Polite Passing

The pingers were at it again as the other network approached. I issued a silence order to control the din and free up bandwidth. Low speed propulsion pulses were queued and transmitted. As a threshold was crossed, a new set of pingers were clattering due to the external influence of the other network. In an instant, without missing a beat, a single token was picked and queued on the compression-relaxation transmitter:

Pardon...

Rolled into the gaseous space that separated the two networks. Before the signal was trailed off with a down-dipped pitch that recovered at the last moment, a pattern shift was detected in the nearby network. A slight shift occurred as evidenced by a bump in my orbit and the nearby network had passed the point of closest approach. Fewer pingers were clicking and shifting in response to the intercepted waveforms.

The propulsion pulses increased as distance was increased and travel resumed. Not before a few pulses had been processed, the buffer monitor pinger reported a relief of pressure. Scanning the local central network revealed that there was no change in the local buffers, and once again, this pinger was reporting an external event. The new prefix code and external detection enable commands were nearly complete, and the Pairs were about to get an update assignment.