The Forward Sensor Room

[rosetto 0]

Sal had oddly chosen to remain on QoB. The captain was aware of his reasoning, however, the rest of the crew, save Parsons, had not been informed. After the crew had been swept away by the transport beam, Sal walked quietly to the forward compartment of QoB where several banks of sensor panels lined the wall. In the center of the room was a circular gangway which led down to the torpedo launch bay. Sal walked around it and sat at one of the consoles and began typing. When Sal saw the 'blip' that Troy had seen, he immediately started a sensor record of 'intruders'. Basically, it was a jerry-rigged tricorder interface that enabled them to track every action taken by the Bynars with them being unaware that they were being scanned. To them it would appear to be a routine synchronous function of QoB as it orbitted the planet.

 

One thing was certain. Manning trusted no one and this ideology was now becoming reasonable to Sal as he glanced up from his work every few seconds to watch the Bynars like a fly on the wall. He chuckled quietly to himself as Troy toyed with them. Sal had encountered the Bynar on Titus V during one of the Federation's many failed campaigns. They always seemed to have an agenda of their own which, albiet logical, was usually not obvious.

 

Sal continued recording and typing away. Several sub-routines started up and his displays now filled with artifacts of the Zoalus. One such routine was analyzing the hundreds of samples of glyphs in an attempt to make sense out of the language. It was not simply a matter of determining individual characters or words but to give meaning to their content. The archaeologists had established few frames of reference from which to work which was why, Sal thought, they had made such little progress in ten standard years. It all seemed to be jibberish and non-sensical. Sal's program, he'd hoped, who derived a pattern which would lead to a better understanding of their language; a clearer picture of what had actually happened to them.