"Sandra will be proud of us." She almost giggles.

"Coming onto my ship, telling me what to do... I jest. I will stop trying to push you away. No more crazy workload or acting standoffish. If you're going to leave, or if you're going to stay, that's up to you."

"Great! ...I still like you. I never stopped. I wouldn't call it love... But it could easily turn into that if I let it."

"I don't know what to think about that yet. I've been trying not to think about it. Plus, emotions are running high right now, I shouldn't make any more grand proclamations at the moment. I'll think about it."

"I understand. It's okay if you never want to... I can ignore it, push it down. Be on the lookout for somewhere else to go eventually."

"But then the entire onus is on you once again... Like I said, I'll think about it."

Nick goes and finds Sandra, leaving Walta smiling to herself wistfully. 

"This may well be the only time I say this to you. Thank you for meddling."

"I'm glad I meddled." She says happily. "And I promise not to meddle any more, unless it's something really, really bad. OK?" 

"Okay. We haven't decided if we'll part ways or what, yet, but at least there is no more of that tension under the surface you hated."

Ideas form in his head. Marriage is very, very premature... But would having a partner for good really be so bad? I was acting more like my father than I really like, before.

"Whatever you two decide is up to you, I'm not going to control your lives. I just can't stand it when there's something going on and it's hurting people, but they won't admit it. I hope things get better."

"The two paths I see are eventual amicable splitting, or just maybe some sort of romance. But like you said, that's our business. Shall we go set up the radar?"

"Well, that sounds better than the most likely scenario before, so I'm glad. Let's do it!"

Setting up the radar involves the same safety harnesses as yesterday and climbing out the side of the ship and to the top with the radar gear. Nick also has some tools.

"I brought conduit up from the workshop. I'm thinking we mount it on the mast and run wires down to the bridge at the front. I can put the screen and hook it into power there. We'll have to go around the greenhouse. Do you see any problems with this plan?"

"Hmm... The inventor who made this made it adaptable to just about any power source imaginable, and it should plug into just about any kind of electronics you've got. So we should be good, no problems I can foresee."

"Convenient, that. I was not looking forward to building a transformer or something. Well, let's get to it!"

"My source learned how to interface just about anything to anything, it's kind of a necessity in my world. Lot's of alien tech running about. But enough talking, let's get to it."

They get to it. The hardest part is putting the radar dish on top of the flag mast and securing it there. The slow swaying of the ship makes their ladders a slightly dubious prospect, but that's what the harnesses are for.

Nick has some pretty versatile tools. It takes a while, but not as long as it could.

Sandra helps, she's not as experienced as Nick, but she is able to keep up OK. Sandra gets up to the top of the mast without any difficulty whatsoever. She takes some time to admire Nick's engineering.

"You are quite good at this. If I ever find my way back here, maybe I'll bring along my inventor friend, Devra, she loves talking tech." 

"I bet my stuff looks silly compared to what she gets up to. Material constraints and so on. But I would probably enjoy that quite a bit either way."

"Comparing yourself to her wouldn't be close fair, she's got a pretty unfair advantage, but she'd be able to give you a few pointers."

"I buy up lost tech whenever I can. As you have seen. Trying to understand it, learn to make more. Like, I can make crude radios with silicon and quartz and glass, but it's a huge pain and quartz is rare. So is silicon, for that matter."

"It sounds like your making the most of a bad situation. I honestly wish I could help more, but I don't know how to solve material issues like that. I'm really only starting out when it comes to traveling to other worlds."

"Heh. Now I'm fantasizing about having an inter-dimensional freighter. That'd be a riot."

"You'll be the first to know if I get something like that going. I'm not that ambitious though, I'm not good at the whole infrastructure thing. I tend to content myself with making the worlds I visit a better place, person by person."

"Fair enough." He hums and goes back to work. Unless Sandra has other topics of conversation they will finish quietly.