==Saurians and the single Autopilot== Ch.1
“Here” she said tracing the circuits of the main induction lines. The second engineer watched the female Saurian’s hand and understood what she was saying.
“I see so by powering up the reaction chambers to super conductive levels your space drive is made many times more efficient and more powerful to boot!” Second engineer William exclaimed.
“Are you ready for the shake down voyage?” She asked.
“Is Lt. Mcgivvers aboard yet?” The second engineer wanted to know.
“Yes, she boarded some time ago.”
“Then we should close up these maintenance hatches and begin at once.” William concluded.
The Saurian deep space module accelerated under power from her conventional space drive engines. The engines quickly moved her out of her parking orbit and out into the cold emptiness of interplanetary space.
The space ships of most of the interstellar traveling races all had two types of engines the first an engine designed for use in normal space which could drive them at only some portion of the speed of light and a second for crossing the vast distances of interstellar space in the blink of an eye known as a Point Drive which folded space, but was disrupted by gravity and useless inside a stellar system hence the need for a conventional engine. The Saurian vessel that Lt. Mcgivvers and William were aboard for the demonstration of human computer systems interfacing with Saurian navigational systems would be run inside the stellar system and so would rely solely on her conventional engines.
The ships new human made autopilot was in control through out this stage of their journey. The ships newly installed system worked so flawlessly, the Saurian captain lost interest in monitoring its performance. “I am gong to the wardroom.” He stated, “Call upon me at once should you have any need for me. I will be studying your porn files, again. Tell me, are you and the female officer you brought aboard with you going to be mating soon? Are you experiencing any discomfort at not being able to mate for so protracted a period because of the lengthy duty shifts in preparing the ships Human-Saurian hybrid technology?”
The junior engineer cringed. The Saurian obsession with human sexuality was embarrassing enough as is, but the captain’s timing couldn’t have been worse. Since his last few sentences were spoken just as Lt. Mcgivvers had entered the command deck. The Saurian engineer made a sharp hiss, had she been human it would have instead been a quiet cough.
“Oh yes.” The captain said realizing his mistake. “Where are my manners, we were informed that discussing explicit sexual behaviors is a taboo topic amongst you. I apologize for any offense I may have offered. I do beg your pardon.” He finished and he stepped off of the command deck.
Mcgivvers giggled as she slipped into the captains vacated seat and looked at the young human engineer “So tell me Will how is your discomfort going? Needing to mate at all times must be such a burden.” She gently chided. “I so wish all those porno files had never fallen into their hands. At least Doctor Phillips was able to get them to understand that talking about porno in polite company is forbidden.”
“Yes Ma’am, now if only we can convince them we are not always in some kind of constant state of mating frenzy.” William offered. Though truth be known he wouldn’t have objected to a roll in the hay with the Lt. Mcgivers all the same!
Mcgivvers giggled and said. “If only! Though you wouldn’t know it from what I hear about Daniels and Macsten. She was in the officer’s mess yesterday and…” She droned on at some length with all the details and gossip.
The irony was that despite his protestations to the contrary about human mating frenzy that as the Lieutenant spoke at length about the latest scuttle-butt aboard the Prometheus the second engineer was thinking about how to have sex with her.
Will listened with only half an ear, gossip just didn’t interest him. Instead he read with great interest all the self diagnostics on the computer console that he had installed to run the Saurian ships navigational systems. So far the earth expedition’s offer of technology exchange was working well. The earth computer systems were much more refined and robust in performance then the Suarian’s own. Unlike the data file exchange the two races had made this was going letter perfect.
A deal had been struck, the Saurians would trade one of their FTL Point Drive equipped ships in exchange for the Prometheus. Now all that had to be hammered out were the technological details, like the compatibility issues that they were here to work out with this flight.
When Mcgivvers finally ran out of chitchat she checked the navigation and autopilot, satisfied, she left to report in to the captain. At least that’s what she said, more then likely she was off to talk his ear off too.