Halcyon jumped at the loud noises, and looked at the offending tool, rather than the source of the noise - Elke.  She glanced back at the door, then at the tool, and drew her knees even closer to her body and started folding the edges of her Toy closer together, shrinking it as much as she had pulled into herself.<br/><br/>There wasn't any question about which was worse in her mind; A loud noise was a singular event, while the nebula would be far closer for a period of time.  One would be gone as quickly as it arrived.  The sense of the other would be much longer in passing.  not to mention uncomfortable.<br/><br/>As Adam wandered in carrying a tray of food, her bright eyes slipped away from her Toy to watch him approach Elke.  She perked up a little as Elke responded to Adam's presence with pleasure, and the fact that neither of them were looking at her allowed her to observe them in a more candid and blatant manner than if she were under observation herself.  She doesn't say anything, but the frank curiosity with which she watched them might have raised questions.  How much did she understand of what she saw and heard?  Did she know how they felt, what the words meant, why the spoke reassurances and joked?<br/><br/>In truth, it was the simplest of curiosities.  She wondered if the mechanic was going to sit in the man's lap.  Not in a crass or sexual manner.  Her mind didn't work that way.  They were friends, ergo, someone should be sitting in someone else's lap.  He was bigger, therefore she would be sitting in his lap.  Simplistic thoughts, from an exceedingly complex mind.  Her curious look was drawn away from the twain by an increasing strength in the vibration.<br/><br/>Crawling on hands and knees, she made her way to a section of decking near the engine, but not close to it.  She held her toy in the hand that rested on the plating of the deck, but the other she lifted and reached out over the decking and then pressed it firmly down, opening her mind to the metals and currents that they held or were subject to.  It was the mental equivalent of opening her eyes, but what she saw/felt/knew was not anything visually based.  It was akin to how sharks sensed prey, or the whiskers a kahtfesh had.  A knowing, a sense that had no correlation with the other five.  It didn't take long for the sense to receive the information she sought - the vibration was simply the result of metal being loose under the decking.  It wasn't an electromagnetic phenomena, and therefore she didn't care.  She rolled back and sat on her haunches, and started collapsing her Toy into a more compact shape, apparently satisfied by whatever she had or had not found.