Warhammer: The Time Traveler

Chapter 334 Overcoming Difficulties (Eighth Update)
Kirk and Spock's search soon yielded a crucial discovery.

During their visit to a renowned marine research institute in San Francisco as “interested sponsors,” they met Dr. Gillian Taylor, who was in charge of researching whale behavior.

As he led them on a tour of the institute's facilities, Dr. Taylor pointed to two humpback whales swimming gracefully in a huge pool, his tone filled with both pride and concern.

“These are George and Grace,” she introduced, “a gem of our institute, and key to our understanding of humpback whale language and social structure. But…”

She sighed and gazed into the distance. "Their kind are facing extinction in the ocean, and whaling ships are still operating. We have limited funds and limited capacity for conservation."

In fact, we are preparing to transport them to the open sea next week for a trial release. This is to protect them, but the prospects... nobody knows.

This news gave Kirk and Spock a jolt.

The target is right in front of us, and it will soon be released back into the sea. Once it enters the vast ocean, finding and capturing it again will be extremely difficult.

The timing must be precisely before the release.

However, directly proposing to "borrow" these two whales and take them back to the future would obviously be seen as a pipe dream or madness.

Kirk tried to communicate with Dr. Taylor in a more subtle way, suggesting the possible existence of a "safe haven," but Dr. Taylor was deeply skeptical.

Just when negotiations reached a stalemate, Kirk decided to take a risk.

He requested that Dr. Taylor go to a "safe place" for a more in-depth discussion.

In a secluded warehouse in the San Francisco Bay Area, Chen Yu's massive, dark red mechanical body, having deactivated its optical camouflage, appeared before a shocked Dr. Taylor.

“Dr. Taylor,” Chen Yu’s synthesized voice rang out smoothly, his very presence being the strongest evidence, “Captain Kirk is not lying. We come from the future. Earth will face a devastating crisis in the future caused by the extinction of humpback whales.”

George and Grace are the only solution. We need to bring them back to our time to respond to an alien probe that is destroying Earth.

Faced with this vision beyond comprehension and the harsh logic of the statement, Dr. Taylor's scientific mind, after the initial shock, began to be forced to accept this unbelievable reality.

She loves these whales and knows that if Kirk's words are true, it concerns not only the fate of the whales but also the future of the entire planet.

After a fierce internal struggle, and after repeatedly confirming the sincerity of Kirk and others and the advanced technology that Chen Yu demonstrated, Dr. Taylor finally chose to believe.

She agreed to use her authority and expertise at the institute to assist Kirk's team in secretly transferring George and Grace before the planned repatriation operation began.

A well-structured action plan was thus formed.

Scott and McCoy were tasked with building a specially designed transport container on the Enterprise within a limited timeframe that could simulate the marine environment, sustain whale life, and withstand the pressures of time travel.

Once the container is completed, it needs to be secretly transported to a secluded and easily accessible sea area or dock near the research institute.

The next step is the most crucial and dangerous one – transferring the whale.

This required Dr. Taylor to make meticulous arrangements within the institute, utilizing its lifting equipment, transport tanks, and professional animal care techniques to safely transfer George and Grace from the institute's pool to a specially designed container under the cover of night or at a suitable time of cover.

The entire process had to be precise and swift; any unexpected event or delay could draw unnecessary attention and expose the plan. However, even if the whales were successfully placed into the container, how to silently transport these two behemoths and their massive container assembly to the Enterprise, hidden in a valley dozens of kilometers away, remained a thorny problem.

Using the Enterprise's tractor beam directly would be the most straightforward solution, but in this era, such a large-scale energy operation carries the risk of being detected, even with stealth technology as cover.

They had to consider alternative plans, such as finding large transport vehicles or using waterways for some sections of the route, which undoubtedly increased the complexity and uncertainty of the plan.

Once the whales and containers are safely inside the Enterprise's hangar or the converted large cargo hold, they must immediately return to the 23rd century.

The Enterprise must take off immediately, hurtling towards the sun once more, repeating that extremely dangerous gravitational ejection, precisely returning to the point in time they left, and responding to the harbinger of destruction hanging above the Earth with the natural song of a humpback whale.

The entire project, from container construction to final return, was like walking on a knife's edge, fraught with technological risks, potential exposure, and unpredictable threats of spacetime paradoxes.

But faced with the sole and urgent goal of saving the Earth, Kirk and his crew, along with their new ally Dr. Taylor, had no choice but to push this seemingly impossible mission step by step into the execution phase under immense pressure.
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Scott encountered a real problem when he set out to build the transport containers.

After enduring a series of fierce battles with Genesis and the Klingons, and despite emergency repairs by the Vulcans, the Enterprise's stockpile of engineering materials, especially special composite materials suitable for constructing large, sealed containers, had been completely depleted.

Faced with this predicament, Scott had no choice but to turn his attention to the local industries of the time.

Together with McCoy, with a mix of helplessness and adventure, he found a chemical plant's materials laboratory that seemed to have impressive technical capabilities.

In order to obtain a sufficiently strong and transparent material to build a container that could observe the whale's condition and withstand the pressure of time and space, Scott had to show some "sincerity".

During a conversation with the lab director, Scott cautiously revealed the structural formula and key manufacturing process of a material called "transparent aluminum," which is commonplace in the 23rd century but was considered a marvel in the 20th century.

He tried to explain using terminology that engineers of this era could understand, but the concepts of directional crystal growth and energy field-assisted bonding still left the engineers present dumbfounded and skeptical.

In this process, the gap between generations inevitably becomes apparent.

McCoy complained about the "primitive" chemical smells and rudimentary safety measures in the lab, calling it "worse than a Klingon's infirmary."

When Scott tried to use the computer-aided design software of the time, he was incredibly frustrated by its slow processing speed and extremely unfriendly interface, and several times he couldn't help but mutter curses in Scottish slang.

Despite the numerous comical misunderstandings during the communication and Scott's barely suppressed discomfort with the "primitive" technology, the feasibility and immense value of the advanced technical data they brought ultimately impressed the lab's director.

After rigorous verification experiments confirmed that the miraculous material formula could indeed lead to groundbreaking products, the other party agreed to produce the large quantities of transparent aluminum they needed, which could be considered a kind of "technology exchange".

The material problem has finally been solved.

Scott and McCoy immediately transported these "antique" but compliant materials back to the Enterprise's temporary workshop and worked through the night to complete the project.

With 23rd-century engineering skills and meticulous attention to detail, they successfully created a huge, sturdy, and transparent custom-made aquatic container large enough to house George and Grace and provide them with the life support needed to travel through centuries of time.

The first major obstacle to the plan was overcome without major incident.

(End of this chapter)