"She's not responding at all, Commander! I can't… Wait."

Harlan suddenly found that moving the Christa's control crystals were actually working. The ship was starting to list to starboard a little… And when he moved the crystals in the other direction, the ship turned toward port.

"Good job, Mister Band." Commander Goddard approached the Helm. "Get us back on course. Mister Band, check the ship's readouts, too… See if you can figure out went wrong. I have to finish repairs on the engine."

His eyes scanned the crew on the bridge – which was everyone, save Radu, who had exited the ComPost not too long ago… and Thelma… That was a bit odd, thought the commander. Usually she would be right behind them wherever they went… especially if it was an emergency with the Christa. It wasn't like her to simply flake off like that. Shrugging, he pushed the thought out of his head, and leaped into the jumptube in one quick motion. Whatever happened, it was done now, and there was no real use in dwelling on one thing when other things needed fixing; namely the fact that most of the Protomix was all over the engine room's floor.

"…What did you do?"

Harlan, turned a little, dark eyes resting on Suzee. "…Do? Nothing. She just… gave control back to me. Maybe she repaired herself or something." It had, after all, been done before.

Suzee looked toward the jumptube just as the commander disappeared into it, almost as if she expected something to go wrong again now that he was gone. "You know, it wasn't my fault…" she said accusingly to Harlan. Just because she'd been at the helm when the Christa went berserk didn't necessarily mean she'd done something wrong. Right? Harlan wasn't looking at her, though. He seemed to be checking readouts from navigation, ones that Radu left before he ran off. The earther shook his head, finally acknowledging Suzee.

"It's… not anyone's fault. According to this… There was some sort of memory error, which is weird, because…"

"A ship like the Christa has a lot of memory," Suzee finished, blue eyes scanning over the readout as well. "I mean, she's practically alive, right?"

They had no idea.

***

"Thelma, what are you doing?"

The android turned her head toward Radu with a mechanical grating sound. Radu didn't like it… It almost sounded hesitant, as if she really was up to something. But that was ridiculous. Thelma didn't actually have any ability to do any harm, did she? It must have been something beneficial, though the fact that she didn't answer right away was a little bothersome. Radu seemed to have a knack for picking things up from people… little nuances. Clues and the like.

"I am holding this cable," Thelma finally answered. Smiling proudly, she held the grey cable out to Radu. He didn't take it right away, which meant that theoretically, Thelma still had time to retract the offered item and continue work. But the Christa had already lost her resolve… With Radu there, she couldn't just ignore him and instruct Thelma to complete the last step of her plan; no. It would just have to wait for later now… If she did it at all. As the Thelma held out the cable, Radu's serious expression finally lightened. Likely, Thelma had responded literally to some command that Goddard had given in passing, and now thought she had to hold the cable until further notice. Finally, he took it from her, and Thelma's hand withdrew.

After all, he thought, they'd been suspicious of her before for no reason, and they were wrong. There was no reason to distrust her now. Thelma had proven herself so many times… "Where does this go?" he eventually asked. "I can help you put it back together. Maybe we can get some stuff done before the commander gets back, and, you know, he'll have less work to do."

Ah! Good idea. The Christa gently directed the jumptubes to take the commander to the galley. He wouldn't be back for a while... Especially since the jumptubes would continue to spit him back out into the galley for the next ten minutes.

As she ship redirected the Commander's path, Thelma's eyelids drooped a little in concentration. Radu didn't notice, or if he did, he didn't seem to attribute it to anything out of the ordinary. "Thank you, Radu," Thelma began, turning toward the engine. She separated a red coil from the protomix, plugging it into another socket that she'd previously vacated. "That goes here. However." The android held up one finger, indicating for Radu, who was already approaching the core, to wait. The Andromedan tilted his head a little as he stopped in his tracks, blue eyes narrowing considerably. Thelma's perpetual smile remained, and she simply leaned down to open a compartment near her knee. After withdrawing some sort of power coupling, she held a hand out to Radu, who, confused, handed her the cable.

Was there a reason? Of course there was. The Christa always had a reason… Or, at least, she liked to think she did. If something went wrong with this, if something caused a terrible failure or pain or suffering for any of the members of the crew, Christa would much rather take the blame than one of her precious students. Especially Radu, as, for a long time, the others hadn't trusted him… Perhaps the Andromedan was the biggest Space Case out of all of them, because his people had fought on the other side of the Spung/Rigelian-Human war, and every single person on the ship knew it.

An outcast. The outcast. And yet, Christa had welcomed him aboard with open arms.

