Starborn Odyssey: Voyage of the Lost (The Starborn Odyssey Trilogy Book 3)

by Haines Sigurdsson

  “That’s gonna take some getting used to,” croaked Pixie, trying hard not to look queasy.

  Tanya nodded in agreement. “I wonder how we smell to them,” she mused.

  Gemma cut in over the communicator, “Elton, see if you can get some basic words of their language, so I can work on a translation. Find out about whether they perceive the differences in gender, what they are called.”

  Elton nodded, agreeing to try. “Man,” he said to Bard, pointing one at a time to each male member of their party. Bard watched Elton attentively, expectantly. Elton felt a little silly, but they didn’t have a trained linguist on the trip—only Gemma, with her access to the computer. So Elton’s rudimentary technique would have to do. “Woman,” he said next, pointing to Tanya and again to Pixie. He repeated that twice.

  Bard, who was sharper than his primitive appearance had led them to expect, seemed to understand this concept quickly. He nodded, and then pointed first to himself and then to each male member of the Wanderer’s crew, and said, “Shank.” He then pointed to first Pixie, then Tanya, and said, “Skank,” looking pleased with himself.

  Zak burst out laughing. Pixie and Tanya both glowered at him.

  “I think I’m going to have to have a word with their lexicographer,” said Pixie sternly, trying not to laugh.

  “Can’t wait to find out their word for sex,” chuckled Zak. Tanya rolled her eyes at him.

  “Man, woman,” Bard said, “Shank, Skank.”

  “Very good!” Elton exclaimed, putting an end to their banter.

  Bard nodded, and then glanced again at the pistol, this time with a more obvious intent. Perhaps he was building up his nerve to ask for it.

  “They are really amazing,” Shana said, over the communicator, needing to have some part of this momentous meeting. “They seem so curious, and not at all scared of us. I didn’t expect that!”

  Gemma’s voice said, “Let’s try something,” and then suddenly Gemma stood next to Elton and Bard, projected from Elton’s Link. It was as if a solid woman had materialized out of thin air into their midst. Several of the hunters jumped and gasped. Bard jumped back warily, eyeing Gemma, but did not attack or run. Instead he narrowed his eyes, then reached forward and put his hand through Gemma’s chest. Gemma looked down at his hand, unaffected, then up at him as he pulled it back and cocked his head to the side with curiosity.

  “Hello, Bard,” Gemma said.

  Bard grunted at her, uncertainly.

  Elton was stunned. “They’re fearless!”

  Gemma nodded. “And they appear to have exceedingly good eyesight; Bard could tell right away that I wasn’t corporeal.” To the Starborn, of course, she looked solid.

  “This is going well,” Shana said over the comm. “I think they want to be friends.”

  “Do you think we can move the ship a little closer to the village?” Zak asked, clearly curious to explore more of their culture.

  After some discussion, they agreed that it would be safe to move the ship in to about a mile from the village.

  Elton indicated to Bard as best he could that they would be moving the ship, and returning very soon with more gifts. Bard nodded, seeming to understand. The crew backed away with a slight bow, and turned to walk back toward the ship. The hunters continued their harvest of the beast but watched the crew retreat out the corner of their eyes, more with curiosity than wariness.

  “Hey, you skanks try to keep up,” teased Zak, as they were walking back.

  “Oh, very funny,” retorted Pixie and Tanya in unison, making everyone laugh.

  “That was amazing!” Elton beamed.

  Gemma said, quietly, “They are very smart. But I did see Bard looking with great interest at Pixie’s laze pistol. They didn’t even seem to notice that everyone had one, which seems a little odd. We don’t yet know how far their apparently friendliness goes, or what their social mores are related to killing, stealing, or borrowing. I strongly advise continued caution.”

  Kelsan, for once, agreed with Gemma. “It’s only natural for a leader to want a weapon that would truly make him master over the rest of the people in his tribe— and for that matter, all of the surrounding tribes.”

  “That’s a very human attitude, and we don’t know enough about them to assume they are the same as us in that regard,” Tanya suggested. “His motivations might be purely scientific, or protective. Not everyone is obsessed with power.”

  “But they do seem awfully human,” Kelsan insisted.

  Elton agreed, “It’s true that all of their gestures and expressions seem human. I suppose their social structure and egoisms likely mirror ours, too. No matter what, Gemma makes a good point. We need to do a great deal of thinking about how to handle the situation.”

  “What worries me,” Gemma said thoughtfully, “is that, while you exchanged names for a fair number of objects, like knife, clothes, trees, spears, Bard never asked the name of the weapon that he was clearly most interested in.”

  Elton frowned, disappointed at this turn of reasoning about his new friend. “You think he was being duplicitous? Hiding his interest in order to get some sort of advantage, to take it?”

  Gemma said, soothingly, “I only recommend caution. If this was a human tribe, I would definitely be suspicious.”

  “We still need to talk to them more,” Pixie said, seeming to take Elton’s idealized view of the aliens. “I don’t want to judge them based on just this meeting. Besides, we haven’t met any of their women yet. And, we need to find out what they call the planet, so we can use that name, too, instead of naming it ourselves. I mean, if this is going to be home.”

