Caine took Lemuel’s arm again. “No. Don’t start it. I won’t allow you to give Major Patrone any trouble. Besides, there’s one more thing you might want to consider.”
“Like what?”
“That she’s right.”
Lemuel looked up at Caine, then away. “Yeah. Maybe. Okay. Let’s go.”
They entered a room filled with screens and a few small holotanks. Three sensor operators were adjusting controls, studying results. Standing at the center of their triad, Richard turned, nodded, went back to watching the screens. In the most distant corner, wedged between two consoles, shoulders hunched together, Visser acknowledged them with a tight, perfunctory smile. Had she been wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with the legend “I am a technophobe,” her discomfort could not have been clearer.
Evincing a diametrically opposed set of affinities, Lemuel pushed hurriedly into the suite, shouldered past Downing and almost dropped into the lap of one of the Navy ratings in his single-minded attempt to get at the machines. Opal sidestepped over toward Caine’s side; he felt her shoulder brush into contact with his upper arm and stay there. “Jesus, I see why they call Wasserman ‘Le Mule’ instead of Lemuel. What gives with him? Does he take jerk pills?”
Caine shrugged. “From what I hear, he’s usually less prickly than this. But either way, he’s the real deal when it comes to high-energy physics.”
“But I thought you and Richard had your doubts about his being assigned to the delegation.”
“Yeah, we did. We were worried that he might be an overpraised heir-apparent to the family’s reputation for genius. He’s got a lot to prove if he’s going to be someone other than the nephew of the Wasserman who invented—as much as any one person did—the shift drive.”
“But he’s got the goods?”
“And then some. Mark my words: he’s going to outdo his uncle. He’s rough around the edges, but in all our meetings, it’s been obvious he really knows his stuff. He can almost see the next generation drive.”
“So in the Wasserman family, the lightning of genius struck twice.”
“Looks like it.” Half of the screens starting scrolling off reams of data. Caine stepped forward. “What’ve we got?”
Downing gestured. “Come take a look: first visuals of the Dornaani’s arrival.”
In the largest screen, there was a sudden flash and then a blurred shape arrowed out of view to the left.
Lemuel—by dint of expertise—had effectively taken control of the suite. “Get me the first frame image of that ship, and zoom in on it. Ladar 3-D interpolation and densitometer sweeps?”
“Working through them now.”
Caine leaned forward to study the still image that popped up. “Lemuel, did that ship put out any thrust—did it accelerate—as it arrived?”
“Nope.”
“So it came in moving at that speed?”
Lemuel turned around, a smile on his face and one eyebrow raised. “Yeah—so you understand.”
Caine nodded, staring at the screen again. Opal cleared her throat. “Why is it important that their ship came in moving?”
“Because ours can’t do that. In order to achieve the power levels necessary to effect a shift, our shift carriers have to both accelerate to near-relativistic velocities and then use the energy output of an antimatter reactor. The shift drive uses up every bit of that energy, so when our ships come back into space normal, they’re at full stop.”
“So that means—?”
Lemuel’s tone was almost congenial. “So that means that the Dornaani either don’t need as much energy, or are much better at generating it, because they just came out of shift moving at one hell of a clip. The mere fact that they have any exit velocity means they can generate excess energy—kinetic energy, in this case—before shifting. That means that they might not even need the weeks of near-relativistic preacceleration that our ships require. And here’s another indicator of just how far ahead of us they are: take a close look at the hull design.”
Caine did: it wasn’t at all akin to the long modular frames of Earth’s gargantuan shift carriers. Shaped like a blunted arrowhead with down-angled edges, the Dornaani vessel was essentially a delta-shaped design. As Caine studied the finer details, he noticed what seemed to be vents or intakes on the underside of the ship’s drooping “wings.” “Are those—?”
“Fuel scoops, yeah.”
“And the significance of that is what?” Elena’s question announced her arrival: Caine turned, saw Durniak, Trevor, and Hwang file in behind her.