After about an hour, Chris’s agitated voice resounded in everybody’s ears.
“Guys, come back immediately! There’s military action on the orbit: a group of ships with the refugees onboard tried to escape the planet and came under fire of the Tarian border cruiser!”
“In this case, let’s not waste any more time walking back! Chris, teleport everyone in turn, except for me,” he ordered, “Lora, Derek, copy?”
“Yes,” answered the girl.
“Great, I’ll just attach the container with the dismantled parts of the station and then join you. Start calculating the route to avoid the fire zone. Stan, check the defence systems and get the shuttle ready for launching.”
“Yes, captain!”
When Lora and Derek came onboard, Mary and Oleg were already hastily taking off the protective suits. Paul also didn’t take long.
“Show me what’s going on,” the captain approached the holographic projector.
“Here’s the cruiser, and these are the eight passenger ships carrying about two thousand refugees. Things don’t look well for them. It seems the cruiser has made some warning shots since there is no external damage to the ships. The agreement with the Tarians doesn’t allow us to listen to their broadcasts, so it’s difficult to say for sure.”
“They demand the refugees to return back to the planet,” said Paul almost without any hesitation.
“Wait,” Mary called to everybody, “We’re receiving a signal on a neutral frequency.”
“Turn on the speakerphone,” immediately reacted Paul.
The loud speakers transmitted some rustling and swishing. The crew members could hardly discern the words among the stray signals. Derek shook his head.
“It’s obviously a speech, but I understand nothing,” he whispered into Lora’s ear, “Do you know Tarian?”
“You could say that,” answered Lora still trying to listen carefully. “A UCD,” she barely touched the small gadget at her temple, “is multifunctional, and can work as a translator. The part of the communicator that you see is the receiving part of the gadget, while the part that analyses and archives data is implanted directly into the brain. All the Titanium citizens undergo this operation at sixteen. I’m sure that when you get better, Doctor Borshchevsky will suggest you to have this simple procedure done. The implanted element creates grammar and vocabulary memory zones that allow us to understand foreign speech. Thus we could say that our brain actually studies languages by itself.”