Part 1,Part 2,Part 3,Part 4,Part 5,Part 6,Part 7,Part 8,Part 9,Part 10,Part 11,Part 12,Part 13,Part 14
"Flag At the Edge of Space" page, Athena Home Page, Other Stories Home Page.
"Command officer's log, February 24, 2170, mission day two hundred and twenty-three." Captain Hall paused in the recording of the log, as he looked again at the small display screen in his quarters. It was showing the forward view as it would appear on the bridge viewscreen. Even though they were still three months from that star, it now dominated the view. It was the brightest star that they routinely saw, and they would have to approach rather close to any other star to see one brighter. Turning back to face the computer terminal screen, as it was sat exposed on the desk in his quarters, Hall continued, "Nothing much has changed in the past couple of days. The Atlas continues on its course to Rigel, and everything appears to be operating within norms. The crew does feel a little restless, even after the two training exercises, which at least gave most of the crew a chance to stretch their legs under sunshine. Unlike the first training exercise, the other two went off flawlessly, and the crew got in some good practice identifying materials, operating in various planetary environments and extracting minerals. We even gave the transporter a try, and I was amazed at how it worked in beaming up the samples." Hall paused, and realized that, in the absence of anything else to report, he was rehashing what had happened in the past. He almost felt obligated to say something and fill up space in these log entries, and if the news was old, then it was still the news he would have to give.
He had the computer resume recording, and then said, "I'm repeating myself. I guess after this kind of voyage so far, and how things are unchanging, I would get that way. What I have noticed, and what several others have noticed, is how empty space appears to be. I guess we were spoiled dealing with the Kentyans, Vulcans, Andorians and Tellarities, along with some other races, so close to Earth. I guess it would be too much to believe that the galaxy is that densely populated throughout. Maybe what we have here is more the norm, with large volumes of nothing. We've detected a few other class-M planets, and some might have life on them, but none have warp capability. Other than the trilithium vessel at that collapsar, we have contacted no alien vessels. We have not even scanned any alien vessels. I can stand by the forward viewport and look out, and even in that distorted look of space, I still get the impression that we're all alone in the universe. There is nobody but us out here. Contact would be nice, but I increasingly get the feeling that's not going to happen." Hall sat there, and reviewed what the computer had transcribed from his words, and edited those words slightly. Then he saved it to the computer's memory, and continued with his ritualistic approach to the day. The next thought was, what were they serving in the mess hall for breakfast?
Hall made his way to the mess hall, and found that the reconstituted scrambled eggs was the main thing on the menu again. While Hall sat down and was eating his share, Gerthe also sat down at the senior officer's table, and after taking a single spoonful of the stuff, said, "Sir, I was wondering... do you have any say in what the galley staff prepare for our meals?"
"Unfortunately, that's an authority that I have not chosen to use, yet," Hall remarked.
"Perhaps you should. This egg-stuff is starting to get to me."
"It doesn't taste that bad," the captain said, as he ate a forkful.
"Well, but nearly every day? And it's not real scrambled eggs, just a chemical concoction that is supposedly similar."
"What would you suggest?"
"Where I grew up, bacons and eggs--real eggs from real chickens--was what you ate when you knew a full day awaited you."
"Not exactly a healthy choice of food. Besides, we have neither real eggs nor bacon on board."
"As I have heard," Gerthe said, as he reluctantly went back to eating the scrambled eggs and the slices of toast that was the side dish. Even Hall noticed that the bread was a little flat-tasting and the toast was not especially warm. The coffee tasted, if anything, diluted. It was inconceivable, he knew, that food stocks were running lower than anticipated. They had stocked enough for the planned length of the mission, and fifty percent above that. He had received no reports of any food stores that had gone bad or had "disappeared." He also saw nobody on the Atlas putting on any weight. Nobody had put on as much as a gram, he thought, even those who spent their time working out in the gym. Nevertheless, Hall had the feeling he was going to have to talk to the food services staff soon. Nothing could dampen morale on a long mission like this one, confined to a ship, than food that was less than ideal.
"I'll see what I can do," the captain finally said.
"That's all that we expect, sir," Gerthe added.
"We?" Just hearing that caused the engineer to blush somewhat.
Before the conversation could be continued, one of the doors to the mess opened. Abuna stepped inside, and looked right at the senior officer's table. Hall caught her glance, and just had the feeling that this meant trouble. He had this mental flash of a mutiny erupting on the Atlas over the food. The first officer approached, and said, "Captain, I've been looking for you."
"Yes, commander?"
"Long range sensors have detected an alien ship." Hall could almost hear the background murmur of conversation in the crowded lounge drop back, as others heard this news. This was the first clear sign that life did exist beyond their little corner of the universe. "We've been tracking it for some time, and have come to the conclusion that it is in hyperdrift."
"It could be having some kind of problem."
"Possibly. It's a smaller design, and as far as we can tell, it's not something from any known race."
"Have you attempted to communicate with it?"
"No, sir, we're still out of range for conversation without a time lag."
"Okay, commander, we'll take a closer look. Have the helm alter course to intercept."
"Aye, sir."
