While Nick was exploring a physical relationship with a sexy alien, the food situation was stabilizing. The Arrurrans had set up an entire housing complex in a small base on the inner moon of the gas giant Owarra, and over a hundred fuakalas had already been dropped off in their new home. There was talk of expanding it so that the entire population could move there if they wanted, but nothing had been finalized and there wasn't an official offer yet.

Nick really didn't have a lot he had to do beyond manage the printer queues and a few other things related to Petra and the ship. So, he had a lot of free time. Sana had a fair bit less, at least when there weren't any accidents or space battles. "Doctors love to be unneeded," she had assured him, though she spent a fair bit of time studying the germs and viruses of the four species aboard. "Preventative medicine is the best medicine," was another of her sayings.

She seemed happy enough to explore human biology in much more intimate detail in the evenings, though. Sana said that she intended to keep their physical relationship separate from their work relationship, but she didn't mind spending time talking with him socially, either. She asked many questions about Earth and its cultures. Nick could only answer for American culture, but he happily did his best to fill her in.

It was hard to tell whether there was an emotional part to their relationship or not. Nick liked Sana, but he wasn't in love or anything. He was starting to wonder how she felt, but whenever he had a specific question, she seemed happy to answer him point-blank. It was nice to skip all the bullshit, but he did have to be careful not to ask a question unless he was willing to hear the answer. She bruised his ego more than once, but he decided to man up and deal with his own shit.

* *

After another ten days or so, the situation had stabilized enough that the ship could be spared away from Ooafa for the weeks required to go hire or buy more ships. Even better, the Arrurrans had managed to provide an entire shipment of rare elements. In exchange for this, the Visitors, as they were collectively called by the Arrurrans, loaned one of the shuttles and two Goldaskians, including a spare pilot they had recruited from the exiles. There was an understanding that only the Goldaskians would do any disassembly and reassembly in the course of studying the craft. They also made it clear that they would be taking the shuttle back when the Kalash-Quovo returned, and they expected it to be functional.

To Gooraroo and the conglomerate of interests he had assembled, that was clearly worth a fortune in exotic materials. They weren't even bothered that the shuttle had had crucial components of its weapons removed in advance—they seemed to have expected it, which was reasonable of them. Between that and ingots manufactured and gathered from Ooafa, the ship was heavily laden, but the important point was that Nick finally had enough resources to get Petra to make a lot of things he had been wanting for a while.

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Another eight Arrurrans and four more Goldaskians came aboard, and were granted significantly less access to parts of the ship. There were always at least a couple of crew watching their every move, which was exhausting, but trust was earned. It helped that the new Arrurrans argued a lot with Grrmyip and Yiyirari and each other. Unless it was all an impressive act, the Arrurrans were not cooperating with each other well enough to be plotting anything.

As for their course, they had decided on a compromise: they would head for Galgazor, but search hundreds of systems along the way. It would slow them down dramatically, but the hope was that they would find a world with suitable ships before they reached the system connected by instant communications to the greater galaxy. And Nick would have plenty of time to print out wonders and marvels for the various races. After a final check with the populations, the Kalash-Quovo headed in the direction of Galgazor.

He spent several days with Geh!kin, Sana, Yiyirari and Grrmyip, where they went over their wish lists. Every hour or so, the ship would announce that a system was empty, or had no useful planets with oxygen, and so forth. Using those announcements as breaks, Nick would go off to get some privacy, and hunt through Petra's menus to see what was possible. The others grumbled about it, but accepted that he was not willing to let them see Petra's menus for themselves. It slowed things down tremendously, but he was pretty sure that he would be revealing far too much if he gave them free access even to the list of options.

Everyone was in agreement that a Medical Repair Swarm Model 331 was the most valuable trade item that Petra would be able to produce in a reasonable time frame. It was the green glowing swarm that had been used to heal him after Rockhunter crashed. Some was consumed by each patient, but a lot of it seemed to be reusable, given that they got back the majority of the stuff the Ooafans spent to revive him. However, that idiot marine blasted the storage system for it to bits during the attack on Petra's dungeon.

There were four printers on board ship, the rest on Ooafa. Nick started printing another printer, the gear to make the green swarm, a language block for Petra, and more food. I should always have at least one printer printing another printer. Man, try saying that five times fast after a few beers. Everything else would have to wait a while.

Apparently, Grrmyip's father had bumped scanners and sensors high up on his priority queue—particularly scientific instruments. The idea was, even if the Arrurrans could do nothing else with whatever weird kinds of radiation the aliens used, if they could at least detect them, that would give them a serious leg up on developing technology. Nick checked with the Goldaskians about what scanning technology they had already, and together they decided on a kind of scanner one tech level lower to offer to the Arrurrans.

It reminded Nick of a meme where somebody asked, "if you could have only one magic spell, and you were the only person in the world with magic, what would you choose?" There were loads of different answers: Healing, Lightning Bolt, Invisibility, and so on. But one girl said, "Detect Magic." When commenters asked her why, she explained, "So long as I can see magic, I can figure out how it works and make all the magic spells!" Nick figured that the Arrurrans were using the same philosophy as that girl.

I wish I had her here to pick her brains—she was smart. Maybe I'll do some online polls or something when I get home, to help me figure out what to do. I mean, governments would spam the hell out of a vote, but just to get ideas, maybe.

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