“Lorgan… what?”
“Exactly. What will it do when it sees Gus coming? He happened to scare that shiny vagabond a while back, while it was hiding behind the sun.”
“You Americans really get around these days!” It is hard to impress the Swiss 
physician, but he is. “And you spell your spacecraft “S-E-X”? What marvelously fun?”
“Like SCIFI isn’t a funny name for a bunch of doctors? Actually it’s spelled capital S-capital E– lower case x,, but pronounced es-ex phonetically and is short for Stellar Explorer.”
“How clever you Americans!” Gus McKinney is mocking a man who is too smart to be mocked.
“Én realité, I think it quite sophomoric, messieurs.”
“Touché Doc. But it’s only between us NASA-types. If the public caught us making fun of SOL, we would lose public support,” Roy states pragmatically.
“But it is in bold letters on the side of the ship!” Details – details. “It seems the public knows very little of what you are doing?”
“Say Gus,” Roy changes the subject, “why don’t you and Fitch prepare our “sexy” machine ready for a quick trip.”
It is back to referencing their escapades on a need-to-know basis.
It is not long before Jean-Luc’s lone{star} Texas patient comes to him 
with concerns concerning her possible return to Eridanus. Even though she is being treated like a princess and “prince” Joyner is taking to Texas like it is the only home he knows, Cerella is homesick.
The fact that Celeste has informed the folks back home, specifically Deke, about Cerella’s relative safety {and bundle of joy}, she would rather catch the next stagecoach to Eridanus… this despite everyone suspecting the contrary.
“Not from this end you aren’t. Unless your people can figure things out back there, you are stuck here, purement et simplement.” The French adverb is fancy window-dressing.
He could not possibly know of all the potential scenarios and his motives may be slightly selfish. But for the time being, she is the intellectual property of the Suisse Conjoined Institute of Fetal Integrity or as the Americans like to refer to it as SCIFI.
Stardate 2053.999 is ending very much like it started.
The NULL Solution =
