Top Down or Bottoms Up!

Being one Neutron heavy, I can handle. Any desire beats randomness. Being two Neutrons heavy put me at a far worse disadvantage than not even having desire. This left me only the option of turning back. Not my first choice in any situation, but in this case, I needed to come up with a transport that was completely normal. Down by two is just not in me.

After taking a detailed scan, I discovered that about one per hundred Shorties has a gimped Six, detectable even from my wide-arced perspective. Fewer than half that number of tinkered Sevens were scattered across the Shorties than I had scanned. In each case, the emission spectra from the scan targets deviated only slightly, and always in a pulse-elongating manner.

Committed to the return path and tracking the heavies that I had spotted, I plotted a course to avoid them. All of them. If I did run into a Shorty, and It was not on my reject list, then it was either way more messed up that I could detect, or it would be just what I was looking for. Having zizzed with enough Electrons on the Seven end, I had no trouble finding a replacement for myself in the swingshot chain and letting the Seven end run itself. I had to make my way down to the Eights.