* * *
It was not until the first shift was about to come to an end when the Atlas caught up with the alien ship, which was travelling in hyperdrift at a speed just over warp one. The ship was now displayed on the viewscreen. It was a dark-coloured craft, although displayed in enhanced colours for visibility, and the design was simple. It consisted of a cylindrical body, and at the rear were aerodynamic wings, and mounted on the wings were the warp nacelles, which also housed the impulse emitters. The aerodynamic nature of the craft suggested something that routinely landed and travelled through atmospheres. It was a small craft, no more than twenty metres in length, and the scoring all along its length and over the leading surfaces indicated a vessel that had been in use for a long time.
"Still no response to hails," Yuniki remarked.
"Engines are cold," Abuna confirmed. "The warpfield is being maintained only because the motons in the warp coils continue to hold their patterns. The vessel might have been in hyperdrift for some time now."
Hall asked, "Lifesigns?"
"Still out of range, but indications are that there would not be many on board. As for why they're in hyperdrift, I don't know. I'm unfamiliar with the engine type, so I can't tell if there's a malfunction there. The ship design is completely unknown."
Weisser looked up at the ship that they were trailing. He had attempted to compute where it had been, but without knowing how long it had been drifting, he could not make more than a guess. He also wondered about who was on that ship and what had happened. "So, we're approaching the alien vessel. Since it's still at warp, we can't do much."
"We have to force it out of warp," Hall remarked. "The only way to do that is to introduce enough positive energy to disrupt the flows of the negative-energy motons in the warpfield coils. The warpfield would collapse."
"And destroy the ship," the pilot pointed out.
"Not necessarily, not if we disrupt the field evenly, or as evenly as possible. The navigational deflectors can be used for that. William, can you route enough power into the deflectors and direct it over a wider area, say the length of the alien ship?"
"It can be done. It'll take a few modifications, and a few minutes to do."
"Go ahead," Hall ordered.
Weisser spoke up, saying, "But wouldn't using the deflectors be risky? What about us?"
"Given how long this ship has been in hyperdrift, judging by its speed just above warp one, the warpfield is likely being held up by first-order motons only. Energy at a precise range of frequencies directed through the deflector would be the most effective in disrupting the warpfield, while maintaining enough for our deflective purposes. Our speed is low enough that even fractional deflector ability is sufficient."
"Of course," the pilot said, but the tone of his voice implied that he was not so sure in what the captain was planning to do.
Moments later, Gerthe, from engineering, contacted the bridge and said, "Captain, the modifications are in place. I've configured the emitter array to cover the entire ship at equal efficiency, and for this to work, we'll need to maintain a range of seven hundred metres, and an angle of fourty-five degrees. Operation of the deflector in this mode is at the discretion of Lieutenant Yuniki."
"Understood. Helm, get us into position." Nothing much shifted on the viewscreen as it was locked on the alien vessel, but it did look like it tipped its front end up a little.
"In position," Weisser finally said, and the displays on the secondary screen confirmed that.
"Yuniki, activate the deflectors. Lets try this at low power first."
The operations officers set the deflector to emit a low-level stream of directed energy at the warpfield, to erode it to the point of collapse. "Ready, firing." On the screen, rays of green appeared, extending from below the screen to the ship. Everybody on the bridge knew that the rays were really just a computer construct, since the rays were actually invisible to anybody outside of the ship. Even at low setting, the deflectors worked. Within seconds, the warpfield integrity was lost, and the engines were no longer able to supply fresh streams of motons to maintain the field. It collapsed, causing the alien ship to simply disappear off of the screen.
"It worked," Yuniki remarked, surprised as anyone about how easy it was to knock the drifting ship out of warp. It was not supposed to be that easy. "Maybe it was ready to drop out of warp on its own."
"Helm, take us back to the ship and then out of warp. Abuna, lifesigns now?"
"I'm reading... one," she said, peering into the hooded viewer to get a complete, glare-free look at the data. "Very weak, unknown race."
"Looks like a situation." Hall turned to the science station, and said, "Commander, can you scan for a docking port?"
"There is one on the rear. That appears to be some kind of airlock, with docking clamps. The ship scans as a single deck, flight deck in front, then what might be cabins, and further back, machinery of unidentified purpose, perhaps engines. Oddly, I can't detect significant stores of food or other supplies."
"No tasty alien morsels to vary the meals in the mess hall?" Gerthe asked.
"Not likely."
"Very well. Abuna, I want you to do a scan of the docking clamps and see if we can configure the ones on the pod to mate with them. Otherwise, we'd have to improvise. You'll be leading the mission onto the alien ship. Quirk and another of his officers will accompany you, along with Doctor Torres. Weisser's flying. Questions?"
"No sir."
* * *
Half an hour later, the shuttlepod was ready. It was one of the three shuttles on board the Atlas, and it was designed specially for ship-to-ship travel and docking. The rear contained an airlock and a configurable docking system, which could be adjusted in various ways in order to mate with alien docking systems, as long as they used the circular docking ring pattern that seemed to be common on ships from different species. The one on this alien ship appeared to be circular.
