"I mean, it's all well and good that the chinheads are letting us borrow some of their equipment and facilities and all that," Seamus Harper began for what must have been the twentieth time, "but come on, I can build this thing myself, without their overeager help."
Trance Gemini sighed in exasperation as she followed close behind Harper down the sterile looking white hall. "I'm sure you could, Harper, but remember that they were instrumental in helping you last time you tried to build it, and Technical Director Hoon died because of it. Besides, if they're willing to let you test out your theories – which are dangerous, to say the least – on one of their worlds and in their own facilities, the least you can do in return is let them look over your shoulder while you do it."
"Yeah, except looking turns into asking, and asking turns into prodding, and prodding turns into meddling, and meddling turns into a major disaster that'll get us all killed," Harper retorted, throwing up his hands.
"If it's that dangerous, do you really think you should be working with it again?" Trance asked simply.
The engineer stopped and turned to face her. "Look, Trance, I understand your concerns. I really do. I mean, last time I started building it, it turned the Andromeda into one big megamaze between past, present, and future. And you switched places with Trance. I mean the other Trance," he started to add, but it was too late.
A look of what might
have been hurt flashed briefly across her face. "You still don't
trust me entirely, do you?" she asked.
"No... it's not
that," he said lamely, looking away from her intense gaze as he
tried to come up with an excuse. "It's just... I'm still
trying to get used to it, that's all. The switch I mean."
She nodded, but didn't look convinced.
"What I'm trying to say is," he hurried on to change the subject, "I know it's dangerous. But I've done a lot of research since last time. I've gone over my blueprints, and I've almost memorized Hoon's notes on the thing, just from reading them so many times. And I think I've come up with a way to make it more stable, so that we won't get teseract events all over the planet."
"And what would that way be?" she prompted.
Harper gave her that quirky smile, the one that made most women grin foolishly back at him. Trance didn't so much as blink. He sighed. "Come on, I'll show you."
It wasn't a long walk to the lab rooms that had been set aside for Harper, his experiment, and everyone that would be working with him. Which turned out to be a lot of people. The All Systems University Laboratory Headquarters was a huge complex nearly the size of a small city, and although Harper's teseract generator experiments only required two or three rooms and a fair-sized generator, it seemed that half the Headquarters' personnel were crowded into them.
"Oh, come on," Harper whined as he pushed through the doorway into a crowd of people. "How am I supposed to get any work done with this many chinheads – I mean Perseids – wandering around and getting in my way?"
Trance just raised her eyebrows when she saw all the people.
"Oh, Mr. Harper!" a voice that was annoyingly high-pitched for being male shouted from across the room. "Mr. Harper! Oh, excuse me, terrible sorry, excuse me. Mr. Harper!"
The two turned to see a particularly tall Perseid wading through the crowd toward them.
"Here we go already," Harper muttered to Trance as the alien arrived before them.
The blue-skinned Perseid gave a short bow, his black cap nearly falling off his bald head as he did so. "Mr. Harper, allow me to introduce myself," he babbled far too ecstatically for Harper's quickly souring mood. "I am Professor Deedran, head of the teseract research team here on Ciinti."
"Uh, yeah, pleased to meet you," Harper managed to sound dubiously cheerful as he found his hand being all but forcibly shaken.
Deedran seemed to notice Trance for the first time, and offered another bow, after which he released Harper's hand only to take hers and shake it up and down hard enough to make her red braids of hair bounce. "I'm afraid I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you before," he went on almost without taking a breath. "I am Professor Deedran, head of the teseract research team here on Ciinti."
Despite the fact that her hand was almost certainly beginning to ache, Trance gave a graceful smile. "Trance Gemini," she replied. "I'm a friend of Harper's. I'll be helping him during his experiment."
"Wonderful! Wonderful!" Deedran exclaimed, still shaking her hand.
"I wasn't aware that Ciinti had a teseract research team," she continued before Deedran could say anything more. "I assume it's newly formed?"
Finally, Deedran let go of her hand and grinned, showing teeth that seemed extremely white against his dark blue complexion. "That would be a very clever assumption, Trance Gemini," he said. "After the events of the past few months and Technical Director Hoon's tragic... demise... onboard the Andromeda Ascendant, the All Systems University decided it would be a good idea to have a permanent team in place to study the effects of teseract events, and their possible uses in the near future. This will be the first chance the team gets to put some of their theories to work."
"Great," Harper said with mock enthusiasm. "So where's this team?"
"Why, you're looking at them!" Deedran bubbled. "The entire team is here, and they are all very excited to get to work as soon as you're ready!"
"Whoa, whoa, wait," Harper exclaimed, holding up his hands. "Hold on for just a nanosecond, my finely chinned friend! Are you saying that everyone here is part of the teseract research team? Half the University's personnel on Ciinti must be here!"
"Actually, only about a tenth," Deedran corrected helpfully, holding up his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart.
"But what about their other projects?" Trance asked in slight confusion. "Surely some of them were working on important research. Did they just abandon it to join the teseract team?"
"Why, yes," Deedran answered as if he were explaining the obvious to a person of slightly-below-average intelligence. "When we heard that Mr. Harper was coming here to work on his famous teseract project, nearly everyone in the entire University wanted to be a part of the team that would work with him. There were so many that, in the end, the board of directors had to turn some of the applicants away."
"Not all that many, apparently," Harper muttered in disbelief as he surveyed the room once again. Most of the occupants were Perseid, with a few members of other species scattered among them. All of them were talking animatedly, waving their arms about or pointing to flexisheets filled with rotating diagrams or row upon row of notes. More than one seemed to be trying to make their way toward him, which was definitely not a good thing in his opinion.
"Are they all going to be here while we work?" Trance asked, the tone of her voice hinting that she already knew the answer, and didn't like it.
"Oh, but of course," Deedran replied. "They would be heartbroken if we asked them to leave, and besides, I doubt the security systems in these rooms are good enough to keep all of them out." He started nodding furiously and grinned as if he had made some sort of joke.
"Well, what can I say?" Harper shrugged as he turned to Trance. "The Perseids love their science. What d'ya say we get this show on the road and see what happens, huh?"
Trance just looked at him for a moment, then gave a small, knowing smile and nodded once. "Let's get started."
