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.
Doctor Manuel Torres entered sickbay. It was approaching the start of the third shift, so at this time of the day on board the Atlas, sickbay was mostly deserted. Nothing was scheduled for this time of day, and the room was mostly unoccupied. If an emergency did happen, the medical staff could be summoned quickly enough. They all had their quarters right across the hall from the main entrance to sickbay. With the alien woman still in recovery ward, one of the medical staff was assigned to check up on her every hour, and the computer also monitored her condition. If something unexpected happened, Torres and the others would be automatically summoned.
Now Torres was alone in sickbay. The alien woman was on her back, the machinery still hooked up to her. He knew that she was starving to death, but he had no idea what she ate, and what nutrients her body required. He had spent hours in the lab trying to culture specimens of her cells and to see if common Earth-xenotype sugars and proteins would work, but the results were inconclusive. He had thought often about taking a chance and administering intravenous feeding, but that chance could as likely kill her as help her. He had hoped that the Atlas would arrive at her home planet, or would encounter more of her people, but those chances had not come out. Now he was again contemplating the last-ditch effort to save her.
She was silent. For the most part, she had been unconscious, and her vital signs were fading. Seeing the numbers on the screen, Torres thought that her species might have had the ability to hibernate, or to at least slow their life processes in times of crisis. Most people would have died a long time ago from her condition, he thought. Standing beside her, he started speaking, softly, knowing he was speaking more for himself than for her. "I don't even know your name," he said. "I don't even know your people. The possibility exists that I will never know either. I have done all that I can for you. I hope that you won't hold my failures against me."
The doors to sickbay opened. Torres briefly thought that somebody, somewhere on the Atlas might have injured himself doing something. However, it was Gerthe who entered, and he walked in under his own power and had no sign of any burn, bleeding wound or anything else that would require the skills of a physician. "Doctor," the engineer started, "we just got back from looking over the alien ship again." Now that the starship was in orbit and out of warp, Gerthe and some other engineers had used the opportunity to travel over to the alien vessel and continue their searches.
"I gather you've learned nothing that could help?"
"Unfortunately, no. I was looking for emergency rations, any kind of emergency equipment or supplies, but I found nothing that I recognized as such. Everything I saw implies that the ship is rather old and has been operating for some time."
"How long?"
"That's hard to say. From the outside, I'd say it had not been refitted and repaired for maybe a hundred years, maybe more. I had one of my engineers do an examination of the exterior hull. The conclusion was that a lot of the wear came from prolonged operation in an atmosphere. For the longest time, this starship was used as an atmospheric vessel. The antigravity generator system appears to have been overhauled more than once, and a careful look also picked out extensive modifications to the warp engines. I noticed that the basic systems are very advanced, very meticulous and carefully constructed and built. In fact, the engineering is exquisite, and quite interesting. Clearly, her people are very advanced, centuries ahead of us, I'd say."
"What do these modifications imply about this ship?"
"That it might have been at a planet for some time."
"This planet?"
"That's hard to say," Gerthe admitted. "The captain wants to get underway in the morning. He's still undecided at what to do with the ship. He'd hate to abandon it, and leave it to scavengers, and it would not be practical for us to continue to tow it. Mary and I were talking about it, and thought that we should continue to investigate this planet. We've done a powered orbit and confirmed nobody's still alive, but if they were here, and had stayed here long enough to repair their engines, there must be clues left behind."
"We'll have to talk to the captain again," Torres said.
"Agreed."
"But what about those replicators?"
"As far as I can tell, it's a voice-activated system. You simply step up to it, and state the item that you want. It produces it for you. You don't punch buttons, and you don't insert cards or anything like that."
"And it probably doesn't understand English either."
"No," Gerthe admitted, and the tone of his voice suggested to Torres that the engineer might have in fact attempted to talk to the replicator in English. "But imagine if we had that kind of technology on board the Atlas. We could actually have real breakfasts and real meals, instead of that scrambled-eggs-from-concentrate stuff that we get every other morning."
"And it doesn't help us either." Torres turned to look at the sleeping alien woman, and said, "It's so frustrating. All this technology, all of this knowledge, and we can't help her."
"Our problem is that our technology and our knowledge is race-specific. In time, our membership in the Federation might change that, but right now, that is very true. The Atlas is an Earth ship. Doctor, you tried your best."
"I know. I want to keep thinking that there are alternatives."
