Among Stars

Scientists of the Round Table

"Uhm, Dr. Mizuni?" T'hea-ik wondered, turning towards Mizuni. They were sitting in a medium-sized room with a table in the middle, and five chairs around it. There were five desks with various computer-equipment along the walls. On one wall, there was a large screen that currently displayed images from deep space.

Five people occupied chairs surrounding the table. Well, of course, T'hea-ik was on his own floating devices. Besides T'hea-ik and Mizuni, Llainessa was there with Fesh and a woman who hadn't yet spoken.

"Yes, Dr. T'hea-ik?" Mizuni said and lifted her gaze from the datapad she was just reading. She placed the datapad down in front of her and turned towards T'hea-ik.

"So, what I've gathered is, that our trip, ultimately to Helios-5, will take only about two weeks, correct?" he said, watching Mizuni expectantly. She nodded at him. "Yes, so... why do we have sleep pods on the ship?" he asked.

"Oh!" Mizuni said and blushed. "I haven't explained that? Oh my. One of these days I'll forget to wear my head in the morning and walk out of an airlock..." she said, grinning. She tapped her datapad, poked it a couple of times, then cleared her throat.

"Might as well make a memo out of this," she said and tapped the datapad. "Hello all, so, I've just been told that I haven't told any of you why we have sleeping pods in the ship, even though our voyage is just a couple of weeks to Helios-5," she smiled awkwardly.

"As you all know — or at least I hope at this point I have told you that already — we're waiting until Helios-5 to engage the Polarizer module that will pierce the spbub... eh, sub-space bubble for us and allow us to travel into the middle," she explained. "While we don't need the pods for reasons of longer duration, we will need to enter the pods to shield us from the polarized energy and the sub-space radiation that the bubbles emit."

"We are currently flying through sub-space, thanks to the Donut Drive as everyone keeps calling it," Mizuni continued. " But we are nowhere near a spbub, and it's those that are the danger. The sleeping pods are needed more for our protection than anything else."

She tapped the datapad with her finger, gave it an awkward smile, and turned back towards T'hea-ik. "That should explain it enough, right?" she asked. "I can't believe I hadn't explained that. I'm so sorry. It's not like everyone here is a sub-space specialist like me. We're all from slightly different fields. I shouldn't have missed that one."

People around the table nodded. One of them, a woman in her early 20s, turned towards Mizuni. She had her blonde hair in a topknot. Her green eyes were so bright as to be almost luminous. She had large round glasses on her nose and she looked more like a model than a scientist, with her perfectly symmetrical face, plump lips, and long eyelashes. Her name plate said "Dr. Kitten."

"Mizu, it's not your fault," she said, almost whispering. Her voice was soft and warm, and she sounded like she should read slightly raunchy stories on a shady commline, rather than astrophysics. "We're all so swamped here. It's like we have a month's work to finish in just a couple of weeks, and we're not allowed to use a lab," she continued and smiled at Mizuni.

"Thanks, Vivi," Mizuni smiled at her. "Makes me feel better. But doesn't remove the fact that I should have done that," she said and grinned awkwardly.

"Dr. Kitten is right, though," Llainessa said next to her. "Nobody is blaming you. I'm fairly certain I've forgotten to tell everyone something important too," he grinned.

Fesh nodded too. "Too true, Ewrian," he commented. "I forgot to mention that the sensor packages must be stored in an environmentally controlled storage space, and they yelled at me loudly because they had no idea and had to scramble a container from somewhere before we left."

T'hea-ik snickered. "Oh man, I can believe how pissed off they must have been, Llainessa," he said. "They were running double or triple shifts the days preceding the launch."

"They really were angry, though," Kitten whispered gently. "I asked one of the workers where the server blades should be stored, and he made very rude remarks about my looks and told me to go look for the servers in the bathrooms. I still don't know what that meant," she purred, smiling awkwardly.

"Beats me," Mizuni replied. "Thanks everybody, I'm getting the signal loud and clear," she smiled. "So if we're done with that, how about we get back to work? I know I'm still swamped, and I don't know how I'm getting done before Helios."

"Good plan," Fesh said. "Ewrian, you need help?"

Ewrian nodded. "Yeah, thanks for the offer. I'll show you the forms I'm working on. You can run those through SciDoc."

"Marvelous. I love SciDoc," Fesh said, rolled his eyes, and got up.

"Fesh, I can taste the sarcasm," T'hea-ik commented flatly.

"Good, then you don't need sugar," Ewrian said and got up and went after Fesh.

T'hea-ik got up and stretched. "I'm going to get working on the data, too. I still have to go through about half of it before we're there."

"Mizu, you need help?" Kitten said shyly and fluttered her eyelashes.

"Oh, I hoped you'd ask Vivi. Thank you!" Mizuni almost yelled. "I'm going through the final calculations for the Polarizer, but I'd need to work on the donut drive's efficiency calculations, and I haven't even touched them. That should be child's play for you, right?"

Kitten nodded. "Yeah, that's not a problem. You have direct access to the mainframe in your room, right? I'll go take a quick shower and I'll meet you there," she purred at Mizuni.

Mizuni nodded, grabbed her datapad, and got up. "See you there, then," she said and walked to the elevator.