20 A bright flash suddenly appeared in the middle
of the screens. "Damn!" cursed North, "our time's up already. Peace be
with you, my good friend. No more Bloodlots!"
21 "You, also," said Morn, "my brother. No more automatics. " He had
barely finished when the screen went blank. No matter how rich you
were, or how influential you could only buy so much system to system
communication.
22 Morn went back to his reading feeling better. On his own ship North
gathered up the sketches he'd just finished and headed down to the
First Engineer's quarters. He pressed the buzzer, and the door opened.
"Come in, Commander! " the Engineer invited, with a smile.
"What brings YOU back here?"
23 "I need a favor," North explained, "I didn't like what happened on
the command deck during our first mission together. I damned near lost
my Communications Officer and could have been killed, myself. There's
nothing we can do to strengthen the consoles, but damn it, we can come
up with a way to protect the Officers using them! I know body shields
have been tried before and haven't been successful because they were
too uncomfortable for the men to use.
24 The problem is those people before were trying to design full body
shields; we don't need full body shields. We only need protection from
the front and the sides. I've worked out some designs. It took
reshaping the field generators and modifying the power packs, but I
think I've come up with a system that will afford us a maximum amount
of protection with little discomfort.
25 I figure they should cut our command deck losses due to a near miss,
by fifty, sixty percent. I'd like you to look the plans over, take out
any bugs, and submit them to Fleet with your name. I'm a Ship's Commander, not an Engineer!
If I submit them, they won't even look at them."