* * *
Captain Hall was in his quarters. Despite being the captain, his quarters were not really that much more elaborate than those of the other officers. It was a square room, with bare metal walls and beams, and a carpeted floor. The bed was in something of an alcove, with storage underneath, mostly for emergency equipment in case the person had to leave the room and enter an unpressurized area. The other furniture was simple, including a desk with a computer terminal, and an easy chair by the window. Other than a photograph of his wife hanging on the wall beside the desk, Hall really had not decorated his room that much. He was not here to do much more than sleep, and sleep was what was he was about to do. He sat in the chair, and was reading through chapter fourteen of Assorted Redundancies, a ten-year old novel set during the AI battles that occurred when Colonel Green's machines got out of control late in the period known as World War Three. It was a rather terrifying novel in places, and Hall was in one of those places now. Here he was, in a starship hundreds of light years from home, dependent on the very kind of machines that had so threatened mankind just about a century ago.
Then the door buzzer sounded.
Hall put the book down--almost relieved that he could escape the intense passages--and walked to the door. He pushed at the button that opened the door, and saw that three of his senior officers, Gerthe, Abuna and Torres, were standing there. "What can I do for you?"
"Sir," Abuna started. "There is something that we need to discuss."
Laughing just a little, Hall remarked, "I hope this is not mutiny that we're talking about." The others just grinned.
"No," Abuna said, as she entered the quarters with the others. "It's about this planet. We need a little more time to look around. William has come up with this theory that the aliens might have spent some time here, and used that time to repair their ship, perhaps by exploring through this planet and looking for and adapting technology and resources. That's why it looks like the origin point of their mission. We need to find the sites that the woman and her companion--if he was still alive then--were using. There might be clues there on her origins, and what we could do to help her."
"I see," Hall replied, as he carefully considered what his first officer was suggesting. A lot of these thoughts were his own as well. "Do you have an estimate on how long this could take?"
"Sir, what I propose is that we give this two more days. We'll conduct some surveillance missions, and if there are no leads, no positive developments, then we'll have to seriously reconsider what we're doing."
"I see."
Before Hall could even begin to think about the request, and before he could even begin to ask more questions and gather more information, the computer sounded an alert. "Attention, paging Doctor Torres. Emergency situation in sickbay detected. Automatic alert. Paging Doctor Torres."
Torres said simply, "The moment I've been fearing."
"It was inevitable, doctor," the captain said softly.
Torres left the room, with Hall and the others following close behind. The trip between the captain's quarters and sickbay was not exactly a short one, so when the group arrived, Lane and some of the medical technicians were already there. The first thing that Torres looked at was the monitor. It showed the vital signs, as weak as they were, but most of all, he concentrated on the brain wave readings. Although this woman was an alien, Torres had no problem recognizing a lack of brain activity in the readings he saw. Lane heard the others enter, and said simply, "Doctor, I don't think there's anything we could do. Virtually all brain wave activity has ceased."
"I know," he doctor said, somewhat glumly.
The patient still breathed and there was a little bit of a pulse, but that was coming from the life support machinery which had been keeping her alive. It was up to him to disconnect the machinery that was keeping her shell of a body alive, and he had none of her family or her friends to consult and get advice from. It was up to him. Even Hall was leaving this decision up to him. The others, except for Lane, stood back while he approached. To his assistant, he said, "It's kind of sad, you know. One of the first things I learned in medical school was that there is a limit to our knowledge, and a limit on how much we can know, especially when practicing medicine hundreds of light years from home. This was my limit. I feel frustrated that I could do nothing, that I had no time nor no opportunity to learn."
"You did the best you could, sir," Lane added.
"Everybody's telling me that. Maybe I did, but this time, my best was not enough." The decision had been made, but this was the kind of decision that only Torres could carry out. He could not ask anybody else to do this. He walked over to the small control panel that operated the vital sign monitor and also the life support machinery. He looked one more time, and saw only random "noise" as brain waves. When a human got to this state, there was no hope for him, and he could not think that an alien would be different, especially an unknown alien like this woman. He wondered how long he should wait, and at the same time, realized that waiting was useless. She was not coming back. She was not going to make a miraculous recovery. It just was not going to happen this time. With a few flicks of his wrist, Torres shut off the life support machinery. Neither Hall nor Lane nor the others complained or said that his actions were in haste. Slowly, the remaining life support indicators dropped to zero. Breathing stopped. The heart beat stopped. Torres tapped in a few codes into the computer panel, logging the time of death. Her name for official purposes was "Unknown Alien Female #1."
