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Huge machines with lots of intricate moving parts took up part of the room. The rest held lab benches, their tops covered with yet more equipment.
Lila raced around the room, her nose to the floor.“Me smell bad lizards.”
“Fresh?”I asked.“Are there any here now?”
“No.”
Glitter appeared in midair in her little flying-squirrel body.“We’re alone!”
“Thanks,” I said.
Tark darted forward, weaving his way through the equipment, his head swiveling from side to side. I might know what the equipment I wanted was supposed to do, but everything here looked, well, kind of alien. Tark would find what I wanted before I could, especially since I couldn’t read the names printed on the sides of the various machines.
“Can I talk now?” Vree asked.
“Sure, bud,” Kirel said.
Sul added, “If the frekkers find us in here, we’re frekked whether you’re talking or not.”
He and Raxnor dropped the unconscious lizard. Then Sul stunned the Tula again. “Just in case.”
“No arguments here,” Raxnor growled.
“Zo-Fee!” Tark called over comms, one hand lifted in a wave. “Over here!”
Kirel and I both hurried over. The computer expert turned on the display and plugged a data cord into a slot on the side of the instrument. He attached the other end to his comp and got to work. In only a few moments, English replaced the symbols on the screen.
I surged forward, fingers already moving around the unfamiliar menu. “It’s an x-ray diffractometer, all right. I just need to figure out how to work it.”
Since these instruments weren’t allowed to the general public, there hadn’t exactly been any kind of user manual I could study ahead of time.
“Can anyone help?” Raxnor asked.
“Tark can prepare the sample.” I pulled a small vial of zurilium from one of the outer pockets on my suit and handed it to the engineer. “Look for glass slides we can lay a thin piece of metal foil on. They probably store the size the instrument takes nearby.”
“Got it.” Tark started opening all of the drawers and cabinets in the bench the machine rested on.
I went back to searching the menu. I needed an x-ray of a metal foil instead of an isolated crystal, and all the human machines I’d trained on had different settings for the different types of analysis.
There! Yes! Delight bubbled through me. It felt so damned good to be using my skills.
“I’ve got it!” I punched to select the type of scan I wanted, and a door slid open on the side of the machine. I turned to Tark. “Did you find the slides? I’ll want to stretch a piece of foil over one.”
“Already done.” He handed it to me with an easy grin, and I slotted it into the instrument. I tapped the control screen to start the scan, the door slid closed, and a faint hum filled the room.
“How long?” Raxnor asked.
I winced. I sure as shit hoped this thing was faster than the ones we had on Earth, because we did not have hours to spare. “Not sure, sorry.”
He scowled at the machine, and if fear could have motivated an inanimate object, that thing would have spat out an answer then and there.
But no, the diffractometer was sadly immune to his glare.
“While this is going, let’s try to figure out how to work the atomic 3D printer.” I turned and looked around the room, one of the huge machines in the other half catching my eye. The scale was insanely big compared to the ones I’d seen on Earth, but if the lizards were making industrial-sized amounts of materials?
“Tark, what do you think?” I pointed.
“I’ll check!” He took off, moving eagerly over to the closest machine.
