Command Decision Read Online Free Page A

alone, absolutely alone, as she had never been before. How could she concentrate on trade, on finding cargo for the ship that had been Furman’s, when she felt so empty? She had forced herself to do the obvious things—hire security for herself and Toby and the Vatta dockspace, talk to Captain Orem of
Gary Tobai
about what security clearances new crew should have, but it was so hard to focus on all that. If only she’d had one other adult Vatta to talk to…Aunt Grace, for instance.
    “You know,” Toby said, breaking into her reverie, “I really think I can make another one.”
    “Another one what?” Stella asked.
    “Ansible,” Toby said. “Like the one Captain—Cousin Ky left with you. Small enough to fit on a ship, I mean.”
    “That’s—” She started to say “impossible,” then stopped. Toby had already modified the appliances that had come with the apartment—giving them more sophisticated control systems—and upgraded the apartment’s security system. She remembered Quincy and Rafe both mentioning the boy’s knack for technical subjects and tasks. An idea tickled her, the first positive one she’d had in a long time. “If you could make another one…a few of them…we could put them on Vatta ships—”
    “That’s what I thought,” Toby said, grinning. He stopped where he was, a box of components in either hand. “If you could get reports from our ships right away, even in systems where the ansibles didn’t work, that would give us an edge—”
    “Do you really think you can?” She could not imagine anyone cobbling together something that intricate in an apartment bedroom. “Don’t you need a special lab or something?”
    “Not really,” Toby said, answering her second question first. “I’d love to have a lab of my own, but it’s mature tech, really; it’s not as finicky as it used to be.” That sounded like a quote from Quincy. “I’m really close now,” Toby went on. “Just another few days, I think. There’s this part I don’t understand…it seems like a backwards way of designing it, but there has to be a reason…”
    “What made you think of copying one?” Stella asked. “Where did you learn—?”
    “We need them,” Toby said. “Captain—Cousin Ky could use more. Every ship, really, could use one, except it’s not our design so we can’t sell it. Anyway, Rafe talked to me a lot, you know. He’s nice, even if he did scare me at first.”
    Stella blinked at the notion of Rafe, with his many aliases and his unquestionably shady past, being labeled “nice” by anyone.
    “I kept asking him, when he was fixing those broken ansibles, and finally he said he’d explain if I promised not to tell anyone else about the ansible repair stuff he taught me, because it was an ISC secret. I understood some of it on my own,” Toby went on. “I always thought it must be like FTL drives, but it’s not, really. Well, sort of, in the basic theory of n-dimensions, but not in the practical application, or space travel would be instantaneous, too.” He paused; he seemed to stare into the distance, and then he shook his head. “No…I haven’t figured that part out yet.”
    “No rush,” Stella said, her head whirling. Her own abilities—assuming she had any—lay very far from the things Toby talked about. “You can stick to ansibles for a while, can’t you?”
    “Oh, sure. I just need to figure out why there’s a lockout circuit, what it’s protecting the rest of it from.”
    “Or what it’s protecting,” Stella said.
    Toby looked thoughtful again. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I thought it must be something to protect the ansible…but that’s not necessarily—thanks, Cousin Stella.” He wandered off to his room, followed by Rascal, without picking up any more of the mess.
    Stella sighed and went back to her work. Standard Vatta trade routes made interconnecting rings rather than emanating from a few hubs; a Vatta ship from the