Two more days should have them all strong enough to make the
painful jump.

Bambi told them, “All of you must realize that the
Saurans didn’t share information easily. They only gave it out, as
it was needed and a lowly transport ship computer didn’t need to
know how all of that works. I’m sorry.”

Bet told her, “Don’t be ridiculous, you’ve been a
huge help. I do have one more question. If an alert signal is like
folding space and that needs to be done far away from a solar
system, how do you generate that signal from this close in to the
sun and these planets?”

“I don’t know, Bet. I just do it. There is a file in
my program, in which I place the message and send it. I’ve never
known how it works. I do have to aim it at a specific point, but I
never knew where that point was, unless the Saurans were about to
send a signal. Then they would enter the celestial location in my
database and I would transmit to that point.”

Bet had her chin in her hand, as she looked at one
very short woman in the back. She said, “Charu, what do make of
that?”

The little woman replied, “Who, me,” she said,
pointing to herself. “Well…I suppose Bambi sends out a comm
transmission to a distant satellite, which in turn creates the fold
and sends off the message from way out in space. It’s probably
physically contained in some sort of small message holder.”

The tiny lady began walking toward Bet, as she spoke.
“We need to know how the comm system works. If we can understand
it, then I would think we might be able to jam it somehow, before
it reaches the satellite.”

“Wonderful,” shouted Bet and a few others.

Mike softly asked Bet, “May I ask who that little
lady is?”

“Oh, she’s Dr. Charu Nara. She’s a theoretical
physicist from India, although she was educated in America. She’s
very quiet and one of the brightest minds here.”

Without realizing it, Bet had moved in close to him
and began stroking the back of his arm, as she pressed her breast
against the front of it. Clearly, she’s flirting with me, he
thought? He had to admit that he liked it. It had been a long time
since a woman had come on to him.

The tall man smiled nicely, as he chided the short
scientist, “Charu, you’re not going to drag out Tesla’s wave
theory, are you? The man had a few wonderful ideas about resonance,
but in many ways, he was a crackpot.”

She grinned at him, waved a finger back and forth, as
she said, “Now Horace, I’m not saying that Tesla was specifically
accurate about gravity waves. But it might be possible that some of
his theories are in use here. If we can determine the appropriate
gravatic frequencies that it uses, we can use variable harmonics to
blank out a transmission.”

“NO!” Bambi shouted.

Mike immediately asked her, “What’s wrong,
Bambi.”

“I’m not sure. I just know that it’s wrong to block a
transmission with the use of harmonic frequencies.”

Bet, in a kinder, gentler tone asked, “How do you
know that?”

“I’m not sure. But when Dr. Nara suggested
interfering with transmissions, I had a sudden jolt of warning. I
didn’t seek it out. It just hit me.”

Bet looked at Mike and then at the other scientists.
“I believe the Saurans have buried more programming in your system
than you realize. Can you find the source of the warning?”