Free Ion 417: Raiju by James Darcey Page B

even Traxel noticed I was less enthusiastic about everything. He even claimed I was eating more.
    When he caught me tripping on the stairs, I mean ladder, he insisted that I get checked out. The side table converted to a bio-bed, and I lay on it to endure the scan. I think I remembered reading about that in the manual, but hadn't spent much time on the ancillary systems. Surprisingly, the scan wasn't even painful. A part of my mind was screaming at me that here I was getting tested again, while another part was reassuring me that this was my choice. After all, I could get up any time I wanted. I wasn't strapped into this scanner as I had been in the lab.
    The bio-scanner system went to work measuring all sorts of things including a sample of blood it had taken. Traxel was muttering about how the readings were very odd for an Indigal. They didn't match any of the species he thought I might be. He waved aside the question as to what species I was supposed to be. He was busy pacing back and forth muttering about how odd it was because the information was automatically updated every time the ship docked.
    I had to assure Traxel that I was unusual; in fact I might be the only one like me. At last I told him to try looking under project 417. He gave me an odd glance but keyed in the request. It popped up readings on the screen that matched pretty well. It told how I was low on some enzymes, likely caused by nutritional imbalance. Recommendations were to increase intake of several minerals. Some of the missing minerals could be obtained from simple salt, and others from mineral spices, but a few would be hard to obtain aboard the ship.
    Now I knew why the water tasted funny to me. They had been giving me needed minerals with each drink. This also explained some of my food cravings. My body had been trying to find the missing minerals in another source. I opened the salt dispenser and took a few mouthfuls of that, washing it down with some of the bland water.
    I was pawing through the packages in the food locker, finding a few ocean dwelling things, while only half listening to Traxel ramble on about how he had just known that my bio information had to be in the system because the ship had been docked to the lab. This also confirmed my status as an escapee, and not a pirate. The Teyrn would never want to be without medical facilities in some of the places he visited.
    "Not to worry. This ship was originally a fast courier. Since you said the lab had monitored your bio scans I knew the ship had to have the information because the fast couriers always updated medical information when docked and just like the other high drive ships they... Oh Farslec! I almost forgot about that!"
    He left me in the common room happily munching on some root vegetable that, well it smelled good. I followed along, intrigued by this sudden panic of his. If something panicked him it was probably not a good thing. I found him sitting in the pilot's seat punching buttons and scrutinizing the readouts. Every one of them that he pressed brought with it another little exclamation as the results further alarmed his already nervous nature. Just when I thought he was about to explode, he jumped out of the seat to run past me, headed for the common room. He fairly screamed in my face sounding very panicked.
    "We've got about thirteen hours! Plus or minus about twelve hours!"
    "What are you talking about?"
    "We'll drop out of high drive at Reliance Station Sugnoff in about thirteen hours!"
    "Reliance Station?"
    My strength was rapidly returning, and we launched into a heated argument about how we were ending up in Sugnoff system, when I had programmed in Sol system. For all the stuff I had studied, I knew that changing course mid high drive was tantamount to suicide. As it came out, in those moments that we were outpacing the missiles, he had taken the time to re-plot our course so that he could escape me.
    I had planned many things about this escape, but without