Weisser was behind the flight controls, while Abuna sat beside him. In the seats to the rear were the other three members of the boarding party. Both Quirk and Ensign Dmitri Asselstine were equipped with phased laser pistols, while Torres had with him his medikit, although he wondered how much he could do for an unknown alien. If the injuries were a result of trauma, then he could use standard procedures to treat them, but if the problem that the alien was suffering came from some other condition, he would not be as useful. Although this was not the same shuttle she had been on during the ill-fated mission to the so-called Uniworld, Abuna still could not help but to think of that mission. She had been on the training missions since, but the successes did not occupy her mind. It was easy to forget about the success, since that was what was supposed to happen, but the failures seemed to weigh on her. She was determined not to make this one another failure. This mission mattered more than the previous ones, since this was clearly not a training mission. They were doing this for real. They just did not have an idea what they were doing or what they were getting into. They knew nothing about this alien race, or its ship. Ever since the Atlas dropped out of warp, they had attempted to contact the ship, using the Preserver language, or known natural languages, on various frequencies, both subetheromagnetic or conventional electromagnetic. They had no response. This meeting could be the beginning of a friendly, mutually-beneficial relationship, or it could be the first encounter with an adversary that could be far worse than the Romulans. She just did not know.
"Commander," Weisser finally spoke up. "We're fully ready to go. The bridge has given us clearance, and they're depressurizing the bay now."
"Good," Abuna remarked. She had been aware of the hooting sound of the alert klaxon as the bay started to depressurize, a sound that slowly faded away.
"Bay depressurized, opening doors now." The hatch slid open and quickly retracted, revealing the darkness and the speckle of stars beyond. Weisser, with the shuttlepod fully powered up and ready, lifted off of the deck and flew through the opening and into space. Powerful arc lights mounted on the nacelles were shining on the alien ship, which was about five hundred metres off the starboard stern. The two ships were moving alongside each other in step at around twenty-two psol, and both were travelling purely on inertia. Weisser could see that, as he swung the pod to his left. He had a clear view of the starboard impulse engine. It was completely dark. Given the distance of the stars and the absence of anything in the immediate vicinity, it sure did not look like they were travelling at just under sixty-six thousand kilometres per second. The only clue that they were was the fact that the shields on the pod were raised to protect it and the crew from any dust particles or molecules that might slam into them.
The journey to the alien ship took only a few seconds. Weisser approached the docking port, and then turned the small vessel away from it. Using the sensors and the on-boarding targeting and docking systems, he managed to line up the docking rings on the pod with that of the alien vessel. He carefully backed in, watching the monitors as the metres and then the centimetres counted down. He had to do this docking totally manually since the alien ship did not having the docking procedures system that he could use if this was another Starfleet vessel or installation he was approaching. Weisser made some minute adjustments to the controls to get the rings within the larger rings of the alien docking port. At the right moment, the grapplers were deployed, which held onto the alien docking ring tightly through hydraulic pressure. The remaining space was filled in as gas cells inflated to a high pressure and pressed into every crevice and gap that existed between the two rings. Sensors in the docking mechanism confirmed that the various systems were working and that the hold appeared to be secure.
"We're docked," Weisser said, as he glanced backward. The inner hatch of the airlock was closed. "Pressurizing the gap now," he added. Air filled the small space between the outer airlock hatches on both ships, and sensors checked to make sure that air stayed there. "It's holding. We have a secure dock."
"Lets proceed," the first officer remarked. She stood up, and gestured for three of the others to follow her. Weisser would remain on board the pod, and if necessary relay information back to the Atlas and be ready for an emergency departure. He also had to make sure that nobody else got onto the pod. Abuna took her tricorder, and also a heavily-insulated work glove from a storage cabinet. She opened the hatch to the airlock, and then walked through its short length to the other hatch. She opened that too. Right in front of her was the alien hatch. It was a simple sliding hatch, with an overlapping section in the middle where the right section extended over the left. It was on that extension that they saw three simple controls, one of which was light up dimly in a reddish-orange. The other looked to be bluish and the lowest one, white. Abuna scanned the lights and the wiring behind them, to determine that they were buttons and that they were connected to something. She understood that they were simply designed and worked easily, since they could be accessed by individuals wearing space suits--or people like her wearing the bulky insulated glove. Afterall, this hull had been exposed to deep cold just moments earlier. It was likely no more than ten or twenty degrees above absolute zero. Already, a noticeable layer of ice had formed on the exposed hull surface.
Quirk looked over the first officer's shoulders, and said, "How complicated can this be? One opens the door, and the other depressurizes the airlock on the other side."
"And one could well cause whatever is attached to the docking port to be blown off."
"Not too likely," the security chief remarked.
"Why?"
"The wiring for that would be obvious. Besides, this doesn't look like a warship or a fighter. It's too small. We can't detect any weapon systems on board. This could be a courier vessel, or some race's version of a luxury yacht."
"One nobody is looking for."
Another tricorder analysis of the wiring did not fully identify what the buttons did, so Abuna was forced to eventually take a chance. She pressed the one in the middle. It came on with a bright blue, and for a few seconds, the red and blue button lights started to flash in alternation. The four just looked at themselves, while it was Abuna who wondered if they had set off some alien race's autodestruct system. However, after those few seconds, all three lights went out and the doors smoothly opened. Beyond was another airlock, not unlike their own, and on the other side of that, another hatch. It opened to their approach.
