Page 40 - The Chronicles Ser2 (6-10)

one of the larger equatorial island chain that might prove problematic, but otherwise we are ready
to go” Henri responded.

The two of them went over the revised schedules together and came to an agreement as to the
order the changes needed to be implemented to create the features they wanted. It was a good
feeling for Alicia to be able to delegate itineraries like this. It left her time for her personal life. It had
been two years since her mate had passed away and the rest of her family were becoming worried.
It was uncommon for a female to be without a mate for so long. But she, for her part, felt no urge to
find a suitable mate in the time. She was fast approaching her races time equivalent to human’s
menopause. So any mate would have to be a “soul” partner who had already had children from
other marriages. Her recently deceased mate had been her third marriage and had resulted in four
offspring, Uther being the youngest. That could be why she felt compelled to give him the best
possible start in life that she could. Untharans were basically descended from a warm blooded
reptile ancestor. However, unlike the great reptilians of old Earth, their ancestor had developed a
sparse fur coat and long manes. This was realised in the modern Untharans as a ridge of stiff hair on
the crown of the head, longer in females than males. She was a cross breeding with the more
Human like Genovan (her mother). So she also had faint hair patches on her body with a smoother
skin than most Untharan females. Curiously, this had made her more attractive to Untharan males
than her own kind. During her puberty she had had to fight off many suitors and became an object
of envy among the other girls. Her previous mates had all been Untharan, but this time she wanted a
change. Another Hybrid race might be a good choice. She had found herself strangely attracted to
the Nephel, in particular Humerus. He had been without a mate now for over half his adult life. He
was young when he had taken his first mate and was not affronted to talk about that. His second
mate had been killed during a survey mission only a year or so ago. She would take the approach
slowly to begin with…
(Authors Note: Mid-life Untharan females can be very persistent in hounding a suitable mate. Like
human females they have a “ticking clock” of viability. So as they approach that ending of
reproductive ability their efforts get very frenetic.)

Lisa, her Flutvarn name was almost unpronounceable by others, was making a detailed
examination of the control circuitry of the “Seeder” as they had come to call the Alien device. It was
made to create various modulated forms of radiation that would affect growth and composition of
Biological Matter. That much had been gleaned from the “Manual”. Even if they only managed to get
it around 20% operational, the effect on the initial Bio-seeding with microbes could be greatly
accelerated. The EMP outburst had proven that. Although an Electronics specialist, she did have a
subsidiary education in Bio-logics. Humerus seemed to have confidence she would be able to
unravel this mystery, so was determined to prove him right. Her assistant, a young Delevan male
called Norvik, was tinkering with one of the emitters from the object that had started to smoke
during the EMP release. The circuitry was crystalline and used Polaron Energy to power it.

“Miss Lisa; I’ve found the damaged area. It might be possible to use slivers of Krall memory crystal to
repair the damage, but we cannot reproduce the replacement “fibres” to the same finesse as the
originals, so the results could be unpredictable to say the least. I would even go so far as to say that
the original purpose of this circuit was as some form of fuse” he said adding “To that end I suggest
making the replacement in some sort of ceramic cradle to make changing it out easier in future. The
makers probably just changed the whole emitter.”

“Good idea Norvik. Perhaps we should look for similar circuits and do the same to them also. After
all we don’t know for certain if any other examples of the device are around now after all this time.
I’ll get the Techs in Engineering to try the new matter printing units to make the replacements. Do
you think you can work up some schematics for them?”