Kanti sipped at the most wonderful bowl of soup that he had ever enjoyed while Chendra talked about her day. The soup was creamy and warm. It had a strange variety of mushrooms and thinly-sliced meats that glistened on the surface. After each wonderful bite, he’d breathe out through his nose just to enjoy the soup’s peculiar herbal notes.

A female geroo with all-white fur performed on a nearby dais. She dragged a bow across a dirembo’s strings for a moment and then plucked a few notes with her claw tips. It was a hauntingly beautiful tune. In another setting, Kanti would’ve enjoyed hearing her sing, but he was glad that she didn’t, as he’d have had to divide his attention.

“We’ve been poring over the data ever since the last maintenance cycle,” Chendra explained, “but it almost seems hopeless.” She sighed deeply. “I’m boring you, aren’t I?”

Kanti shook his head and gestured with his spoon. “No, not at all. It probably sounds stupid, but I’ve always been fascinated by the trinity. I tried to read up about it, but… I’m afraid it went right between my ears.” He smiled at her, and her dark eyes sparkled.

“What did you mean by the trinity’s ‘order’? I’ve never heard anyone mention that before.”

“It’s just a theory we’re experimenting with,” Chendra explained. “The ship’s generators route power to the drive, so we’re calling that the first part of the trinity. The drive disrupts the fabric of space by generating microscopic ripples that the ship floats along.”

Kanti dunked the end of his hearty, black bread into the soup without taking his eyes off of Chendra. He nodded to urge her on.

“The disruption doesn’t last for more than a few hundred nanoseconds before it collapses into the heart of the recycler. So the recycler seems to be second in the trinity’s order. The collapse rips apart all molecular bonds and releases some sort of…” she shrugged. “We’ve been calling it a quantum echo, but I’m not certain that it’s a fair characterization. Anyhow, whatever it is, it’s channeled out of the recycler and into the gate.

“We still don’t have the first guess about how the gate functions, but this quantum echo seems to feed it. So that makes the trinity’s order: drive, recycler, and then gate.”

Kanti nodded his head and grinned wide. He was so happy to understand any of her work. “So, your team’s trying to figure out how to channel the quantum echo somewhere else so that it no longer feeds the gate. Then we could break free of our slavery to the krakun…”

Chendra glared at him before glancing around to see if anyone overheard. He shrank in on himself, realizing his misstep. “Please don’t say that word,” she whispered. “We don’t ever say that. You never know who might hear you.”

Chendra sat up straight and cleared her throat. “Our team hopes to reduce geroo reliance on krakun assistance.”

They shared a private smile.

“But unfortunately,” Chendra explained, “even though the trinity appears to operate in that order, there’s definitely more to it than that.

“If anything should interfere with the quantum echo before it reaches the gate, then the drive and recycler shut down as well. Just like if you stop recycling matter, that causes the drive and gate to shut down. So although it seems that the drive must be first, no one can see how that can be.”

“So the trinity acts like a dirembo string,” Kanti said, pleased with himself for understanding a far more technical job than his own. “I get it.”

“A string?” Chendra asked. She looked up at the dirembo player on the dais, and then back to Kanti. “I don’t follow…”

“Well,” Kanti explained, as if it were obvious, “you can pluck the string at one end and the note will travel down to the other end. But if you cut the string at any point, then the note will stop.”

Chendra stared at Kanti with her jaw agape for many long moments. She looked almost as if she had been struck across the back of the head. Kanti started to grow worried before she let out a loud gasp. “A vibration of some sort… a resonant frequency… a harmonic vibration for the whole trinity!”

Kanti nodded. “Yeah, like that. Perhaps each ship plays a different note. The fleet might make one gigantic chord.” He smiled to himself, imagining a space symphony. “Did you try this soup? It’s really amazing!”

“This whole time, we’ve been thinking serially; generator, drive, recycler, gate. Perhaps the generator is more similar to the pump on a laser, and the trinity is a weird, gain medium that operates in three different phases of space◦time…”

Chendra leapt to her feet, bouncing in place. Kanti, confused, stood as well. He had no idea what she was talking about. She threw her arms around him and squeezed him tightly. “That’s it. That’s got to be it!” she squeaked.

Kanti put his arms around her. He pressed his nose to her neck and drank in her delicious, musky scent. It filled him with desire and he could imagine nothing more than covering her soft body with his own…

“I have to go,” she squeaked. “Okay, I’ll see you later!”

Kanti fell back away from the beautiful geroo, feeling a little dejected. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is amazing!” she squeaked. “It may take years, or maybe even decades of research to find a component that vibrates at the same frequency as the gate, but it can be done. I know it can.

“And when our cubs, or perhaps our cubs’ cubs are…” she lowered her voice conspiratorially, “free, it will all be due to your insight.”

She pecked a kiss on his cheek. “You may have saved us all, Saina!”