Queen Maureen

The Empire's first space ship yard had been constructed in a vast copper mining pit.

Robotic equipment worked to assemble a massive articulated Fullerdome overhead.

Six bays were packed around a central service column.

And in each of them was the hull of a partially constructed Jupiter class craft.

"We have duplicated the hull and basic systems of your craft.' she said.

"But your counter gravity and hyperdrive systems give my technicians pause."

"Don't they understand?" asked Professor Robinson.

""They think they do." Nloani said."

'But my Chief engineer reports a lot of improvised repairs. "

"She is reluctant."Niolani smiled" to make a mistake."

Later  John had conferred with Chief Engineer Lanhilde.

She was statuesque with breasts that might have been a cosmetic surgeon's manum opus.She was toned and muscular and it all showed through her metallized purple skintight.

Maureen wasn't jealous. Lanhilde was hot enough to distract her too. John had to be heating up.

She smiled as she speculated about how Niolani would react to John ducking out with the engineer.

"We have faithfully reproduced your engineering and flight control systems", she said, "but we are not certain of the ideal specifications."

"Of course we dont have those commited to memory" said the Professor,"but they are stored in our B9 robot and the ships' microdot library."

"Microdot?"

"It's a very old fashioned form of micro miniaturized record storage. It's not as Compact as digital data, but has to be physically destroyed to be corrupted."

'Nice" she said."we will have to examine the micro dot system."

"I just fear it will not work when we power it up." she continued

"If you copied it  precisely it will  work." John shrugged. "Do you have a complete example?"

Lanhidlde looked at her daya pad. "Number two is closest to completion."

Maureen couldn't resist. 'What happened to number one?"

"Static test hull" Lithande replied.