Free Alien Enigma by Darrell Bain, Tony Teora

be a good sort and even more enthusiastic about the ship than he had been while working it up. He would have been almost glad to have been called back to active duty if it hadn't been for the specter of Xanadu and the missing ships looming over the coming mission.
    ***
    Keane scrubbed his burning eyes with his knuckles. He'd been studying hard, practically living in the great ship concealed beneath the hanger at the Skunk Works. He wandered purposely through the passageways, living quarters, cargo bays, fighting stations, engineering sections and every other space that could be accessed until he could visualize practically every square meter of the starship. He examined the new weapons systems and the machinery and instrumentation that powered them, then studied the specs until he knew them practically by heart. He went on to look at the four marine assault shuttles with their own weapons systems. Always, though, he returned to the control room where he would become the living embodiment of Doc Travis .
    He was enormously pleased that someone in the crew assignment department had the sagacity to recall Wannstead to duty. He would certainly be a great help. Just because Keane had memorized so much of the inside of the ship didn't mean he knew everything about it, and there were countless places where access hatches had to be opened to get at the real bowels, the wiring, plumbing and electrical network that meshed the physical parts together into a working whole. Brian had to understand more about this than anyone. The Wannsteads were known for their technical brilliance and if there was a battle Keane wanted someone like Wannstead around.
    He always thought of their mission when visiting the control room, trying to visualize a shadowy menace that lurked on Xanadu, a menace with interstellar star ships as its prey. Each time he vowed to himself that whatever it was, it would never get his ship nor harm its crew. He had room for optimism. The engineers and theorists had put a great deal of time and effort into turning a regular interstellar ship into a thing of lethal beauty. It was as different from its predecessors in armament and electronic assets as a lady's automatic pistol was from a machine gun.
    If this baby can't crack the mystery, nothing we have in the pipeline I know of can , he thought. And there was always the risk of bringing back home whatever was possibly destroying the ships. That would not be allowed. The Space Navy had a contingency plan for everything, and the confidential self-destruct that was secretly installed on the Doc Travis reminded him of not only the responsibly and obligation he had for the ship and its crew, but for humanity too. Alien contact was not defined by the Space Navy as something safe. It was a risk humanity took in order to expand into the Galaxy.
    He looked at his watch and decided to call it a day, or night, rather. Doc Travis was powered up to idle so that the basic operating systems were workable. Such as hot water for a shower , he thought. Too bad there wouldn't be anyone waiting in the bed afterwards, though. When he returned from the last cruise he found that Mary had reneged on her promise to wait on him. Not even the courtesy to tell me in person , he thought with dismay, remembering how he'd felt then. Later he thought that loneliness was probably a factor in her decision. Navy life had always been hard on those left behind but it was even worse now. An interstellar voyage seldom lasted much less than a year and sometimes the ships were gone two years or more before returning to their home port.
    This meant that a lot of the time, shipboard alliances became a more suitable solution to maintaining a romance than trying to do it long distance, especially when there wasn't even a means of communication as had been the case in the past. The only thing wrong with onboard relationships was that captains had to be very careful or someone was sure to accuse them of favoritism. And