Once on the alien craft, Abuna turned to face the others, and said, "Asselstine, you'll accompany the doctor and find the individual whose lifesigns we had been detecting. Quirk and I will look around."
"Very well."
The craft did not seem too alien. Abuna did notice that the corridor here was narrow, and that the walls sloped inwards, leaving not much headroom. The walls were covered in a kind of plastic, and it became translucent in places. Panels behind the clear plastic displayed some information, although it was not information that was changing as she watched. Her other impression was that the air was breathable, but cool, with a temperature of only about twelve degrees. The ceiling was rather low, and more than once, they had to duck under some conduit or beam. The aliens were likely short in stature, Abuna thought. On the other hand, she wondered about their eyes. The corridor seemed unusually bright, almost as if they were outside in bright sunshine.
"Should've brought some shades," Quirk said.
"Tell me about it."
A short distance down the corridor was an archway, and on the other side, the hallway was a bit wider and the walls were straighter. They were still covered with this type of plastic, with the clear panels and the displays underneath. Abuna noticed that the floor was carpeted here, and that the carpet was rather worn in places. Lining the corridor were a number of doors along both sides. Torres and Asselstine stopped by one of them, with Torres using his tricorder to scan into the room. "The life sign is in here."
Puzzled, the security officer asked, "Do we knock?"
"Because the life sign is weak, we might have to attend to him quickly."
"But what if the life signs of this species are naturally weak as we interpret them."
"Then this one should've answered the hails, or respond to our docking with his ship, or at least move around. He hasn't."
"He could be sleeping."
Torres thought it over, and realized that Asselstine was in a way making sense. They had all interpreted what they had seen here through their own eyes and their own knowledge. Maybe the interpretation algorithms did not work properly for this species and left out too much data, and maybe they really were just barging in on a lone alien sleeping. But why would an alien be alone in a ship in what was clearly extended hyperdrift? If the alien travelled alone, why kind of security system did he have? The computer should be going through an effort to alert him that an alien ship had docked with it and unknown aliens were on board. No, Torres realized, this alien clearly was in distress, and might have been for a prolonged period of time. He stepped in front of the door, but it did not open for him. He felt along the doorframe, and found a section that did not have the warm touch of the plastic, but had the cold touch of metal instead. Touching that caused the door to open.
The room the two entered was clearly quarters. On one side was the bed, and on the other, a table and chair. In between was one of the few windows on this ship. The room was actually kind of messy, with what looked like dirty dishes on the desk, including one with some half-consumed and cold food. Nearby was a glass half-filled with some reddish-pink beverage. However, Torres did not focus on that. Instead, he focused on the being in the bed. The alien was slight of build, perhaps no more than a metre fourty in height, and the body was rather slender--in fact, Torres got the impression that the alien was slender to the point of emaciation. The being was humanoid, with long, straight black hair, and apparently dark skin. The alien also had something like whiskers, long, thin, stiff but noticeable hairs growing out of the sides of the face, around the mouth and the eyes. One hand was holding on to the blanket, and that hand had an unusual amount of hair. One other feature caught their attention.
Asselstine said, "I gather those white scaly things on her skin are not natural."
"I don't believe so," the doctor replied tentatively. All over the face and the visible hand were whitish scab-like patches of skin, which were not symmetrical over her body, and which came in a number of sizes and all had irregular outlines. The skin around them was especially reddish, and even though this being was an alien, the crusty blisters had to cause some discomfort.
"What is it?"
"I don't know," Torres said, as he got his tricorder out. He swept the instrument along the sleeping form of the alien, and studied the readings. He had no idea what they meant. He noticed a lot of stuff in her bloodstream, and tried to pick out something that should not belong there. However, as far as he could tell, the various cells all showed signs of her genetic structure. "I'm not sure if these vital signs are good. She's an unknown alien, and I don't know what normal is."
"She?" asked Asselstine.
"Well, the tricorder did pick up signs of a womb and ovaries. She's humanoid in structure, but most curiously, the bone structure and some other readings suggest a great age."
"How old?"
"A hundred and twenty-five, hundred and thirty perhaps."
"Maybe those things on her skin are signs of advanced age."
"On the other hand," the doctor continued, "Even I can tell that her body functions have deteriorated, and she is on the verge of starvation."
The security officer said, "And she doesn't wake up while we're standing around, scanning her and talking in a normal tone of voice."
"No," Torres remarked, looking down at his tricorder again. "I guess the best thing would be to get her back to the Atlas. In sickbay, I might be able to do something for her."
Abuna and Quirk reached the front of the ship. It was not really a bridge, but more like a cockpit in that only two seats were present, both at the front and facing blank panels. She saw only a small number of fixed controls, but large areas of black glass. That glass was kind of grimy and smudged with fingerprints. Everything about the room showed its age, to the threadbare carpeting and the worn vinyl in the seats. A lot of the panels had scratches and the paint worn off of the edges, and some small debris and even dust lined the edges of the floor. The security chief commented, "Everything we see about this ship indicates that it has been operating for a long time."
