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alerts me if anything is not functioning properly. As Dot told
you, this ship was built for speed. It's lightweight and powered by a specially
customized stardrive."
    He went on to explain how
the stardrive worked, but Cherry didn't understand enough about engineering to
follow, so she let her mind wander. At any rate, for all the attention he was
paying her, he could have been speaking to a piece of furniture. With every
passing moment, it became more obvious that Voyager was purposely trying to
ignore her presence.
    There was nothing she
relished more than a challenge and with little else to do, she decided to
accept the unspoken challenge to make him pay attention to her.
    "O-o-oh," Cherry
suddenly moaned and covered her right eye with her hand.
    "What is it?" Gallant
asked in a concerned tone, yet still kept his face averted.
    "I got something in my
eye." She rubbed it, tugged on the lid, then moaned again.
"Drek.
It's probably just an eyelash, but I can't get it out."
    Leaning closer to him, she
pleaded, "Can you see anything?" She heard him take a deep breath
before facing her, and had to forcibly hold back her smile.
    "Move your hand,"
he ordered. She did. "Open your eye." She tried, but after a little
lash fluttering, it was clear she could not keep it open on her own. He hadn't
wanted to look at her, let alone touch her, but as her lower lip began to
quiver, he gave in.
    Steadying his hand on her
cheek, he used his thumb and forefinger to gently pry her eye open. Her face
muscles strained against his effort for a moment before she relaxed and met his
gaze. He didn't find any eyelash or particle, but he did see a definite twinkle
of mischief… just before she tweaked his nose.
    "Gotcha!" she
said with a laugh.
    He jerked back in his chair
and looked at her as if she was unbalanced. "What was that for?"
    Cherry shrugged lightly. "I
wanted to make you look at me, and I did it. You were being very rude, you
know. In fact, speaking of rude, you have yet to apologize."
    He slowly swiveled his
chair back to its usual position and stared at the monitor. "I told you,
the importance of my mission—"
    Cherry gripped the arm of
his chair and turned it back to her. "Look at me and say I'm sorry or you
won't have any peace for the rest of this trip."
    Gallant decided she was
quite capable of carrying out her threat, and considering how long this trip
was actually going to take, he acceded. He looked straight at her pretty face
and murmured, "I apologize for stunning you and taking you away without
your permission."
    Cherry's smile broadened. The
expression on his face was one of extreme discomfort. "See? That wasn't so
hard. And now that we got that business out of the way, tell me about this
grid."
    "It's a navigational
device."
    She smirked at his simple
answer. "I gathered that much. I want to know what all these blips and markings
mean. And what are all the red sparkles at the edge? It looks like the tail of
a comet or something."
    Gallant realized if he
didn't answer, she would just keep prodding. "That's an ion trail."
    Cherry frowned at the
screen. Dot had said the blue spot of light was this ship, and even though the
movement across the grid was slow, it looked as though the ship was following
the ion trail. The distance between the last red sparkle and the blue spot
appeared to be exactly the same as it was earlier. "You said something
about an ion trail before. Is there a ship on the other end of that
trail?"
    Now it was Gallant's turn
to frown. He hadn't expected intelligence along with all her other attributes. "Probably.
But it's too far away to be picked up on the grid."
    She had an inkling that she
had just learned something important, but she couldn't put her finger on it. "And
where's Earth?"
    "Also too far
away." He knew she was going to have to be told the truth sooner or later,
but he opted for as late as possible. Since it was clear she would not permit
him to ignore her, he thought distraction might buy him