The smile returned. “Good. Then maybe you’ll look on this as a change of pace instead of another crisis.” Pulling a hand projector, he flipped it to life.
A three-dimensional map appeared, floating in the space between them. Within it, a tiny skimmer-shaped dot of light was visible traveling south from Taulau Town.
“That’s the rescue team we sent out to find that missing bioscout, Hasselemoga.” As he paused, the light disappeared. “That’s the location of the last contact, aural or automatic, that we had with the rescue team. Thirty hours ago.”
She frowned at her assistant as the map vanished and he slipped the projector back into a pocket. “If contact was lost thirty hours ago, why am I just finding out about it now?”
“Because permanent contact wasn’t terminated until just this morning. Prior to that, the skimmer’s instrumentation was doing its job, staying in touch with Port Base. The trouble is, the last thirty hours of communications turned out to be blank. Nobody thought to check the transmissions for actual content until they stopped altogether.” He looked apologetic. “So they likely were traveling for thirty hours or so on unknown vectors. We have no way of knowing if they changed course during that time. If they did, it’s going to be hell to find them.”
“As good a description of the Viisiiviisii as any.” Resting her head in her hands, she stared down at the desk.
Pandusky waited silently for several moments before finally breaking the silence. “Administrator Matthias? Lauren? What do you want me to do?”