The kitchen was an inset on the left wall of the living room.The kitchen was an inset on the left wall of the living room. There were no windows on the walls, but there was an overhead skylight. My cabin was nominally on the "bottom" of the ship, but with gravitics technology and SDisks it was impossible to tell. My biggest problem, though, was navigation. I tend to make mental 3-d maps of places like starships, and I couldn't reconcile the double-image of 'up' and 'down.' I'd get it eventually. It was nice, though, that I'd get a full view of any planet we were in orbit over. We were interrupted by a voice behind us? "Captain Hawkwind?" We turned to see who it was. Kathy answered, "Yes, Amanda?" I was stunned. This young filly was the first example I'd seen of the EQ2vR virus. Introduced into the Centaur population about twenty-five years ago, the EQ2vR was supposed to increase the possibility of size variation in the general population. Most Centaurs were immune, but a small percentage experienced a strong effect. The maximum was still around Clydesdale, but the minimum had been pushed down almost to Shetland, but not quite. At that level, certain systemic failures occured that I'd rather not think about, so I left the size at about 1.18 over minimal systemic support. Amanda was an example of that. She was barely taller than I was, I'd guess 190 cm, and she was adorable. And that voice... where had she learned such an innocent voice? I resolved, right there and then, to get to know this filly. I was so completely taken in by her that I completely missed what they had discussed, until Kathy said, "Ken?" as I watched Amanda turn to leave. "Hmm? What?" "YooHoo. It's me, Kathy." "I know, I know... Who was that?" "That was Amanda Ohadi. She's the project head for Sickbay Engineering." "She's a project head in your department? How old is she?" "Twenty-four." "And you trust her?" "Remember me at sixteen?" I nodded. "She's better." "Kathy, at sixteen you redesigned starship drives as we knew them!" "You should see her work. She thinks she can prove a relation between elemental pattern of configuration waves and quark-quark distance effects." I thought about it for a second. |