Eye of the Beholder

Chapter 1.4 The third eye

It wasn't long before Ray and Newt finished the modifications. Newt and Sedna walked their drones into the lounge that evening to show them off.

It was one of those rare evenings when most of the old crew was there. Sedna and Newt sat relaxed on one of the plush couches while they stood their drones up front where everyone could see them. They had all heard what was going on, of course, but the drones just stood there with their lights off. Ray went to the door and turned down the room lights, then Newt and Sedna began to turn up the chest lights on their drones.

There were a few oohs and aahs from those who hadn't seen them work before. Newt varied the beam on his from wide to narrow, showing off this feature. Then the new gem-like lens in the forehead of Sedna's drone began to glow, and brightened until it projected a spot on the far wall. Then she too varied the beam until the spot flooded the wall. Many more oohs and aahs followed this display. It was the feature they had all come to see.

Newt turned on his own eye beam and showed how the spot of light would move across the wall as he turned his head. Then he tipped his head back until the spot was on the ceiling.

"This is what we realized was needed when we were deep in the lava tube in Hawaii. It's just not always convenient to turn your whole body when you want to look at something in a dark corner.  And believe me, without the lights, those lava tubes are dark!"

Bear spoke up. "So you're really going to Mars then?

"Moon first, then Mars."

Naga asked them, "How do you plan to schedule your time? Clearly you won't be flying home every day."

"True. But the drones don't mind just hanging around wherever they happen to be," said Newt.

"And we can leave them active enough that we can monitor them. So we'll know if anything unusual starts happening nearby," Sedna added.

"Right. We figure it's roughly a three-way split. Meals and whatever chores we have to do around here, then operating the drones, then sleep."

"Like three eight-hour shifts," offered Kore.

"Of course it won't be that cut and dried," Sedna replied, "But that's the general idea."