"What a way to go," Hall said, to the group gathered around him. "Alone, perhaps hundreds, maybe even thousands, of light years from home, on an alien ship surrounded by aliens unknown to her, aliens who could not treat her disease, and aliens who could not speak her language, and aliens who had no idea what her customs in this matter were. It's not a way I would wish for anybody to go."
"Indeed," Abuna said. "But what do we do now?" She spoke while watching Lane and Torres remove the saline solution lines and the life support equipment. Then they pulled the blanket up to cover her head. She continued, "Do we leave her on board, and hope that someday we contact her people?"
"The only problem with that," Hall started, "is that we do not know who her people are. It might be years before we contact them, maybe even centuries. Who knew where they came from. We might never find out who her race was. It's not especially dignified to carry around alien bodies hoping one day to meet the living version and get information on proper burial rituals."
"We can bury her, and her companion, on the surface of this planet," the first officer suggested.
"No, this is not her world. It's not the world of her people. It's someone else's world, someone else's grave, judging by what you and the others saw on the surface." He paused for a moment, and wondered about the appropriateness of the idea that came to mind now. "We do not know the customs of her people. We don't know if they prefer burial, or cremation, or what else they could do with the bodies once the person has died. However, in Starfleet, we do have something of a tradition of burials in space. To avoid having these bodies found later, perhaps by aliens, it is also customary to direct the burial tubes into the nearby star, so that they are incinerated by the sun. Unfortunately, we don't know if this alien race follows the same practice. In the absence of contrary data, I believe that is the best thing to do here."
"Should I ready the photon torpedo casings?" Gerthe asked.
"No, not yet," Hall remarked. "We won't be doing it that way. We'll put them onto her ship, and then guide that into the star."
"Sir," Gerthe protested, shocked that the captain could even think of doing such a thing. "We can't do that. There are things to learn, technology to study, even deciphering the computer core. There's work to be done on board that ship."
"Unfortunately, William, we still have a mission to perform. I don't believe it is practical to drag that ship around to Rigel and back, especially considering how uncertain the situation at Rigel is. It would strain our resources and could compromise our security and safety."
"Then we can leave it behind, and retrieve it on the way home."
"It might be looted or stolen by someone else in the meantime. In addition, I don't think it's appropriate to steal the technology of others in that manner."
"Sir, if we could understand such things as their replicators and personnel transporters, it would revolutionize our space-going technology."
"Perhaps," Hall started, "but it's the wrong way to go. I don't think stealing technology from other races is the way that we should proceed. It sets a bad example for the entire Federation. The technology that we saw on board that ship is nothing that mankind cannot develop, given our level of advancement already. Those things are in our future, and it would be much preferable if we develop and refine them in our own manner rather than steal the technology from others."
"If not the technology, then the computer core."
"A core we can't read or even power up in all likelihood. No, let the memories that this woman, and her companion, go with them to whatever afterlife these people have."
"Sir," Gerthe continued. "You could be making a bad decision. Are you sure that Starfleet can back you up on that?"
"I don't know what Starfleet could think. I'm well out of communications range with Earth, so I have to act independently. That's one of the reasons I got this mission. It is my decision to make, and given the circumstances, I believe that it is the best decision to make." Gerthe was not happy with the decision, as he was losing a ship that could contain a wealth of technological treasures and other information, if they could just solve the problem of being able to operate the controls. However, he did not further complain. "Then the matter is set. Doctor Torres, if you do not believe that an autopsy is in order--"
Torres cut in, saying, "I know the cause of death. I'd hate to do the autopsy, since it would seem more like a dissection to me. It would not be necessary."
"Then have you and some others move the body of the woman back onto her ship, and put her in some ‘dignified position,' a position of importance."
"I'm on it, sir."
* * *
Captain Hall and the other senior officers, as well as Doctor Torres and his assistant, Roberta Lane, were on the bridge. The only person still sitting was Weisser, who was behind the controls. Dominating the viewscreen was the sun that the derelict planet orbited, and it was visibly growing as the Atlas moved towards it at almost fourty percent of the speed of light. Held in place below the ship was the small alien vessel, in which were the two bodies of the unknown aliens. The male had been left in the chamber that he was found in, while the female was returned to her quarters and placed in the bed. Hall had left strict orders that when the shuttlepod returned, those on board were to bring back nothing, no relics, no souveniers, no portable pieces of alien technology. Hall understand that a lot would be lost by what they were going to do, but he still believed that ultimately, this was the right choice for them to make.
