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primitive on a technological basis, was worth checking out.
    Lieutenant Goddard spoke. "Captain! Mr. Grange! We have intrusions into our comm and nav systems! I attempted to relay that information back to the Grid, but it was somehow blocked. I have shut down both internal and external comm channels in an attempt to isolate it before it spreads to the ship's other systems."
    The Captain replied, "We can't fly without our nav system!"
    The lieutenant spoke. "I realize that, Sir. Lieutenant Commander Thigs! We need to isolate the nav system from the central computer! Whatever this is has already broken through three levels of our security!"
    I stood and walked with the Captain to the lieutenant's console. "How many firewalls do we have left protecting the computer core, Lieutenant?"
    Goddard replied, "One, Sir. Sixty percent of the core's cycles are already being used to defend it. When that number hits 80 percent, either we are going to start to lose other systems on this ship or the final core firewall will collapse. If Mr. Thigs can shut down the connection to the core, it should diminish the threat and allow the main security algorithms to rebuild those outer firewalls. It's using our own systems against us in an attempt to spread."
    I spoke. "If we reboot the core, will the firewalls reconstruct, or is that a bad idea?"
    The lieutenant glanced up as he continued to type on his keyboard. "The central core runs life support, Sir. If that goes offline, and the core fails to restart due to the load being exerted on it by whatever this is... that would be very bad for us all, Sir."
    Thigs yelled out, "Channel to the core is down! We have isolation!"
    At that moment the Granger lost all forward propulsion. The ion engines fired in reverse, and we quickly slowed to a stop.
    Again, Thigs yelled out, "I no longer have control of the nav system, Captain! Controls are not responding to my commands!"
    York, Frost, and Rodriguez walked onto the bridge.
    York spoke. "What's happening, Sir? The internal comm systems are down."
    I replied, "Comms are all down, York. We have an intrusion of our computer systems. It has taken over the comm and the nav systems. We had to shut down to isolate the main core."
    The Captain yelled to the lieutenant commander, "Kill the nav, Thigs. Perform a complete reset, and let's see if that will clear out the bug that has us."
    The lieutenant yelled as he continued to type, "I wouldn't do that, Sir! With a reset, we lose all nav references that have been loaded into the system. We have a good idea of where the Grid sits, but we only have that because of the star maps we have loaded. Unless we have someone who can eyeball their way through space, we could easily send ourselves in the wrong direction!"
    The Captain replied, "The nav system can rebuild the maps, Lieutenant. That is what it does on first start anyway."
    The lieutenant stopped his frantic typing and turned. "Captain, the nav system will indeed recreate a map. But unless we give it reference points of what is what, we run a big chance of heading the wrong way. We are in unfamiliar space, Captain. We can't trust the nav logs to give us an accurate heading to send us on our way, because we don't control the nav logs. This is an intelligent program we are dealing with, Captain. It can and probably will outthink us when it comes to controlling this ship. Mr. Thigs? How much practice have you had with manual navigation? Do you think you could get us home?"
    Thigs slowly turned. "Manual navs are no longer taught as part of our training. I don't know if anyone on the Grid has that knowledge anymore. Captain, I'm sorry, I think the lieutenant is right. If we shut her off, we might not get her back."
    Rodriguez stepped forward. "Mr. Grange, Captain. I'm familiar with manual nav. The lieutenant is right, though. They ended that training many years ago."
    I replied, "So, Rodriguez, you think you can fly this thing? How much manual have you done?"
    Rodriguez