It was, she now knew, indeed possible to manufacture a virus capable of modifying DNA to her requirements. However, it would be the children of those infected who would have their lifespans shortened and who would die, without senescence, in an approximate age range of between forty and fifty years. Those with such shortened lifespans could have their span increased, however, by the constant administration of drugs. This same virus would not render the recipients infertile, but another virus could be made to achieve that a this infertility continuing into subsequent generations and also amenable to negation by drug therapy. It would also be possible to create vaccines for both viruses, even though, as she considered that, Serene could think of no one who should be so vaccinated beyond herself.

She, the state, would thus be in total control of human lifespan and fertility. Then, while technology continued to advance and as robots and expert computer systems shunted humans aside, the planet would never again be burdened with an excess population. She would, she now decided, hold back on this no longer, but move from laboratory trials to field trials the moment she returned to Earth. Previously, she had considered the possibility of excess population being used for human expansion into the solar system but, in reality, population control became more essential when such populations were moved into environments even more limited in resources than those of Earth.

Serene strolled back to the sofa and sat down, feeling buoyant again a but, as ever, only for a moment or two. She had the future perfectly mapped out in her own mind, but still a large blot marred that map: Alan Saul. Once she had dealt with him, no other human could ever be allowed to get so out of control. No other human would ever obtain such access to personal power.

Argus The bulge of the dressing on the back of Alex's skull was a constant reminder of his recent trip to see Hannah Neumann. He kept trying to reach up and finger it, and frequently had to snatch his hand away once his gloved fingers rattled against the helmet of his heavy spacesuit. Apparently she could only take the biopsy, since that was a surgical technique that required little energy, but the cerebral implant would have to wait. All she had in stock were already assigned, and more needed to be manufactured. This could not be done yet while the whole station was conserving energy: the lights were turned off in the Arboretum, and it and the arcoplexes were now free-wheeling, with no energy being provided to their motors; similarly all manufacturing was closed down and the smelting plants were somnolent in their docks.

Alex felt a degree of relief about that. Even though he had decided to have the implant, the idea of someone cutting into his skull evoked vague and unpleasant memories of the numerous cerebral operations he had undergone back on Earth. Hannah Neumann had been swift to note evidence of this while she scanned his skull prior to the biopsy.

'It's not usually necessary to do this,' she had told him, 'but what lies inside your skull has been altered . . . isn't the same as standard human.'

Standard human?

'So what does that tell you?' he had asked, gesturing to the 3D scan on the nearby screen.

'You've got a micro-wire net inserted to provide electrical stimulation to various brain centres, along with a system of micro-tubules through which various neurochemicals were injected to targeted points,' she had then explained. 'It's all a bit primitive a state-of-the-art about thirty years ago a and it's what they used to reprogramme you and erase your memories. There's also a lot of scarring from subsequent updates, along with the addition of a connector to both networks set in the top of your skull, under your scalp. I imagine you were one of the first: one of the prototypes.'

'Thirty years from that tank,' he had admitted, 'but I don't know if I was one of the first.'

'Putting an implant in your skull is going to require more extensive surgery,' she had continued, 'I'll need to remove much of what has been added, including a couple of chips that are constantly making neuro-blockers and other odd substances. Also, I must make some repairs and some reconnections. It could be that you'll then access old memories. It could also be that your character will change.' She had paused, watching him carefully while displaying a hint of that suspicion of him that others aboard the station tended to show. 'I'll need to put you under close observation, and you won't be able to go back to work for a while.'

Now he was back at work, wondering if he really wanted to go through with that extensive surgery, and observing just what all the spare energy was being used for. He, Gladys, Akenon and Ghort, along with two robots under Ghort's control, were positioned on one corner of the platform made ready to take the Mars Traveller engine. The behemoth itself was sliding slowly past them, almost like an old-time super-tanker drawing past a dock. Such was its sheer scale that it seemed to Alex as if it was the platform he stood upon that was in motion.

The engine was angled in slightly, so its business end would pass through a circular gap allowed in the spherical superstructure of the spaceship. Their team presently waited by a slowly unwinding cable drum a one of eight positioned all across the platform. Once the shock-absorbing base of the Traveller engine passed the platform, every drum would then begin braking, bringing the giant to a halt, while impellers dotted across its surface would begin pushing it into position. Thereafter they would wind in cable to tow it down to its destined resting place.

