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Day Two

Copyright (c) FarmWolf's player

Felix awoke well rested the next morning, for all the members of the transwarp team had been given the day off and he had slept later than usual. He looked over at Kisara and saw that she was sleeping peacefully. Looking at her, he fondly remembered the events of the previous evening. After a moment, he headed to the rec park down the trail, reviewing in his mind the things he had planned for his day off.

Felix found a small waterfall, checked its temperature, and stepped under. When his fur was completely soaked, he stepped out and accessed a soap dispenser behind a door in a false tree. After Felix had worked up a lather all over him, he went back under the waterfall. With some scrubbing, the biodegradable soap flowed away into a small pool to be recycled.

After shaking thoroughly, the chief pilot trotted away to an area with warm simulated sunbeams and a nice breeze. By the time he was nearly dry Kisara had arrived at the park. They touched noses in greeting and Felix went for his morning run while Kisara availed herself of a large, deep pool in a rock.

* * *

By the time Felix had finished his morning run and had his morning nap, Kisara was ready for breakfast. They returned to their den, where Kisara called up the news on a holo display.

"Come and see this, Felix," she called. "We've made headlines everywhere."

Felix padded over and saw a stack of triumphant proclamations.

"The media can be so caught up in the moment," Felix observed. "They hail this as the pinnacle of scientific achievement, but it's only the beginning. We have a long way to go."

"And at each step, the reporters can hype it up even more."

Felix chuckled, "Exactly." He went to the replicator alcove and ordered breakfast for two, then returned to the terminal and set one portion beside Kisara, who was still engrossed in news articles. He brought the other over to the table in the center of the cave. Felix picked up a slimpad, settled himself in a chair, and called up the latest novel in his favorite science fiction series.

They read until lunchtime, pausing occasionally to discuss some aspect of Felix's history-making flight, or how Kisara's team could improve the transwarp drive. They had lunch, then, at Kisara's suggestion, went down to the propulsion lab.

"We don't have to work on anything," she told him, "but I wanted to look over some of the flight logs and upcoming test schedules without feeling like we're on a deadline. It might give us a better perspective for when we go back to work tomorrow."

Felix had been thinking along similar lines himself. "I haven't been in the lab quite as much as I'd like. There were a couple of things I wanted to check."

They'd been reading logs for about fifteen minutes when some of their fellow teammates poked their muzzles in.

Kelvin Sirta, Kisara's chief warp field physicist, said, "We looked all over for you," as his gaze drilled into them. "Imagine our surprise when your scents led us here."

"Yeah," piped up Felix's ground crew commander, a female by the name of Andrea Sitka. "We suspected the chief engineer and chief pilot would want to spend their day off working on the next phase of the program."

"We're not really working--"

"So we decided we had to do something to give you the break you deserve," Andrea interrupted, her brown eyes gleaming like her sleek black coat.

Two other team members stepped forward, one holding some drinks, the other a basket of snacks.

"No excuses, now," Andrea said, flashing them a grin. She turned and led the way out of the lab. The team members crowded around Felix and Kisara, giving them no choice but to follow. They left the file room behind, made their way up a ramp to the habitat level, and settled themselves under some inviting trees.

The celebration they had begun the previous evening quickly resumed. Felix was pleased to find that his surroundings no longer felt surreal in the presence of his friends. He and Kisara spent the next few hours chatting with the others and helping themselves to the occasional drink or snack. The talk was mostly of a general nature, but often skipped back to the transwarp project--they were scientists, after all.