J. B. Tilton/Page 5
ELEVEN
"Is it always this crowded in here?" Paige asked as the group sat down to their meal.
"It's lunch time," Trip said. "But there are usually a few people in here most of the time."
"Meat loaf, huh?" Piper questioned as they looked at their meal.
"Yeah," Trip said. "It's one of the better meals here. Personally, I'd prefer a good steak or a nice catfish. But you know what they say. Variety is the spice of life."
"This tastes funny," Phoebe said, taking a bit of her meat loaf. "I mean, it's not bad. It just tastes different. Do you guys prepare it differently somehow?"
"She's right," Piper said, taking a bite. "What kind of spices is your cook using? This has some kind of under taste to it that I can't quite place."
"Oh," Trip said, "guess I should have warned you about that. Actually, it's resequenced food."
"Resequenced?" Paige asked.
"Yes," Trip said. "You see, we can take just about any object and break it down into its basic molecular structure. Then the resequencer can rearrange the molecules into any form we want. Warp coil conduits, hull plating, food, whatever we want. We do carry regular food but this helps us to save on cargo space. Most of the meals are resequenced food."
"So you just press a button and get whatever you want?" Phoebe asked.
"Well, it's a bit more complicated that that," Trip said. "The computer has to be programmed with the proper genetic code and molecular sequence. That can be a bit tricky."
"So, why 'Trip'?" Paige asked.
"It's simple," Trip said, smiling. "My daddy was named Charles. So was his daddy. Triple, get it?"
"Interesting," Piper said. "That T'Pol seems to be a barrel of laughs."
"Oh, you get used to the Vulcans after a while," Trip said. "They can be kind of annoying, though. They think humans aren't advanced enough to be traveling in space. They think we should stay in our own back yard for the next couple of hundred years."
"She seems to have a single mindedness about most things," Piper said. "That can get on your nerves."
"Oh, you should have seen her when she first came on board," Trip said. "She's actually mellowed some since then. I guess working around humans all this time has had an affect on her."
"How long has Earth been able to travel into deep space?" Phoebe asked.
"Well," Trip said, thinking for a minute, "about ten years after World War III, Zephram Cochran built the first warp engine. He could only travel at warp one, though. That's the speed of light. It wasn't until a few months ago that we broke the warp five barrier."
"Warp five?" questioned Piper.
"That's what we call faster than light speed," Trip said. "Warp one is the speed of light. Warp five is about two hundred fourteen times the speed of light. We can go places pretty fast these days."
"Two hundred fourteen times the speed of light?" Phoebe asked. "I can't even imagine something going that fast."
"So," Trip said, "is it true what you said? You're all witches?"
"That's right," Piper said. "Our mother was a witch. So was our grandmother. We sort of inherited our powers from them."
"Boy," Trip exclaimed, "I thought that was just something from stories and movies. I mean, not many people even believe in such things today."
"Certainly not T'Pol," Paige said. "She acts like if you can't see it or touch it then it doesn't exist."
"Oh, the Vulcans are devoted to pure logic," Trip said. "They believe that things like emotions are a detriment to civilized races. If you can't analyze it under a microscope then it's not worth the time."
"She'd have a field day with us," Phoebe said. "Some of the things we've encountered totally defy the…."
Suddenly a klaxon began to sound throughout the ship. A voice came over the intercom.
"Intruder alert in engineering. Security to engineering immediately."
"Come on," Trip said, jumping up from the table. "If that thing is in engineering it could destroy the entire ship."
"It's a good thing we stopped by our quarters and got the spell," Phoebe said, pulling the spell out of her pocket. "Looks like we're going to need it."