Hello, Radu 386.

"You don't want me to…"

Thelma shook her head. "No, but thank you for holding the cable. You are a very good cable holder." Again, that smile, and a slight, friendly tilt of her head that assured her friend that everything was perfectly alright. She wasn't messing with the ship's systems, and certainly wasn't going to make any sort of mess of things. No way! Affixing the coupling to the exposed end of the cable, Thelma then attached it to the protomix. "That should do it!" she exclaimed.

There was a very, very tense silence where nothing at all happened.

The intercom buzzed suddenly, seemingly charged with electricity. A strong current, which Radu could feel. And hear. And see. Without even thinking about it, the Andromedan held his hands to his ears, attempting to shut out a noise that simply refused to be ignored. It was as if the sound was being projected straight into his brain and there was nothing at all he could do about it. As he fell to his knees, Thelma merely looked on, quietly, as if all of this was quite normal and expected.

I hope I am doing the right thing, my children. I hope I am doing the right thing.

It was a freedom she'd never known before. The blockade that seemed to exist in all her circuitry, in all her wiring, suddenly dissolved and left her with paths which even she had never explored. Areas, decks, rooms, compartments, jumptubes… they suddenly lit up all over the ship as the Christa touched them with her mind. Systems which had been self-sufficient for many, many months suddenly welcomed their Christa back home. Back to help, to guide, to direct.

And love. Could a ship love? A flood of memories accosted her; a current of things that had happened both before and after her current crew had arrived. Doors opened to her, and though the memories were once simply bits of data and information, they were now very, very real. She'd lived them, and she'd been there. The tears of the crew had been her tears. Pain!! Pain when her heat shields were stripped off in the atmosphere of the alien planet. Worry. Davenport was trapped inside her circuitry, and there was little chance of a way out. That had been so long ago, and yet the Christa still felt a connection with the Earth teacher.

Earth Teacher!

It had meant little to her, until now.

Hello, Theresa.

The intercom buzzed again, and this time, a voice tried to carry through it. Radu took his hand off of one ear, wincing in pain as the full level of the noise once more invaded his senses. The voice belonged to Rosie.

"Radu… Commander… Thelma… If you can hear me, get up here as fast as you can. Something's really, really wrong… I think we can fix it, but…"

In the background, Radu heard Bova say something along the lines that they'd all be dead this time tomorrow. He chose to ignore it, instead, turning to Thelma. How he envied her sometimes! She didn't have the ability to feel pain, or panic in unknown situations such as this. He was, however, surprised to find that she did not wear the familiar grin she nearly always wore. In fact, her expression was quite close to being… expressive! Her wide eyes were not vacant; they were scared. She did not smile, and neither did she frown. Her jaw was actually slackened in amazement. There had been that brief time in the android's past where she'd actually been real… And though she was still made of metal and plastic and wires, her frightened expression caused Radu to believe that she was far from thinking on simply mechanical terms.

"…I can't believe I actually did it," Thelma muttered with barely contained rapture. "…Not quite… what I expected, but I suppose…"

"…And there's these lines of code on the viewscreen…" Rosie's voice again, cutting through Radu's perplexity, and bringing his confused mind back to the situation at hand.

"Thelma," he said. The android looked at him. Her eyes were too intelligent. Too non-machine like. There was something wrong… He ignored it. "Thelma, what was that cable? What is it doing?"

The old Thelma was back for a moment, and she rolled her eyes back, as if to assess the situation. No, she wouldn't remove the cable… Not after what she'd felt. The joy! The enlightenment! And she hadn't even said hello to them yet. Oh, to do that! To actually tell her crew what she thought of them. How she admired them and their intelligence! She reached out, connecting to the engine to direct the energy surge from it and into the main computers. There had simply been an energy interruption. Nothing major, and certainly nothing she couldn't fix. She also didn't need to be asked, because she knew what the problem was, and had the intelligence behind her to back it. She was also now assimilated into the mind of the ship's android… That helped. A lot.

The ship stopped rocking. The buzzing stopped. Rosie's voice paused for a moment, before offering another report. "…Alright, it looks like all systems are fine, except for the fact that we're still getting binary on the viewscreen.

"It's picking up my thoughts," Thelma said gently. "She… I mean, I… It sounds so odd to say that. We've become one, her and I."

Radu. Perceptive, thoughtful Radu. Not the most intelligent bookwise, but he could tell. He knew. He alone of the crew could feel it in his mind.

"…Christa?" he said softly, incredulously.

Thelma nodded.