The star, Torc, came slowly into view from behind the planet, Hirst, like a curious child peeking around a door. Heralding that the Season of Lights was over, and more importantly, that the Glint had things to do. An orbital dockyard's foundations became lit for the first time by the stars rays, bare scaffolding gleamed silver, UPG rockets could be seen ferrying workers to and from the dock. Several smaller vessels broke off from the rockets and accelerated out to space, mining equipment stowed on their sides.

The largest moon, Tint, was a hum of activity. Over the season workers had remained and expanded the mining facilities. A large silo filled what had been a strip mined hole, a large iris door concealing it's contents. A POI lander could be seen loading up tired labourers, to return to Plinth for the warm season.

Yjantai had less visible projects to be seen. A keen observer could possibly pick up strange waves on radio waves and non visible light spectrums if they thought to check. Sequestered away in a lab, new technology was being tested. Behind several layers of leaded glass two Glintish could be seen surreptitiously hiding behind a desk, in the adjoining room a machine could be heard humming.

"Well, nothing blew up so that's a win." commented Naytani, as she glanced above the desk.

"Only technically Nayt, we still don't know if it worked, and I doubt it's supposed to screech like a batryx when it turns on!" Said Stuhkey anxiously as he climbed out from further under the desk.

"Oh come on, for our first M:E generator, not having a cascading reaction is huge! I had initially calculated there was a 13.333 percent chance of that happening." She cajoled, "Besides, it worked. We just charged those new power banks in 5 minutes, that's enough power to run Yjantai for a day!"

"So we can put it in the new ship?"

"Oh Glisht no. Not until that reaction chance is below zero point five percent, I'll go over the data and see what we can change, and you can see if we just killed ourselves with radiation."

"I was already doing that, but thanks for telling me my job. Considering that neither of our pelts have sloughed off, I'd say we're ok for now on radiation, but there are some other strange readings that got recorded." Ears swiveling, Stuhkey continued. "By the way how did you come up with this generator so fast, it was just the beginning of Lights when you found out a M:E would even be needed."

Naytani paused, a sheet of numbers in her hand, then sighed and said. "I saw it, on the human ship. When we first glimpsed him dismantling that asteroid I got one good look at the side of its interior. I didn't know what it was at the time, but I remember seeing bars of light next to it, like some sort of gauge. Once we returned, and found out we needed one, I remembered it. I didn't copy it exactly, couldn't see the inner workings but I could see cables and a large conveyor access leading to it."

Taking a breath, she continued.

"From there I put together that it couldn't be an antimatter-matter generator but a matter to energy. I questioned every physicist I could on how to possibly start a M:E conversion resction then designed something to contain that. Turns out it's not too difficult to get a M:E conversion going, the hard part is stopping it."

"How is that the hard part, can't it just be turned off by cutting the po-" Stuhkey started to say then growing alarmed "Wait is it still going right now?" As he realised the flaws in trying to cut power to a machine generating it.

"I may have stolen some notes from an alien but I'm not a fool. I've got the fuel rod of iron suspended in a vacuum chamber by several electric magnets. So long as its generating power, the chamber is kept in vacuum and the fuel suspended where the conversion to energy can't spread to the generator itself." Gesturing with a long metal tool towards the generator, she said. "If it's stopped, it's safe. Now let's crack it open and see if anything is damaged or changed."

Stepping over hoses and cables, she used the tool to unlatch a door in the side of the machine. A pungent smell of rust and ozone soon filled the room. Inside the conversion chamber a pile of dust was all that remained of what used to be a solid cylinder of iron.

"I guess a reaction that isn't antimatter based will be a hundred percent efficient. Nothing looks broken though, and the energy collectors don't show any wear." Naytani mused. "But extremely hot, and so is the casing."

--------------

Meanwhile at the Yjantai research building, Saule and Wensly went over the layout of the Daring Leap. Their extended use of the Daring Leap, past what it had been designed for had highlighted several areas that could be drastically improved on.

"It'll need more efficient air filters, they nearly caught on fire from all the fur you and Stuhkey shed." Saule commented, outlining several places on the design. "Also some way to keep us in shape, I don't want to be climbing hills every day in between missions just to maintain muscle mass."

"The air filters aren't the issue, keeping them clean and finding something to do with the waste is. Everytime we jettison waste materials, a miniscule amount of air is lost. It doesn't normally affect missions, but with the length of the new ones in the works, it may pose a risk. Especially if anymore aliens show up and send us on year long voyages that weren't meant to happen." Wensly rebutted.

"An onboard hydroponics would help replace the lost air, and help with sustaining the crew. But at that point we may as well just strap engines to our research station."

For several hours they bounced ideas and tweaks off each other, writing the good ones down on a sheet, with a note in bold at the top.

-For Naytani, just some ideas-

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And so several weeks passed, Naytani hammered the potential failure rate of her MTE generator down to a two percent chance, and it quickly became known in the lab as the Me Too Please or METP, as requests from the UPG and POI soon poured in for it. After all the requested Yjantai ones had been made, of course. Stuhkey discovered a new way to detect signals based on the emissions from the generator, and had started experimenting with fibre optics and using different waves of the light spectrum to send messages. An entrepreneur in POI heard of his research and signed a deal with him to start laying cables down in Yjantai waters if he'd be given a license, to then do so for the POI and UPG. Saule and Wensly eventually contacted Naytani with their 'Suggestions' and immediately regretted it, when she nearly abducted them to help her draft up new plans for the next exploration vessel. Currently under the project name of "Mad Dash"

The UPG dockyard finished construction ahead of schedule, breaking several Plinth records, and setting a brand new one for space-ports, for speed. The POI hanger turned out to house a huge, sleek rocket with several rotating habitats around its waist, powered by a fission reactor, using cracked water molecules to fuel the engines. It's bays filled with mining vessels and other such craft, or at least they claimed. The Yjantia Coalition had made yet another deal with the UPG, but this time to use one of the assembly yards in their new station to create their prototype interstellar vessel.