'It's gonna come down on us like Goliath's boot,' Gladys predicted, 'and turn us into mush.'

'Who's Goliath?' asked Akenon.

'Some fantasy game character,' replied Gladys.

'Actually,' interjected Ghort, 'Goliath was a biblical character, as in "David and Goliath". And, considering the context, "Goliath's sandal" would be more correct.'

'Oh, yeah,' concurred Gladys, 'David was that guy with the spell-hammer and plasma rifle.'

Ghort emitted a low moaning sound and banged the heel of his hand against the side of his space helmet. Alex supposed it was all very well having this instant mental access to the computer library of Argus, but passing on the knowledge thus acquired could be like . . . casting pearls before swine. He then wondered where that phrase had emerged from a and if it might have leaked out of one of those parts of his mind that Neumann seemed to think were now sealed.

Incrementally, the base of the engine came into view over the edge of the platform. Peering across at it, Alex again suffered one of those changes in perspective that seemed a constant while he was working in zero gravity. Now he felt as if he was standing on an elevator platform dropping past some monolithic factory complex. The dome-shaped pellet aggregation plants were now above the platform, while directly opposite him lay the big cylindrical fuel tanks, partially concealed by secured coils of cable and the tied-down fifty-metre-long hydraulic shock absorbers. As these slid past, the spherical start-up fusion reactors then came into view, and next the three-metre-thick layer of foam composite that had been attached to the now practically non-existent central asteroid.

'Braking now,' Ghort announced.

The cable drums were computer controlled, so it was not necessary for anyone to do anything, nor had Ghort's announcement been necessary because they could all feel the sudden vibration through their feet. The cable from their drum a a five-centimetre-thick composite of braided steel and carbon fibre a drew taut over tensioning wheels, above the aggregation plants, to its point of attachment on the other side of the engine. Alex felt the platform push up against his feet as the weight of the engine tugged on it, apparently, as calculated, stretching the column below by nearly eight metres.

Behind the engine, picked out in work lights scattered along the length of the behemoth, clouds of water vapour became visible from impellers firing somewhere out of sight. The engine slowed like a giant train coming into a station, the foam-composite base rising a hundred metres above them, then slowly beginning to swing across.

'Check your tools,' Ghort instructed.

Alex gazed down at the socket driver fixed by his feet, shrugged and picked it up, triggered it to watch the socket already in place spin, and checked its small alert screen. Nothing wrong, all perfectly fine . . . then he remembered to set it in reverse, since his next immediate job was to undo bolts rather than tighten them. Meanwhile, the robots under Ghort's control went over the edge and began hauling up beams and slotting them into sockets all around the platform and, now that the engine was out of the way, Alex could see over to the adjacent section of the outer sphere a directly on the level of the platform about a kilometre and a half away a where the new robots had conjoined themselves into golden centipede forms and were already building inwards the lattice wall that would connect to those same beams. When they were done, the wall would form a section dividing off the half-kilometre-tall hemisphere in which sat the Traveller itself a a wall that would require further strengthening before the engine could be fired up.

'All drums synchronized,' said Ghort, 'we're winding it in.'

Did having an implant incline one thus to make unnecessary statements? Alex wondered.

The Traveller engine now lay perfectly in position above the platform, and it did indeed seem like a massive weight ready to come down and crush them. However, the tug they were to give it was but a small one for, though the platform and column below could take a great deal in the way of impact shock, they didn't want the engine to go bouncing away again. The impetus it was now being given had been precisely calculated so that the shock-absorbing layers, and a series of barbed fittings perfectly lined up below, would negate it.

'Cable detaching a go and get it, Gladys,' Ghort instructed. 'Akenon, Alex a get to it.'

As Gladys launched herself up along the slackened cable, Alex and Akenon strode over to the motorized cable drum and at once began taking out all the bolts holding it in place. Necessarily, because of the huge load it had been under, there were a lot of them. Each bolt he took out, Alex carefully placed in the pouch on his belt, since losing a bolt resulted in a loss of pay a and, besides that, no one wanted heavy lumps of metal floating free when the Traveller eventually did fire up.

