Naina was hunched over a table, sorting through datapads that were littered on the table, and apparently also on the floor near the table. Her eyebrows were crunched together in an apparent attempt to concentrate as hard as she could. Every now and then, her tongue would stick out of between her lips, as she looked at intriguing things on the datapads.
Valera was sitting next to Naina, watching her with an amused expression, suppressing a giggle. She leaned on the table with her elbow and rested her cheek on her hand. Occasionally, she would give her a slow blink and her lips would part just a bit. She was holding a datapad in her hands, but wasn't concentrating on it at all.
"Que-la!" Naina yelled suddenly, grabbing to datapads and putting them side to side, her eyes fleeting from one to the other. She straightened up, and then sat down next to Valera, her eyes still glued on the datapads, her lips turned up in a triumphant smile. She turned to Valera, and her eyebrow shot up, and she tilted her head.
"What?" she asked. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Because I can't get yesterday out of my head," she said, blinked slowly, and smiled at her.
"Oh," Naina said, and blushed madly. Her ears felt like she could heat a room with them, and her cheeks felt hot. Her lips quivered nervously as she smiled. She turned her gaze downwards.
"I ... uh ..." she stuttered. "I don't really know how I did ... did ... all that," she said softly.
"I want to return the favor, Naina," Valera said. "I'm not sure if I can be as good as you, but I really want to."
Naina tried to shrink away and felt like her eyes could be used to light fires. She cleared her throat nervously and shuffled her feet. "Iwouldlikethat," she mumbled quietly.
Valera smiled widely at her. "I promise I'll try my best. But I guess we should try and concentrate on this first," she said and gestured around the table. "And because you need to be able to breathe, Naina," she added and grinned.
Naina nodded furiously, and turned her gaze back to the datapads, her ears still burning hot. She inhaled deeply, and then offered them to Valera.
"Here, look at these," she said.
Valera took the datapads, and her eyes flicked from one to the other. Her eyebrow raised, and her lips moved in and out. "What's this ...? Sub-space tunnels, and ... spbubs? But why do their ..." she said, then her eyes flew wide open, and she turned to look at Naina with her mouth hanging open.
Naina nodded. "Yeah. That's what I'm thinking too. The frequencies almost match. Almost. But there's so many stars between these, I don't know how much the radiation affects the ..." she managed to say, before Valera stopped her by jumping up.
"T'hea-ik!" she yelled.
"Excuse me?" Naina asked, surprised.
"My friend. Colleague. Co-worker. Whatever!" Valera said excitedly. "He had been doing research on this exact thing, and I just read the results before we arrived at Sunstar! Solar siblings have no effect on sub-space radiation, except for the reflection from trinary and binary system's bigger sibling!"
"What? Really?" Naina said, standing up too.
Valera was nodding furiously. "Yeah, yeah! I have the research somewhere on the ship. Come!" she said and grabbed Naina's hand and led her out of the room, running towards her room.
Perez was just exiting his room when he saw the women running hand in hand past him like being chased by something. But their smiles and giggles told him it wasn't anything bad. He grinned and shook his head.
"Those two are acting like young girls. Either they are up to something I don't even wanna know about, or we're about to find out something extraordinary," he mused.
"I'm going to say 'both', Captain Perez," Quera said.
"True," Perez said and turned towards the elevators and the cafeteria. "True."
Valera slammed her room's door open and dove into her drawers, pulling out datapads and mass-storage modules. After a minute or so of what looked like digging for ancient treasure, Valera lifted her hand up that was holding a mass-storage module.
"Ha!" she said triumphantly. "I knew it was here! I saved Dr. T'hea-ik's data once he sent it to me!" She took the module to her console on the desk, and plugged it in. She patted the chair next to her, and Naina sat down obediently.
Valera presented the data, and the two women were transfixed as nearly identical numbers scrolled across the screen.
"There's a slight variation here," Naina said suddenly, and pointed at the screen.
"Yeah, it's from Urdian. It's trinary and Urdian Major is a significant reflector," Valera said.
Naina nodded and gestured Valera to continue. Numbers and other data passed by their eyes for several minutes, until it came to an end, and stopped.
"It's within point five tolerance," Naina said.
Valera looked at her with her eyebrow up, and her head tilted.
"I'm good with numbers," Naina said and shrugged. "You're right, Valera. They don't have a significant effect."
"You know what this means, Naina?" Valera said excitedly.
"Spbubs and tunnels are the same," Naina said.
Valera nodded furiously, with her smile up to her ears. "Think about the possibilities!" she squealed.
Naina's eyes flew open, and she drew in a sharp breath. "Valera ..." she said, her voice thin. "I think I just figured out that it's more than that ..."
"What do you mean?" Valera asked.
Naina grabbed Valera's hand, pulled her up and led her out of the room, running towards hers. "I need to show you. Quera, get the data on the spbubs -- eh, sub-space bubbles -- that we collected on my screen."
"On it, Captain Melcey," Quera said.
The two women run past Perez when he was coming back from the cafeteria, and almost ran into him. Perez chuckled at them and shook his head as he watched them disappear behind a corner. 27Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡsfKd4O9W0i
27Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHgf09efKgW