"I've noticed," Abuna said. "I wonder how they operate it? These panels must hide touch-sensitive controls."
"They must have a lot of faith in their computers. If the computer goes down, then the whole system goes down, and they can't control the ship. I'd hate to put my trust into computers like that."
Abuna had no idea how to activate the panels, so she touched one. Nothing happened. She scanned them, and noticed that there were no active circuits underneath. She checked the row of small fixed switches along one side, and saw that they were active. She was about to reach for one when Quirk blurted out, "Commander, don't touch that! You don't know what that'll do. Maybe it'll blow up the ship."
"Hardly," the first officer remarked. "Afterall, if one button could blow up the ship, what if you accidentally touched it or bumped into it? Unless this alien race has funny thought patterns, I'd hazard to guess that the ‘on' switch is the button at the top." She touched that. A light within turned from red to green, and the panels sprang to life. She was also greeted by a high-pitched alert sound that caused them to turn around in case somebody was coming. Quirk had his phaser out.
In the quarters, Torres and Asselstine were startled by the sound, and like those on the bridge, started to look around to see what had caused it. Also reacting to the sound was the alien woman. She opened her eyes, and looked up. She stared, wide-eyed and transfixed, and almost seemed paralyzed. Both Torres and the security officer backed away and gave her room. All she did was to pull up the blankets closer to her face, as if that could protect her. In a weak voice, she finally spoke, "Hon a ge'o?"
"What did she say?" Asselstine asked.
"I don't know," the doctor answered. "I don't think it's a known language."
"Mon ze omini fom ge'o fa?"
"Maybe she's asking for our names," Asselstine said.
"Really?"
The alien woman continued, "Avand gom qon fon kamed." She spoke fast, and almost seemed scared. Torres was not sure how to proceed in this situation. He had to think how the woman was thinking, about how she was seemingly asleep, only to be woken by some kind of alert sound and then see previously-unknown aliens standing in her quarters. She looked at the two of them, and Torres had this feeling that if they turned her backs on her, she might pull out a weapon. She did stop talking, realizing that the strangers in her quarters could not understand her, just as she could not understand them.
A few seconds after the alert tones sounded, they shut off. The panels remained active, however. The displays were in an alien script she had never seen before, but the number of apparent controls were rather simple. It was as if the panel could be configured to handle whatever was immediately needed, without burdening the user with lots of switches and knobs to operate. She could almost see the advantage of this sort of control system, but she understood the disadvantage too.
"Commander," Quirk said, as he walked the few metres from the open door of the quarters to the bridge. "The alien woke up when that alert went off."
"Oh," sighed Abuna. She was not fully sure how to handle this. She was the ranking officer, and was making first contact with a previously-unknown alien race. However, she found the lone alien on board to appear to be weak and with obvious lesions on her skin. She was also cowering behind the blankets of her bed, and staring at them with panic-filled eyes.
"Has omini gom fa?"
Of course, Abuna thought, the alien would have to speak an unknown language. She had her tricorder out, and it was loaded with known languages, and also the Preserver language symbols. Those did not form a language that could be spoken, but any traveller in space should be able to recognize them. Abuna set her tricorder to translate her words into the Preserver language. "Okay," she said to the others. "Move out of here. Four aliens at once is scaring her. I'll handle this."
"If you say," Quirk remarked.
"I say."
The three men left the room, leaving just Abuna with the alien. She set her tricorder to transcribe her speech, saying, "We mean you no harm. We're travellers who came across your ship in hyperdrift." The Preserver symbols appeared on the small screen of her tricorder, so she showed that to the alien woman. Abuna knew that she could not read those symbols, but surely she had the means to visually record them and then translate them into her own language. Instead, she looked up at the first officer, seemingly dumbfounded. Maybe she just did not know what was expected of her. Surely, she thought, the alien had heard of the Preserver language. The Preservers had come to worlds where sentient life might arise, and left behind their language and the ability to translate it into a local language. The whole purpose was to allow emerging races to be able to communicate with other races they find in the galaxy, and each other, in the hopes of fostering understandings and avoiding conflicts due to misunderstanding. The influence of the Preservers was widespread, but apparently, this alien species had not heard of them. It was possible her people came from a small and insignificant planet, or perhaps a long distance away.
The alien spoke, "Hu go sho a?"
"I don't know what you're saying," Abuna replied. "I don't understand your language. Do you understand the Preserver language?" She rephrased the question and had it translated before showing it to the alien woman, who again did not seemingly comprehend what was going on. Maybe that dumbfounded look was natural for her race, Abuna thought. "Do you understand?" It was almost frustrating to deal with this.