Shortly, Gladys was on her way back to them with the end of the cable, while the drum continued to wind in the slack. Using her suit impellers, she fell past, slowing beside one of the newly placed beams sticking out from the platform edge. Here she attached the cable end just as Alex turned a corner on the plate securing the cable drum in place. He paused to look up, saw that the base of the engine now lay only fifty metres above, and was steadily drawing closer. There was little risk to anyone, however, since it was travelling so slowly that anyone could get out of the way quickly enough. The only risk was that all of the cable drums might not be shifted out of the way in time, so the impellers would have to fire up again to stop the engine's descent.

'That's the one I was looking for,' said Akenon, holding up the last bolt.

'Me too,' said Alex.

By now, the drum had ceased turning and a slack length of cable arced its way over to where Gladys had attached the other end. Alex and Akenon followed this out, propelling themselves from the edge of the platform into open vacuum. Ghort followed next, one of his robots heading back, past him, to close its forelimbs around the spindle points of the drum and its motor. Even as it did so, and as he propelled himself out after the rest of his team, the drum started turning again, towing itself along the length of the cable towards the anchor point at the end, guided all the way by the robot, out from underneath the descending mass of the engine.

Grabbing one of the new beams, Alex attached his socket driver to it, then his safety line. He gazed up, past the great descending mass, towards the hole, five hundred metres away, out of which poked the throats of the fusion chambers. He recognized now why some had compared this device to the tower of an ancient cathedral, some place of worship, and felt glad to have retained his capacity for awe.

'No time for gawping,' urged Ghort. 'We've got work to do.'

There was no conventional dimensionality to the virtual world, and so Saul's control over his nascent spaceship was no different wherever he actually located his physical self. But he still retained a human conception of power, where to be at the centre of things was to be physically present at that physical centre. At the touch of his mind, the armoured door swung open, leading into what personnel aboard were already calling his 'inner sanctum'. He stepped inside, leaving the spidergun outside.

No one had seen this place being built, for he had used only robots in its final construction or assembly. The central chamber within was circular. At one side a single acceleration chair hung in reinforced gimbals that were similar in appearance to an orrery, surrounded by curving panoramic screens. He didn't really need these screens but, as with much in his inner sanctum, like the swing-in keyboards and ball controls on the chair arms, they were a backup should he at any time find himself unable to access all the cams and computers of his new ship mentally. He also had to admit to himself that such human access kept him grounded; kept him from losing himself in the world of mind. The rest of the room, but for a cageway leading to rooms above and below, was empty space provided for his leisure, but which he'd yet to equip. Surrounding this central room were four more rooms, all interconnecting: a kitchen area mostly automated, a sleeping area he might never use, a washroom and toilet, and then a final area for storage.

Saul headed across the empty floor to the cageway, not yet required for going down because the room below was empty too a a museum and display area for which he had yet to obtain any exhibits a and now propelled himself to the room above. Here was part of the reason for Hannah's frustration in obtaining the right equipment for her production floor. The room contained five amniotic tanks with specialized cooling systems, also mainframe computing he could separate from the rest of the ship, a surgery containing the most advanced equipment he could obtain and which would soon be in use, small manufactories, robots and other high-tech items galore. Here he could do just about anything that could be done throughout the entirety of Arcoplex Two, though naturally on a smaller scale. He next walked over to the banks of cylinders running on their own independent cooling system, for here too he had moved Earth's Gene Bank, along with hard copies of the genetic data kept on file throughout the ship. Was he retreating here? he wondered. No, he was making himself a fortress. And soon he would move his backups here too.

Returning to the central room, he climbed into the array of gimbals and strapped himself down in the acceleration chair. Suddenly he found himself at a still point, his mind utterly clear, and allowed his consciousness to expand throughout the entire ship. He studied its spherical skeleton; the two arcoplexes, the arboretum cylinder and a fourth spindle for another arcoplex were the spokes of the old station wheel. Another arcoplex spindle under construction, which extended above, and the column for the Mars Traveller extending below formed the wheel's axle. He then focused on some of the detail of the engine itself, which had now been attached, both visually and also in the virtual world.

His new robots had finished constructing the lattice wall inwards from the exterior skeleton ready to attach to the platform for the Traveller engine, and currently human teams and older-style robots were bolting down hydraulic ram plates at the edge of the platform, and reeling out the last of the optics and power cables to reintegrate the engine with the ship's systems. In the platform-support column robots were now securing themselves to beams while other human workers began streaming away. They had been affixing pipes leading to the location where he intended to place auxiliary fuel tanks a which was a job that could now wait. Meanwhile, the engine warm-up routine and diagnostics had been running for some time, and soon it would be time for the dragon to wake.