He did think about the woman, as he stood there, waiting. He thought about how little they knew about her. He had seen the computer-generated recreation of what she likely looked like without the whitish scabby growths over her skin, and he had read the report from Torres that included such details as how the melanin pigment was building up in her skin. These people got darker as they got older, he had said. The linguists on board had studied her words, most of which had been recorded, and compared them to the written language as seen on the ship. They found some correlation, but they found no correlation with the samples of writing recovered from the surface of the unnamed planet. The linguists had even suggested that her name was "Fon," judging by how she used that word in speech. Others thought it was a pronoun. At least they could agree that in the alien's language, the verb came at the end of the sentence. Hall realized that they had learned a lot based on so little data. It was just not what they wanted to learn.
"Captain," Weisser spoke up, "we're at ten million kilometres."
On the viewscreen, the sun was a bright ball, although the imaging sensors had filtered out enough of the light to make the image viewable. The Atlas was just eighty seconds from the sun. "Be prepared to disengage the tractor beams on my signal," Hall finally said.
"Aye, sir."
At a moment like this, Hall knew that something had to be said. He just did not know what. "We knew you for such a little time," he started. "We knew so little about you. We did not even know your name. However, if your kind has an afterlife, I hope that you do not judge us too harshly. We honestly tried to do all we could, but suffered from a lack of knowledge. One day, I hope your people will meet mine, and that your people will understand what we attempted to do. I hope that one day, our two species can be friends, but that day might be far in the future. Please understand that this method of burial is honoured and dignified among my people, and I hope that it is among yours as well. Peace be with you." Hall bowed his head, as did the other senior officers. Weisser checked off the ever-decreasing distance to the sun. Finally, the captain looked up and said, "Helm, release the tractor beams."
Weisser followed the order without acknowledgement. He pushed the button that set up the sequencers that disengaged the tractor beams holding the alien ship in place. Seconds later, he lifted the Atlas further above the alien ship and turned it away from the star. The sensors tracked the small ship as it continued on the original path, carried along by inertia and pulled in by the sun's gravity. They saw the fury of the sun reflected off of the hull, which seemed to get brighter and brighter as the ship got closer. "The vessel has entered the corona," Abuna remarked. "Ten seconds to the photosphere." The craft was but a speck of bright light moving ever closer to the dazzling yellow of the sun. It seemed to be developing a tail, a stream of matter off of the rear much like a comet. And then it was simply lost among the glare and the brightness of the star. "All contact with the alien ship has been lost. I'm assuming that the ship has been vapourized."
"Understood. Helm, resume our course to Rigel, and make the jump to warp as soon as possible."
"Aye, sir," Weisser remarked. He made some scans, and did some calculations and finally made some adjustments to the helm console. This close to a star, it was going to take a few minutes before the warp engines could allow them to jump to warp, but at least they had the bright point of light that was Rigel centered on the screen again.
* * *
Once more, the Atlas was at warp and heading back to Rigel. The viewscreen in the mess hall showed the familiar forward view, the one that they had become very comfortable with. One star was centered there, and it continued to get brighter and brighter as they approached it. Undoubtedly, from the surface of the planet they had just visited, Rigel would be a dazzling sight in the night sky, easily the brightest star in the sky. Rigel on this planet was likely much brighter than Sirius was seen from Earth.
Abuna was enjoying a late meal, if she could call what she had a meal. It consisted of a submarine bun filled with what the galley staff called "cheese," but she was not so sure. Hall, carrying a tray that contained something similar, sat down across from her. "Trying the so-called cheese sub?"
"Yes," he said.
"Somewhat risky."
"It used to taste good."
"It must be that cheese. I wonder how they're making it."
Hall took a bite, and after chewing and swallowing, said, "That might be something best left to our imaginations only."
"Agreed."
The captain did look at the viewscreen, and remarked, "The familiar view is back."
"I noticed," Abuna said.
"It won't be long now."
