Deep Space Boogie Bundle: Warp Riders Books 1 & 2 by Scott Baron

Author:Scott Baron [Baron, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-05-23T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Chithiid scientist had barely touched the food Hump had put in her lab space before he headed off to his rack. There were so many better things to do than eat right now. She’d found something utterly novel, and for someone like her that was particularly thrilling. This was science, and she was having the time of her life.

It was an utterly unexplainable phenomenon she had stumbled upon, which was precisely the sort of thing those who took up careers in this field longed to find. A mystery. Something unique. A challenge. And the ship’s strange composite hull’s reaction to the seemingly innocuous crystal was all three of those things.

The reaction was relatively minor, but it was utterly fascinating. The glowing crystal somehow shifted the molecular structure of the vessel’s seemingly impervious metal skin. The only thing that affected the solid, yet fluid material.

Goonara took up her small plasma cutter, switched it on, and placed its cutting edge against the little sample she had managed to acquire. That it had taken thousands of tons of white-hot diamond impacting the deck to loosen even the little sliver she’d pulled free was telling. The metal was far more advanced than any material she, or anyone from their fleet, had ever seen.

The cutter’s plasma flame edge sputtered up against the sample. She held it there for a full twenty seconds, then switched the device off to examine the fragment. It was unmarred. Unscorched. Utterly undamaged.

That degree of power would have sliced through solid titanium like butter, but this stuff shrugged it off like a stone bluff ignored a tiny wave slapping against it futilely. Sure, a few thousand years might see a result, but on a normal time frame there would be no noticeable damage.

She had performed variations of this experiment dozens of times with every type of abrasive, corrosive, and heat source imaginable. And every time the results were the same. Every time, except when she added that one unique element to the mix.

Goonara picked up the glowing crystal and clamped it into a portable stand on her worktable. She then slid it close to the metal fragment. At first there was no apparent reaction. But looking closely, she could see the jagged edge droop and soften, just a bit.

She turned on the plasma cutter once more and pulled it across the metal’s surface. This time, a small cut was left in its wake. Not enough to slice the piece in half, but a decent cut all the same. To the naked eye, the damage seemed consistent with a plasma cutter’s usual effect on metal. But Goonara knew that wasn’t the case. She had been performing this experiment repeatedly for hours with different devices, and each time the result was the same.

She reached out and slid the crystal back across the table, distancing it from the damaged sample. No sooner had the glow of the crystal left the metal than it quickly knit itself back together, healing into a solid piece, seemingly undamaged, just as before.

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