Next Saul focused his attention upwards. Lying midway between the old station wheel and the upper pole of the ship was the location planned for the four main weapons. The two railguns were already in place and their magazines filling; most of the maser, which had previously seemed to be just scrap metal, had been salvaged and rebuilt. However, the fourth, uncompleted, weapon was what drew his attention.

Working with a team of twenty humans and forty robots, including two proctors, the Saberhagen twins had been building their plasma weapon there, but had now ceased work and locked everything down. Just like him with his empty rooms for future expansion, they had incorporated extra capacity to allow further development of their latest weapon. Studying their plans, Saul was impressed. Right at that moment, not even he could think of any improvements to make, and he was especially pleased to see that, while they had been installing the heavy electromagnets and power supply they had also detailed a team within Arcoplex Two to manufacture the plasma 'caps'. When completed, this lethal device would be able to deliver the Newton impact of a railgun, along with an EM blast and heat equivalent to a plug of matter magically extracted from the core of the sun.

Saul's main attention next strayed into Tech Central, which lay just above him. Le Roque was striding back and forth, his face sheened with sweat as he organized the lockdown of the ship. Those who had finished their work were busy ensconcing themselves in secure areas, all of them in either spacesuits or breach-survival suits. All loose items were being secured, the biggest chore being handled by humans in EVA units stowing the last small chunks of the Argus asteroid in an ore carrier, before internal cable-mesh sheets would be tightened down over them.

'I'm repositioning in six minutes,' Saul warned him, 'but this time I'll be using the Rhine drive, so there should be no problems.'

'The drive?' Le Roque queried. 'Why?'

'I can't use the steering thrusters to reorient.'

As the man looked thoroughly bemused, Saul decided to put him out of his misery. 'I need to reorient the axis of the ship ready for approach,' he explained. 'And, with the vortex generator running, we happen to be sitting in a massive gyroscope. I calculate it would take the output, at full power, of about four Traveller engines to counter the angular momentum.'

'Ah, I see,' Le Roque replied.

Because of the angular momentum of the vortex generator, it had quite simply become impossible to change the ship's axial orientation at all. However, that situation would change once the Mach-effect drive was operative.

As was his habit, Saul now checked up on those he cared most about or, rather, those he allowed his human self to care about. Hannah and Var he found huddled together in one of the mobile overseer's offices that had recently clamped itself down on the new lattice wall.

'That's not a particularly safe place to be,' he observed to them.

'Argus Station . . .' began Hannah, then paused before continuing, 'Nowhere aboard this ship is particularly safe.'

The new usage Saul had tried subtly to promote a calling it a ship rather than a station a wasn't catching on very well, and he realized that at some point he would have to rename his vessel.

'Where is safe these days?' Var asked. 'I suspect it's a very debatable point whether the chances of the people here getting killed are any higher than the chances of those on or around Earth.'

'You know exactly what I mean, sister,' replied Saul. 'The insulation on an overseer's office is enough to withstand the extremes of space, but hardly adequate for where you are now.' He made some rapid calculations. 'The temperature inside there is quite likely to exceed sixty Celsius.'

'We're prepared.' Hannah reached over and opened a fridge door to expose numerous bottles of the same beer brewed in Arcoplex One and served at the Olive Tree in the Arboretum. 'We have our suits with their cooling systems too.' She tugged at the collar of her own suit.

'You should also check out the power supply here,' Var added, her tone slightly superior.

Saul did so, and saw that it was ready to switch over to a stack of all-but-depleted rectifying batteries. As these converted the heat to stored electricity, they would produce a cooling effect. He also realized that these two women were ganging up on him.

'That's all very well, but what about stray debris, which would punch straight through those walls of yours,' he lectured, feeling like a spoilsport martinet parent. 'You are simply putting yourselves in unnecessary danger.'

'Any asteroid debris will have to get through the station wheel first,' Var observed, 'and in that respect you are in more danger from them than us.'

'You know very well I wasn't talking about asteroid debris but any still unsecured items within the station wheel.'

'I'm checking stress-sensor readings,' said Var stubbornly, 'and, like you, I like to be at the centre of any work I've been overseeing.'

A sniping reference there to his inner sanctum.