"Once we get to Rigel, we'll likely forget the events of the past couple of days. This was not the mission. What we encounter at Rigel will be. And yet... I can't help but to think about it. I can't stop."
"It's only natural," Hall started, after risking another bite of the sub. He had to admit that the bread was pretty good but the cheese was a little... off. "A captain will always, in his mind, second-guess his decisions, always wonder if he did something wrong. It's okay if it helps you make a better decision the next time around, if you learn, but it hinders you if you reflect on the past and brood over it. The past is done, and only for the future do you have any kind of say."
"Okay," the first officer said, after another bite of her sandwich. "Before we put this event into the past and focus on the future, there is one question I have. I hope you don't consider it too personal. I was just wondering... if you believe you made the right decision."
"I believe I did," Hall answered, although he could not fully say he felt that way. The problem was that Abuna wanted to know, so he had to struggle for the words. "Like many things that we encounter in space, this was not a simple problem. We were guided by what we believed in, ideals if you will. We wanted to help that alien woman, we all did, but we simply could not. After doing what we could, then we were faced with the problem of what to do after we had failed. I guess I still will have dreams, and even fears, about the burial. Maybe to her people, what we did was ghastly, and a severe desecration of a body. I hope not, but you never know. In the end, I simply found that it would be inappropriate to steal the technology from that woman's race. I'm sure that we both could give examples of what happens to people, humans like us and other races, who got technology that they were not yet prepared for. It is much better to develop the technology on our own, because it becomes ours."
"But what we learned on that ship implies the direction that we can go."
"Of course. Ours is a history of knowing what technology is possible, and then striving towards it. This is not quite theoretical development, but it does give evidence that things like personnel transporters and replicators and faster ships are possible."
"I guess so," Abuna remarked, softly. She finally took another bite of the sub.
"I take it you're not convinced."
"Maybe not convinced, but I understand..."
"What do you have?" Hall said, as he stepped onto the bridge. He looked around, and saw that Abuna was not keeping his seat warm. Instead, she was at the sensor controls, and was making adjustments to the settings on the console.
The first officer looked up, and said, "Something that we have not seen since our journey to Rigel began." She glanced briefly at the viewscreen, which showed a dominating point of bright blue light that was Rigel. "It's another starship, with an active warp drive." The only other ship they had encountered was the small alien ship that was in hyperdrift.
"Can you identify it?"
"No, it's too far away," Abuna said. "It's also faster than we are and is pulling away. Already it is getting close to the edge of our sensor range."
"Speed?"
"About warp seven point four." Those on the bridge were impressed with such a number, since no ship from Earth had ever managed such a speed. That was enough speed that the trip to Rigel would be a handful of months rather than a year. Because that speed was well within the H-factor for dilithium, those on the bridge understood that it was only technology and quality of dilithium that prevented an Earth ship from reaching such a speed. "We've charted its course for the past five minutes, and the heading is unmistakable."
"What do you mean?" Hall asked, as he finally took his seat in the centre of the bridge.
"That alien ship is heading to Rigel. It's on virtually the same heading that we are."
"I wonder why," Weisser said softly.
Abuna answered, "One thing we had to face up to was the possibility that Rigel is not uninhabited. It's far too young to have life evolve on its own on its planets, but mining colonies, perhaps even terraformed worlds, could be found there. Maybe that is where the ship is going."
"It does complicate matters," Hall remarked. "Unless the Preservers operated out here and the people we meet understood what they were doing, our inability to communicate could be a problem. Whomever we encounter out here could be new to us."
"Should we contact that ship?" Abuna asked.
That was another question that Hall did not have an immediate answer for. Even if he could communicate with the alien ship, he was not sure that he wanted to. Afterall, the first message from that other ship could say, "Rigel is our system. We'll destroy any ship that enters the system." Finally, he asked, "Any indications that the alien ship has detected us?"
"No overt sensor beams, but we could be showing up on passive sensors, just like their ship is showing up on our passive sensors."
"At the present time, contact would not be prudent. We'll stick to the established course of the mission." In the mind of the captain, the "established course of the mission" meant that they would approach Rigel and conduct their mission, unless somebody in the system already objected to their presence. This far from Earth and the Federation, the crew of the Atlas was not going to pick a fight with anybody.
"At least it shows that we're not out here alone," Weisser remarked.
"When will we be able to do subspace scans of the Rigel system?"
"Not for awhile yet, sir," Abuna replied...
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.
