Captain's log, stardate: 56828.8, Commander Kirk reporting... the news of our captain being comatose was a blow to everyone. The senior officers have all concurred that we need to get Captain Velasquez help as quickly as possible. Starfleet tells us the nearest ship that can get her to Starbase 173 is almost five days away. I have asked Leiutenant Moreaux and Leiutenant Kelly to give me options that will allow our limited computer resources to use the sensor mask so we can transport the captain ourselves. I'll be meeting with them in just a moment to hear what they've discovered. Oh, yeah... one of the few things that worked 'out of the box' is our ability to convert our secondary drive system for propulsion. Tom said it would only take about two hours to make the necessary changes. I already told him to do it. That way, we can fly at warp 9 indefinately, well...technically speaking. We'll see. End log entry."

Commander Kirk sat complacently in the captain's ready room, behind her desk. He was hoping good news would be coming through the door soon. The light sounds of the door chime told him SOME kind of answer was on the other side of the door. "It's open," Kirk said to the door. The door slid open with a hiss. Tom and Tony came through quickly with smiles. Stephen was beginning to feel better already. His face brightened. "I take it you two have some good news?"

They sat down in the chairs opposite the commander. "Yep," Tony answered simply. "I have to make some changes to the masking program, though...mostly module removal. If I completely remove the interactivity and lower the resolution a bit, we can make it work. I've already run some tests in a simulation." Both Tom and Tony nodded.

"Okay, sounds almost too good to be true, guys." Kirk sounded a bit skeptical. "What's the catch to making all these changes?"

"Well," Tony started, "without interactivity, the mask won't respond to changes in the environment. If we pass by a star or go around an asteroid or something, the lighting or shadows won't change on the object we decide to imitate. It'll stay at the same light level. Also, if we took damage or anything, we wouldn't be able to project that back to anyone scanning us. It would be the same, static image. With the lower resolution, well...that's more for people who are close enough to look at us out a window. The image we project will look kinda blocky up close. They'd know something was up."

"But, Commander," Tom interrupted waving his arms, "we aren't planning on engaging anyone or even getting that close. Pretty much everyone who'll be looking at us will be doing it through long range sensors. They won't see anything's wrong. There is one other downside, though." His hands went down to his lap.

"What's that?" Kirk asked expectantly.

"Well, even with these restrictions, the mask'll chew up a heck of a lot of CPU power. We'll be able to keep propulsion and environmental controls going, and that's about it. The mask is a pretty resource-intensive beast, even if the image we're trying to look like is static."

"Gotcha...but, we can do it, right?" Kirk leaned forward in his chair.

"Absolutely," Tony replied with a nod.

"No worries," Tom concurred.

Stephen slapped the desk with both hands. "Excellent, guys! That IS good news, and we could sure use some. Make it so, gentlemen. Let me know as soon as we're ready to get underway. I need to go ask Mr. Bristol how long it will take us to get to Starbase 173 at maximum warp." Kirk rose from the chair.

The other two followed suit with a "Yes, Sir."