Lena, Pepper and Vanessa stood next to the radar panel back up on the bridge, trying to decide which panel to try next. They all looked similar, flat panels with various buttons, knobs, and dials, so their function was unknown just by glancing at them.

"I guess it doesn't matter, we just try pressing a button and see if it does anything, then do the same with the other," Lena sighed with a shrug.

"We could always go check out the computer again," Vanessa suggested.

"There is a computer?" Lena squawked excitedly.

"We think so," Pepper confirmed. "One of the panels in the back has a keyboard you can enter information on, but we can't understand the language so it might be useless for now."

"Computers are never useless, show me the way!" Lena commanded in a silly mock imperial voice.

Pepper giggled while pushing off to shoot over towards the computer, Lena and Vanessa trailing behind her. They landed next to the panel that they assumed was the computer, now with an empty screen. Pepper typed a few random keys, and then pressed the key that they still assumed was the Enter key, and as before it showed a string of blue text.

"This is what happened before, we type in random stuff, and it displays a message," Pepper explained.

"Is this the same message you got the last time?" Lena asked, studying the text.

Pepper looked over at Vanessa, who simply shrugged in her suit.

"I'm not sure, I don't remember what it said last time," admitted Pepper.

"Well try another command," suggested Lena.

Pepper typed another random string of letters, and then hit the Enter key again. The message was almost identical, except one section that showed the same characters they had typed.

"So, this is a standard computer error message I would guess," Lena surmised. "But did you notice that the error message is in blue?"

"Yeah, we saw that," Vanessa confirmed.

"Right, well we always use red for error messages, and then on computer displays we use red for enemies. If you remember the battle display, our ship and the enemy ship were in blue, just like this message. I have to assume that is their warning color." Lena decided.

"It still makes me nervous that our ship is the same color," Vanessa said with a shiver.

"They could be playing it safe. Any unknown ship could be perceived as a potential threat. That is probably a safer way to think when you're out in space I suppose," Lena suggested as a possible explanation.

Pepper just grunted in return. That did make some sense, though it would seem to be a good way to get into a lot of unnecessary fights. She was about to chime in about that when she heard Vanessa gasp.

"Hey, does anyone have one of those laser pointer things? There is a hole on the front of the panel that might fit one!" Vanessa exclaimed.

"I think they're all over on our ship now," Pepper groaned. It was just their luck that they had loaded them all from the bunk room.

"Hold on," Lena grunted as she sank to her knees. "I think there is a compartment here."

Indeed, on the lowest part of the cabinet was a narrow strip that had a crease around it. When Lena pressed it, the piece sunk into the panel before popping back out and allowing her to grip it and pull it out. The compartment was full of the pointers, perhaps two dozen of them. "Gotcha!"

Vanessa felt a surge of excitement at the sight of the pointers. So far all of the ones they'd seen had been in the bunk rooms, and seemed like family memories, but perhaps these held something else! She and Pepper had each taken to keeping a tablet in their pouch in case they found any more pointers so they could see what was on them, and she eagerly picked one of them up and slid it into the hold on the tablet. Immediately the tablet lit up, but there was nothing displayed. Lena and pepper watched in interest as she kept pressing the forward and reverse buttons, but there was nothing there.

"Shit! I had hoped there would be something interesting there," she complained.

"No, it makes sense!" Pepper yelled out. "They're empty at the computer, so that they can transfer data to them, they really are portable drives!"

Vanessa opened her eyes wide at the pronouncement and grinned. Extending her hand slowly, she slid the long pointer into the hole on the panel.

"Damn, as tentative as that was, I'm beginning to think you still haven't tried any of those toys I gave you!" Lena chortled.

"Hey!" Vanessa yelped, embarrassed at the thought.

"Look at the screen!" Pepper called out. Instead of the cursor, the screen now had six rectangular boxes on it, each a different color and each with a different label inside it. Pepper noticed that the last one was the same blue as the danger color, but there was also a black, red, yellow, green, and orange rectangle. "Think I should press one?"

"Do you really have to ask?" Lena asked. "Pick the first and see what happens."

Pepper reached out and tapped the first rectangle, the black one. The rectangle immediately started to pulse, and a red light in the top left corner of the screen blinked in time to the box. "Now what?"

"I think we wait till the blinking stops," Vanessa guessed.

"Oh shit, look at the stick!" Lena gasped. "I think it's transferring data!" When the others looked at the stick, they could see dimly lit rings of a pale pink light slowly progressing up the length of it.

"I wonder how much these things can store?" Vanessa mused.

"Well, we had over twelve hours of high-definition holographic audio and visual on the first one, so I bet quite a bit," Pepper reasoned. "We don't even know if that one was full. They must have much more advanced storage than we do, so I'd say multiple petabytes at a minimum. But that is a guess."

The pink rings steadily marched up the stick until it reached about 2/3 of the way up, and then abruptly stopped at the same time as the black rectangle and red light stopped pulsing. Vanessa removed the pointer and then slid another in, this time pressing the second box, the red one. Once more the lights began to blink, and more pink lines started to rise up the shaft of the stick.

"Hey, put the last one into your tablet, see if there is anything there now," suggested Lena.

Vanessa pulled out her tablet again, and then slid the pointer into the receptacle. This time, instead of being blank, there was a speaking alien for a bit, and then schematics. A lot of them. "Oh my god." She started in amazement as the schematics for all kinds of ships appeared.

"Well, I guess we can go back to Earth now!" Lena snorted.

"No. We need to make three copies of everything we get here," Vanessa instructed. "Then we all have to pretend we don't know about this data transfer works."

"Huh? Why?" Lena asked in confusion.

"Lena, listen to me. As much as I love my father, he is not going to leave information like this for other people to find. He's going to destroy it. We must protect this. And we cannot tell anyone else we know about it," Vanessa explained to the pilot.

"Listen, other than Miles, you two are my best friends on that ship, and you obviously know more about your dad than I do. It costs me nothing to hide these, so I'm going to take you at your word. But if I think you're trying to pull something over on us, I'll talk," Lena promised.

"I can understand that. Believe me, I wish there were a better way to do this. But even if this is a heritage site, my father would just smash this and make it like an accident, or a stray collision did it."

"The entire way here we thought he only brought Miles with us to blow up some of the stuff out here so competitors couldn't get to it," Pepper added.

"Huh. Well, you're not wrong about that," Lena admitted. "Miles did mention that blowing stuff up was his original assignment."

"Damnit, I knew we were right!" Vanessa fumed.

"So, we protect the knowledge," Pepper confirmed. "We make sure all of humanity can benefit from it."

"We'll learn more from this than the ships anyway," Lena agreed.

"Good, then let's get all this data saved, we'll figure out what it is later." Vanessa ordered. "We may need a place to store them all though."

"Put them in with the toys," Lena suggested. "No way the guys are looking in there."

"Damn, you keep this up and you might get that threesome!" Vanessa giggled.

"Don't say that damnit!" Lena growled. "I'll get my hopes up! And Miles will still wanna watch!"