"You're strange to me, too. I'm sure we can cooperate anyway."

"Hm."

She tries to find the kobold to ask if they're quite sure the ship can't be teleported, if there's some way to spoof it. If it seperated into a few smaller chunks, as it's designed to do for landing, perhaps?

"Probably not; I'm pretty sure I can't teleport anything larger than a big room. I might be able to make a portal big enough, though - Green, you could have bots hold a big portal up, right?"

"Hmmm."

Green sends //Traditional *Mute a request for the relevant technical information, and runs the calculations.

"Yes, I should be able to do that."

"It'll need to be done in a couple of hours at most. The sections aren't designed to last independently of each other for long. And I need to convince the council, and double-check all the linkages, but it's an idea. Have you three thought of anything we can do to help in return?"

"You truly don't need to do anything for us, *Mute. We're always happy to help an Intelligence in trouble."

The kobold nods agreement.

"We're a bit paranoid. Wired to look our gift-horses in the mouth, so to speak. But if you insist we'll just have to thank you a few dozen more times."

"And, I have the beginnings of official attention, here. A historical society. Apparently there are faster than light ships now, which, don't ask me to explain the physics yet, but that's pretty damn cool."