Aft of this the two main hulls narrow slightly, leaving a 320 metre space between them. The Inner surface of each hull is lined with a cradle which has eighteen grappling points. To hold the load securely. The design has considerable flexibility built into it; the adjustable junction allows this hulls to be moved up to 600 metres apart, while the grappler cradles are on a rail which can be extended to up to 3,500 metres long. The position of the grapplers themselves can be adjusted for larger loads. This allows the Saunders to carry objects up to the size of a heavy cruiser.
The Saunders is unarmed and unprotected, lacking both shields and armour. It is neither agile nor fast. Cruise speed is 18 kc in the normal configuration, dropping to 14 kc in the fully extended configuration. Carrying a heavy load the speed will drop still further - for a typical large load like a heavy cruiser, down to 5 kc or so.
As has been observed, these sort of support ships are usually omitted in sci-fi, even though they'd be invaluable.