Gradually, the woman seemed to relax. She stopped talking, perhaps realizing the futility of that, and increasingly did not regard Abuna as a threat. Eventually, she pushed the blankets down from her body, and got out of the bed. Abuna just moved back, and gave her room. However, she was pretty sure that this alien race did not look this frail and even fragile in its normal state. Her arms and legs seemed almost inconsequential they were so thin. The clothing was thin and worn, and hung loosely on her emaciated frame. Abuna could see the white scaly growths on her face, neck and hands, and the long hair that was ragged and matted and its original black was streaked with white and gray. The woman struggled to her feet, while Abuna stood there, feeling unsure of what she could do or should do to help. She hated to see anybody look like this and struggle like this, when medical technology existed to deal with severe conditions. Why did she not contact her species, or go home, if that was possible? Why was she out here in the middle of space? The alien was trying to cross the room, to the desk. Abuna did not know why. Maybe she was trying to get her equivalent of a tricorder and translate the Preserver language. She grabbed the frame of the window to steady herself, and straightened up before taking the next step. She took that next step--and then fell over.
"Doctor!" Abuna yelled, as she rushed towards the woman. The alien looked up, but her eyes seemed blank and distant. Abuna could almost sense some kind of pain going through this woman. She tired to comfort her.
"What happened?" Torres asked, as he entered the room.
"She got up, and tried to walk across the room, but collapsed."
"She seems incredibly weak. We'll have to get her back to the Atlas. It's the only thing we can do."
"I understand," Abuna said. She was cradling the alien woman, trying to provide whatever comfort she could, but the alien had returned to unconsciousness. Her eyes were closed, and her breathing was very shallow and calm.
"She's still alive, but barely," the doctor said, after doing a quick scan.
"Take her back to the shuttlepod, and have Weisser communicate a request to the captain to bring the alien on board. Meanwhile, we'll have a look around. It's highly unlikely she would be able to survive eating our food, so we'll have to find hers."
"Understood." Torres replied. He was about to call Quirk and Asselstine into the room to help him carry the woman to the shuttlepod, but he quickly found that he was able to pick her up on his own. She was on the short side, barely above a metre-fourty in height, and her body was so wasted that she weighed seemingly nothing. "I may have to take the shuttlepod back to the ship, and leave you three here. Is that a problem?"
"Only if the Atlas takes off without us."
"I'm sure the captain doesn't want to leave his first officer behind." Abuna followed Torres out of the room, and watched as he headed down the corridor, through the narrow passage and back onto the shuttlepod. She turned back to the flight deck, where she found the two security officers were examining the consoles, but not touching anything.
"Commander, look at this," Quirk remarked. He was standing at the rear of the bridge, and had figured out how to work one of the displays. It showed various views, and by tapping at an icon, he could advance the particular views. One was a forward view, and one was a rear view. One showed the Atlas, its working lights shining brightly. At the end of the physical views were a couple of images of graphics and charts. One was a star map, and it showed the recent course of the alien ship, although that recent course was basically a straight line or a slight arc, depending on the influence of the gravity of nearby stars. Abuna looked over the map, and determined that the controls that appeared with this image. She decided to experiment, and found the controls that zoomed in and out. She zoomed outwards, until the origin point of the course was displayed. For a short period, the course was more erratic, but suddenly it straightened out. Abuna thought that part of the course occurred when the ship went into hyperdrift. "What happened?" Quirk asked.
"I don't know. What we need to do is visually scan this image, and see if we can align this image with our starmaps. It's possible that planet, where this ship originated, could be a homeworld for these people. Considering the condition she is in, we might not be able to do much for her, and would have to bring her back home."
"This map could also tell how long the ship has been drifting like this."
"Yes, that too. Right now, the doctor is taking the alien back to the Atlas. We're on our own for now. Our mission is to try to find the food supply for this ship."
"Assuming her condition is not a result of starvation due to running out of food."
"That could be a problem, but we'll look nevertheless."
"What do we do with the ship?"
"Tow it back to the planet," Abuna answered. "It's small enough that we can position it and keep it within the warpfield of the Atlas. Although there might be technology different from ours on board, I don't see things too much more advanced than us."
"These panels look to be more advanced."
"Actually, we can build control systems like this one. The technology exists. We simply choose not to."
Asselstine looked over the forward seats, and said, "I wonder what it must be like to fly something like this, to take it though an atmosphere and land. I wonder what its top speed is."
"I doubt we'll find out any time soon. Lets spread out and start looking."
The three of them split up. Abuna searched the quarters and the forward third of the ship, while Quirk had the middle third and Asselstine and the last third. The ship was essentially one level, but at the rear, crawlway-like lower levels were present, although space was limited. Asselstine found one of those hatches, opened it and got inside. Climbing down to a lower level, he had to fight the sensation of claustrophobia. He briefly considered his position before crawling around the innards of the ship on his hands and knees, while occasionally having to duck under a low beam or squeeze through an especially narrow gap. He could hear the hum of machinery, as the internal reactor was working, and the life support system was also operational. He found the warp core of the small ship, and though it was cold, not having been operated for a long time, he scanned it and detected something other than dilithium in the core. He was sure it was not dilithium, but was not sure what it was instead.
He also found it unlikely that the aliens kept their food stores down here, since it seemed so inconvenient to make this trip just to eat. Most of the machinery was unfathomable to him, but he did come up to something that reminded him almost of a freezer, like the kind that his grandmother back home in Edinburgh had in that big, old house of hers. He moved towards that, looked through the glass top--and almost recoiled and bumped his head into some of the overhead pipes. He moved backwards, and pulled out his communicator. He flipped it open, tapped in a channel and said, "Asselstine to Commander Abuna."