'You can check stress readings from anywhere inside the station.' Saul realized at this point that he had almost unconsciously assigned just a small portion of his human mind to this dispute and that it was now being merely stubborn and just wanted to win a pointless verbal contest. He reabsorbed it and, using pure intellect, assessed their chances of getting hurt as only a little above those in the wheel's accommodation units. And anyway, in the end, how dictatorial did he want to become?

'We're staying here,' insisted Var, 'to see the show.' She reached for a bottle out of the fridge, unscrewed it, then had some problems sucking out the beer. Apparently such bottles were meant to be drunk while the ship was under acceleration. In irritation she pulled the bottle away from her mouth and added, 'If you don't like it, you'll have to send some of Langstrom's men or even some of your robots to remove us.'

'That will not be necessary.' He was already drawing himself away mentally, aware that, even though the human part of him would miss them if they got killed, their loss would have only minimal effect on his overall plans. 'Enjoy the show.'

It was time. Saul observed that the asteroid chunks were now fully secured and the EVA workers positioned where he wanted them. With a thought he initiated the Rhine drive. Magnetic fields torqued, space glowing red and then winking out all about the ship, and the momentary transition raised a feeling inside him like deja vu. Afterwards, the stars blinked back into existence all around, and he checked the axial positioning of his ship. It was perfect.

'Mars Traveller start-up will commence in precisely two minutes,' he announced to all throughout the ship. 'You have only that amount of time to finish securing yourselves.'

The Traveller engine reported just a few faults a ones that were more than compensated for by the redundancy in its systems. The seconds began to drag for him, but he suppressed that purely human sense of frustration for, if he allowed it to continue, the ensuing days of acceleration, course changes and deceleration would seem interminable.

'Firing,' he finally announced.

The engine cleared its various throats and stuttered into life, then it bellowed as it blasted out a fusion flame half a kilometre long. Saul's acceleration chair reoriented within its gimbals, and the acceleration pushed him gently down into it. Debris seemed to be shifting all in one direction, but in actuality remained stationary relative to the ship. Saul focused on a single spanner striking the edge of Arcoplex One and tumbling on down, falling straight through the new lattice wall only a hundred metres away from Hannah and Var, before striking the outer skeleton on its way out, then deforming and melting in the glare of fusion flame.

'We're on our way,' he whispered, purely to himself, for only now did some residual human part of him feel that the journey had truly begun. Then, just seconds later, serendipity took a hand and reminded him of everything that lay behind him.

'Fuck it,' he said, preparing to shut down the Traveller engine and divert power throughout the station back into the Rhine drive; preparing to run.

It was a gravity-wave detector aboard the observation satellite orbiting parallel to Earth that alerted him. The anomaly was one it couldn't quite process because it lay so far out of the parameters its processing had been devised to handle. Secondary visual images came in as a confirmation a the tracking intermittent because the object was moving so fast. One of the three ships had left the Traveller construction station, engaged a drive similar to Rhine's creation and was now on its way out. He glimpsed jerky images of the shiny bubble of an Alcubierre warp heading directly towards them. Travelling at sub-light speed, it was behind the signals from the satellite, but it could still be here in well under an hour.

Extrapolating from the size of its warp bubble, he realized that it was the smaller ship that had left a the prototype a the one with a very vulnerable drive ring and with other combat disadvantages. Still, it was unexpected and it was a danger, for Galahad might have decided to send it to attack in the hope that it would cripple Saul's ship, even though the attacking ship would itself surely end up being destroyed.

'One of Galahad's ships is on its way out towards us,' he stated over the intercom, 'and it may be that we will have to run.' Really, he needed to say no more, and there were no preparations that needed to be made since personnel who were already secure for the thrust of the Traveller engine were over-prepared for inertia-less flight. He could go right now, but he waited. If the other ship continued on this course, it had a very high risk of knocking out its own drive bubble on asteroid debris on the way. Saul calculated tactics. Maybe the intention was to use this approaching ship's drive bubble to stop or attempt to damage Argus, in which case it would have to halt first, then come in on a new trajectory.

'Paul,' he said, 'we have partial on the Mach-effect drive?'

'We do,' replied that proctor.

'Give me stats.'

The figures arrived in an instant, and Saul felt a brief sense of tension dispersing. If the other ship used its warp bubble to knock out his bubble, the problem thereafter would have been manoeuvrability, since his ship carried a lot of inertia so could not dodge bullets easily. However, the partial Mach-effect they possessed, combined with the Traveller engine and steering thrusters, meant that, after both drive bubbles were knocked out, the other ship would have no advantage in manoeuvrability. And if it came within range of the Saberhagens' weapons, it would end up being destroyed.

