82 Morn had seen some of the old Nova Class
vessels. Since the Star Burner series like his vessel had come out,
they had quickly become obsolete. It was difficult to modify them to
the new star drive so most of them had been stripped of their star
drive and been made system cruisers. He could imagine the agony of one
of those old ships being struck by something and its dangerous star
drive engines exploding.
83 "The poor bastards! " sighed the Engineer. "One of the other ships
must have come this way, and they sent this thing for help. They
probably didn't know its drive was damaged. Instead of taking a few
weeks to get here, it took nearly six-hundred years! Those poor kidsl
That long waiting in suspension for help that never came. They're all
dead by now. You can only survive so long in suspension. Right, Doc?"
84 "Not necessarily," answered the Doctor, "some of them still could be
alive, if that robot was programmed to wake them up every once and a
while, exercise, and, feed them. There's a chance, a GOOD chance, some
of them might be alive."
85 "How many?" asked Morn.
86 "No way of telling," answered the Doctor, "until we get there. Maybe
eighty percent of them or better. But what difference does it make?
They're Rebel's children. What's the sense in rescuing them,
only to turn around and execute them?"
87 "Only three people know they're Rebel's children," explained Morn,
"and once we get rid of THIS thing, nobody will have any way of finding
out if we don't say anything. As far as I'm concerned, all I
saw on that tape was a signal from a ship that it dropped a pod full of
children in suspension, and was asking someone to come and get them. We
pick them up, get them well, then scatter them among the stations, even
if somebody DOES suspect, I doubt if they'll say anything."