"Go ahead."
"Ma'am, I've found something, and it's not the food stores. It's another alien, a body, in what could be a freezing chamber. He or she--I think it's a he--has the same general appearance, and the same scaly white growths on the skin."
"Okay, just leave that alone."
"Gladly."
Quirk looked at the middle rooms. At the front were quarters, and in the middle was something that could only be described as a living room, with a couple of chairs around a table, some unidentifiable machinery and a viewscreen, which had been turned off. The small room across from that had some unidentifiable machinery in it. Quirk, even after scanning it with a tricorder, could not determine its function. All that he could determine was that it was added after the ship was built, and it was not original equipment in that room. The next set of doors were the last before the engineering section. The first room looked like a storeroom, since it had a ring of cylinders of various sizes, all made of a reflective brassy material, and labelled with a small handful of characters. A display on one wall showed a graphic with many different small squares in different colours, and arranged in a peculiar, yet somehow familiar, way. In the centre of the room was some machinery, the purpose of which was not revealed by the tricorder scans. However, when the security chief scanned the cylinders themselves, he found that they contained what he thought might have been some kind of electrode, and each one was filled with a pure element. One larger tank had nothing but carbon in it, and a neighbouring one was pure oxygen, held at a temperature and pressure that made it a liquid. Smaller cylinders, some barely larger than a pencil, held rarer and more exotic elements. Now, when Quirk looked at the display again, the vague sense of recognition that he had resolved itself. The diagram looked like a periodic table that had been tipped on its side. He had no idea what was going on in the room, but realized that basic elements were not going to help him find food for the alien.
He left that room and entered the small one that was directly across. This room had a platform above the floor, and on it were two squares that were made of a glass-like material. They were matched with glass-like material on the lowered ceiling, and all around that platform were other glass-like partitions and support beams and other strange materials. Facing it was a simple console, with a couple of fixed buttons and a large area of black glass. Remembering how Abuna had turned on the consoles on the bridge, he touched the first of the fixed buttons. Once more, it went from red to green, and the console lit up. All the glass on and around the platform lit up too, startling him.
"What's this?" Abuna asked, as she entered the room.
"I don't know."
"Any luck finding the food stores?"
"No," the security chief said, adding a shake of his head.
"It almost looks like our transporter back on the Atlas."
Facing the first officer, Quirk asked softly, "You don't think?"
Abuna looked it over visually, and swept it with the tricorder. The device on its most basic level was similar to the transporter on the Atlas, but it seemed much more complicated, with more components and even what looked like redundant systems and backups. Given the size of the alcove and the ship it was located on, it seemed beyond comprehension that this transporter was for cargo only. Although it seemed fantastic, this one might have been capable of beaming people and rematerializing them alive at the other end. "This just might be what you think it is," she finally said.
"A transporter capable of transporting a living person, without killing him?"
"Yes. You know that it is theoretically possible to do it. We have evidence that other races have this technology and have used it, but we have yet to develop it to a safe and practical level yet."
"We have this one now."
"This ship does not belong to us," Abuna pointed out. "It belongs to the woman we found on board, and it belongs to her people. In the future, we might have relations with these people, and perhaps could even invite them to join the Federation if they are peaceful. Stealing their technology would not put us in a favourable light in their eyes. In addition, reverse-engineering alien technology is very difficult. We would have to take this machine apart and study its every aspect, and then basically understand how it works and how we can duplicate the process. Having done all of that, this technology might come down to materials we don't have access to and manufacturing processes that we are not yet capable of. It is much better to develop our own technology than to take others."
"If you say so, ma'am," Quirk started, as he continued to look around. He thought he would really like a demonstration of this device, but he was not sure if he was willing to volunteer to be the one who was transported. And yet, he could almost imagine stepping onto that platform and have someone transfer him to the Atlas, and he would be there instantly, without the trouble of getting on a shuttle, docking with another ship, especially an alien ship, and all of that. He could see the advantage of technology like this. After a few seconds, he spoke up, "But that doesn't solve the problem of a food source for the alien."
"We've found nothing."
"All I've found is this strange room with all of these tanks. I scanned them, and they contain pure elements, and within, some kind of electrode-like structure."
"A replicator," Abuna remarked.
"A what?" asked the security chief, as he turned to face the woman.
"I was talking to William about this." The two, realizing there was nothing more for them in this room, left it and crossed the corridor to the room that Quirk had initially examined. "The replicator is a natural extension of the transporter. The main difference is that in a transporter, the dematerialized object is rematerialized exactly. In a replicator, the dematerialized object or objects are rearranged into something new and useful."
"Like food?"
"Exactly. Therefore, the original objects would be basically raw elements, stored in tanks like these. A replicator program would call up the necessary amounts of each, and combine them according to the program and produce the final product, like tonight's meal."
Quirk thought it over for a moment, and said, "In other words, they don't have to store food. They simply replicate their next meal, whatever that would be."
"That's the idea."