Next, as Saul continued to make his preparations, the other ship halted some half a million kilometres in from the orbit of Mars. For a moment Saul thought it must have struck something, but swift analysis of the gravity anomaly assured him that it hadn't. In the next moment he realized what was going on. Galahad had sent out an observer which, if required, might attempt to stop Saul leaving the solar system. Within a matter of weeks, if his estimations regarding what he could see at the Traveller construction station were correct, the other two ships would be able to follow. It was therefore worth spending time gathering necessary materials and continuing to build his ship inside the solar system, Saul felt a even at risk of attack from this small ship a for a long and perilous journey lay ahead. However, its two sister ships were not worth risking so, henceforth, he would ensure the Rhine drive was sufficiently powered up to engage before those other two craft arrived.

'We're okay for now,' he announced. 'It's just an observer.'

As he sent images to all the screens and delegated a smaller part of his mind to deliver a commentary on what had happened, he felt a deep disquiet. He had been too arrogant on occasion before, so what might he have missed this time?

8.

Impossible Robots Even with our own comlifers and the rapid development of cyber technologies, nothing yet has been developed to match Alan Saul's 'conjoining robots'. The reasons posited for this by those working in robotics have been of the same tone: he was lucky, the reports on their efficiency were exaggerated, or even that the robots never really existed. However, that Saul was able to turn Argus Station into an interstellar vessel in such a short time is undeniable, and the truth is perhaps difficult to accept. Alan Saul was a genius even before he was turned into what we now call a comlifer. Every time we have tried to take people with similar mental advantages and do the same with them, the result has always been disastrous a the recipient of the cerebral technology and AI mental template rapidly self-destructing or going insane, or turning into a moron. We must accept that Alan Saul was unique and we should not slide into a denial of what he managed. For our future, and for the sake of us all, we must believe in the impossible a and similarly achieve it.

Earth The image on the screen was as clear as anything broadcast locally, yet its source lay millions of kilometres away, focused on by the telescopes aboard the Vision and relayed back here. Serene felt an extreme frustration with the clarity of it all, for screen images as detailed as this had been, ever since she assumed total power over Earth, ones of scenes she could affect at once. However, she could not touch Argus Station, she could not touch this ship Alan Saul was building, or at least not yet.

'What are they doing?' she asked tightly.

'Exactly what the tactical assessment predicted, ma'am. They're taking on more materials,' said Bartholomew. 'Professor Calder should be able to give you more detail on that.'

Calder cleared his throat then, in dry tones, explained, 'The Argus asteroid, as we see, is nearly all gone. It was mostly nickel iron, so Saul will need other materials. His EVA units, robots and work teams are currently using demolition charges and cutting equipment to take apart a rubble pile consisting of a wide variety of metallic ores, including some radioactives.'

Calder leaned forward, past Serene, and made some adjustments with a ball control, bringing the focus in closer so that now they could see the conglomerate of the rubble pile lying just hundreds of metres away from the ship's outer skeleton. One-man EVA units a spherical machines sporting a pair of arms and claws to the fore a were ferrying chunks of the pile in through a gap in the skeleton, while robots of a kind Serene recognized were carrying other lumps across and down into a smelting-plant dock. However, there were things there she did not recognize, and the sight of them made her skin crawl. Things that looked like golden centipedes were crawling over the rubble pile and disassembling it.

'What the hell are they?' she demanded.

'Some new form of robot, ma'am,' said Calder. 'Now we've managed to get a close look at them, I can confirm that they are the reason the outer skeleton of the ship was built so fast a but previous images weren't clear enough for us to see them. I have my robotics staff analysing the data. An initial report suggests conjoining robots: single units that can join up into larger wholes.'

'We have nothing like that?' said Serene.

'No,' Calder agreed, 'the degree of programming sophistication is not available to us as yet.'

Serene turned on him. 'And why not?'

He gazed at her steadily, obviously reassessing the snap answer he had been about to give. 'We have been working with already known methods to build our defences and ships as quickly as possible, rather than apply resources to that kind of research and development, ma'am. However, now we know that Saul can build robots like this, and now we are close to completing the two remaining ships, I have assigned a team to work on a similar project.'