Page 48 of Collision!
Lurching around the capacitorus, he propped himself against a workbench and took a cutter to his uniform and then the bandage, baring his chest.Rippling the quill-scales over his shoulders, he sucked in a hard breath when he was finally free.
If he stayed with his engines, he didn’t really need a uniform any more than he required a stateroom.Somehow, he’d wandered too far from his position, but this was where he belonged: following logical laws of thermodynamics and combustion chemistry that spoke his language with no need of translation.His job was exact equations and calibrated computations, not the emotional entanglements of the Intergalactic Dating Agency—promises without proof—that had tricked them into this risky voyage.
But Nehivar would no doubt stop by to yell at him for leaving his bed too soon, so he left his pants on.
Going slowly, he made a full circuit of his station monitors.He told himself he was not disgruntled to find every system nominal or better.Patterning his engine modifications based on the anomalous waveform had increased their cruising speed by seventeen point three percent while improving efficiencies by exactly nine percent.And maybe better if he got the resonark to—
Already anticipating, he turned to find her there, standing by the disengaged capacitorus.A dim pool of light surrounded her from the downturned datpad in her hand.
His pulse leaped.Startlement, he assumed.But his heart kept hammering, hard enough he could not ignore it.“Mariah.”
Maybe he wasn’t as healed as he wanted to be.
She held out a knitted bag decorated with a white crescent; a depiction of a partly shadowed moon, he decided.
But the moon had a face, and it was…smiling?
“You forgot your meds,” she said.“Ikaryo’s tonic too.”
He didn’t move.“How did you know I’d be here?”
“Where else would you be?”
She knew him.Was that why she’d been chosen for his caretaker?
He stalked toward her and took the bag.“I neglected to thank you for watching over me,” he said stiffly.
“I wanted to.But you’re welcome.”
Lub bounded over to them, the ball of glowing threads glinting between snaggled fangs.One delicately gleaming filament trailed behind the goblhob back into the darkness.
It dropped the ball at Mariah’s stockinged feet.
“Thank you, Lub,” she said.“I wondered where that went.”
Tucking the lighted datpad in her pocket, she bent to scoop up the ball and began winding the filament back onto the ball.
Suvan watched the methodical twist of her fingers smoothing the strand into perfect spherical alignment with each rotation.
“Your card is in there too,” she said.
“My card?”He peered into the bag.
When he excavated the thin square of parchment, a small hologram of a simplistic spaceship blasted off and then burst into fantastical floral shapes.“To the best chief engineer on the Love Boat I,” it chirped.“Get repaired and recalibrated soon.”
Many names were written on the parchment, although he didn’t read them all, peering instead at Mariah.
“I am the only chief engineer on this ship,” he noted.
“Which is why you’re the best.”
That did make sense.He grunted an acknowledgment as he shoved the card back into the smiling moon bag.
She was still winding the ball, her head bent though clearly she had no trouble with performing the task by touch alone.When she was done, she would go.
His already accelerated pulse ratcheted higher.
“I have not remembered everything,” he blurted.As soon as the words emerged, he regretted them.Why had he shared that?“I don’t mean the engines,” he said, to reassure her in case she thought a bumbler was now lurking in his place.