"Imagine that. On this ship, they don't have to worry about endlessly eating that reconstituted scrambled eggs for breakfast." Abuna just smiled at the comment, so he added, "What happens when the tanks run out, though?"
"Actually, ideally, they wouldn't. You see, you can run the process in reverse and turn waste products into the base materials, and store them for future use. Basically, all that goes out of the system would be the energy used to run the system and create the replicated materials."
"You know, the idea of waste products being reused like that... doesn't exactly sound appealing. You mean the stuff in those tanks comes form... you know."
Abuna laughed a little, and said, "I take it you haven't been in environmental processing too much, have you?"
Asselstine approached the open door to the replicator room, and said, "Commander, Gord has returned with the shuttlepod..."
* * *
Captain Hall entered sickbay. The room was quiet, and empty except for the doctor and his patient. On the main treatment bed lay the alien woman, who appeared to be asleep. Doctor Torres continued to monitor the vital signs, and the contents and the flow from the intravenous drip attached to the side of the bed. Hall looked at the vital-sign monitor above the bed, but the readings were not too informative. Heart rate, breathing and pulse were above Earth norms, while the temperature was slightly less. The brainwave displays were completely meaningless. He had no idea if those values were normal or severely abnormal for this race.
Torres noticed the arrival of the captain, and looked up as he asked, "How is she?"
"I honestly don't know," the doctor answered, stepping away from the sleeping patient. "We have no information on this race. Even the databases we were given by the Vulcans and some of the other races make no mention of her race."
"Only natural, since we're farther than any of those groups have travelled."
"I'm not sure what's wrong with her. She doesn't have any apparent disease, since the stuff in her bloodstream appears to have her DNA, although not everything appears to have a purpose. Of course, I don't have enough understanding of this person's physiology to make a blanket statement about that. However, since mankind has entered space, we realized that a lot of other species out there are humanoid, and they even share some overall properties with us, to a surprising degree, actually."
"So much so that some have speculated some kind of ancient race seeding planets, and somehow influencing them to develop humanoids."
"A theory without proof," Torres remarked. With a wave at the unconscious woman, he added, "But she has some differences. I did a scan of her body." He tapped a button on a console, causing a display to light up. It showed an outline of the body, and identifiable internal structures were shown in familiar colours. "The expected parts are there. She has a heart, two lungs, a digestive system, although the nature of the system is somewhat carnivorous--that is, her small intestine is rather short--and I've noticed water adaptations in her digestive and excretory systems indicating her kind evolved on a dry world. On the other hand, here is a mystery." He pointed to an organ in the lower back. It was portrayed in gray, and around it were four shapes in the brown used to indicate the urinary track. "I don't know what the central organ does. Around it are kidneys, four of them, but the organ is not connected with that. Even more curious, that organ is attached to what appears to be a secondary nervous system. It's like the main one, which is turn is similar to others found in humanoids, but the secondary one is simpler, though structured the same."
"A backup brain in her lower back?" Hall said. He thought he had heard of weirder things in some aliens.
"Hardly. It's not at all composed like a brain. Her brain is not all that different than ours in terms of its overall composition. Actually, the organ in her lower back does have some parallels in structure to a particular organ on a certain type of Earth animal."
"And what is that?" Hall asked, when the doctor was not prompt with the answer.
"The charge-generating segments on an electric eel."
"You're saying?"
"Her people can produce a charge. It can be carried along that secondary nervous system, although for a purpose I cannot as of yet comprehend."
"Perhaps this," Hall started. "You said that her digestive system was that of a carnivore, and not like that of omnivores like us. Therefore, they must've evolved as hunters. Imagine the advantage you could have if you could hunt prey by stunning it with an electrical discharge."
"I guess so. None of this solves our problem, though. I can't treat her. She's badly dehydrated, and on the verge of starving to death. Her body is running by cannibalizing her muscle cells--no sign of fat on this person. I've managed to use a saline solution to try to ease the dehydration, but only as a last resort can I attempt to use intravenous feeding techniques using our nutrients. That might help, or it might kill her. I simply don't know enough about her physiology."
"What about the white scale-like markings? Are they natural?"
"No, they're not. I took samples, and analyzed them. They appear to be the result of skin-cell mutations, although the source is unknown. The body is actually riddled with cell mutations, although the immune system at one time had been able to take care of them, except the ones on the skin. Now I'm not so sure. There are signs of organ failure here as the mutations interfere with the operation of the organs. Something quite clearly affected her, and it proved fatal to her travelling companion."
Hall thought it over. Ever since Torres brought the woman on board the Atlas, he had been concerned about what to do with her. Ideally, he could meet a ship manned by her people, and transfer her to that ship for the kind of care she simply could not get on the Federation starship. Less ideally, he could take her back to what was assumed to be her homeworld. Finally looking at the doctor, he asked, "What's your recommendation?"
"If she has any chance of life, we have to get her back to her people."
"I see..."
Part 1,Part 2,Part 3,Part 4,Part 5,Part 6,Part 7,Part 8,Part 9,Part 10,Part 11,Part 12,Part 13,Part 14
"Flag At the Edge of Space" page, Athena Home Page, Other Stories Home Page.