  “Well, we know for sure they hunt; I wonder if they harvest anything or only gather? We’d be able to tell their diet from droppings,” suggested Zak with a slight grimace.

  “Yeah,” laughed Kelsan, “Or we could start the standard anal probing reputation aliens are so famous for.”

  His comment set everyone to giggling uncontrollably. “Come on,” said Shana trying unsuccessfully to be serious. “We really do need to decide what to do. Obviously these people are not as advanced as we are, but will it damage them if we introduce technology? Could we share the world? Could this be home?”

  “We don’t know yet,” said Elton practically, but they all couldn’t help feeling excited.

  It was at that moment that Kelsan realized they weren’t alone. Someone was following them, quietly. Kelsan, hearing the footsteps, slowed deliberately without saying anything, and then turned and grabbed the stalker, displaying expertly the benefits of all the sparring and physical training he’d done on Prometheus. His hands were wrapped around the shoulders of one of the hunters—the smallest and probably the youngest, shorter than Kelsan. He squeaked and tried to pull away. He was not armed. Kelsan let go and stepped back, wrinkling his nose at the smell, and wiping his hands brusquely on his pants.

  They expected the young hunter to run, but he didn’t. He looked up at Kelsan expectantly.

  “His name is Krenek,” Gemma supplied.

  “Perhaps we can get more info from him without the others around,” suggested Elton.

  “Do it, if you can,” said Gemma.

  Elton sat on the ground, and the others followed suit. Krenek sat, too. They spent a long time trying to communicate more thoroughly, and about half way through Tanya announced that she was going back to the ship, so Shana could come take part in the interview, which was undeniably tedious and slow.

  Shana came and sat between Elton and Pixie and introduced herself, and Krenek seemed genuinely excited to meet another crew member. He had an open, friendly expression, and up close he truly seemed human. His face was broader and his forehead taller, perhaps, but he could stand in as an Earth ancestor. He directed much of his conversation to Pixie and Elton, although he seemed interested in all of them.

  After some time, Elton had established the name for their world to be Untra, and that was also their name for the ground itself—just like on E
arth. Their moon was Lotis and their Sun was called Tot. Krenek asked the question that Bard had not, the names of the laser pistol and other weapons, which Elton readily supplied. Krenek didn’t seem to have the same hungry look that Gemma and Kelsan had attributed to Bard, which implied that he was more open and honest than his leader; or, as Tanya put it when Kelsan suggested this, just younger.

  Krenek gave Gemma enough dialogue samples for her to begin really translating the Untran language, which she said was fairly simple since it hadn’t progressed to complicated verbs and adjectives, nor had they developed words for plural or possessives. Many of their words had multiple meanings: the word for travel, for example, encompassed any form of conveyance, from “walk,” to “fly,” to the more generic “move.” The word for self could mean “me,” “I,” or “us,” and its opposite was anything “other” than the self—such as the crew of the Wanderer. This simplicity of the native tongue meant that nuance was introduced through gesture and context; it also meant that Gemma was able to pick it up more quickly than a more sophisticated language. She was able to speak a few words to Krenek in his language, offering friendship and, perhaps, assistance, before they sent him away and headed back to the ship.

  To save foot travel, Gemma had brought the ship two miles closer to the village, but suggested that they wait to see the reactions of the rest of the tribe before making the next move.

  “They may only have primitive weapons but they can still kill or maim you,” Gemma warned. “And although they seem generally friendly, we may inadvertently cause offense. If Earth and Reeshian history is any guide, this will be especially true of their healers or religious leaders, who may feel their power being placed in jeopardy. Continue to be very cautious; there are only six real humans here—you—and we could very easily be overwhelmed by sheer numbers if the locals decided to take up against us.”

  With this in mind, Kelsan oversaw the set up of a defense perimeter, in case it became necessary.

  Untra

  While Elton and the crew were making first contact with the hunting party, Shana was alone in the ship with Gemma, whose ability to be in two places at once, apparently with full attention to both situations, was still amazing to Shana.

  Shana decided to take advantage of the situation, to ask Gemma a few questions that had been bothering her. “Gemma, a few days ago you mentioned an idea you’ve been working on, for how to navigate in non-space. What’s your plan?”

  “It’s fairly complicated, and I’m not certain of things yet,” answered Gemma.

  Shana nodded. “I know, but you must have some ideas that you can explain to me. Mainly, what do you think our relationship to the other colonies is, time-wise? Do you think we’re still in the same time coordinates we started from?” The seed of this question had been haunting her since the first jump.

  “I can’t say anything conclusive, as far as time goes, but as I’ve told you, we are fairly sure that the two nebulae we’ve been watching both have new stars that were spotted originally about two hundred years ago. These don’t seem to have changed position in their systems at all; not even a minute amount, which I think makes a fair case for our jumps not being outside of standard time. I think the theories that travel through non-space having the effect of jumping time as well are wrong; we seem to be locked in time and it suggests to me that time is a constant and strictly linear. This alone appears to suggest, perhaps unfortunately, that travel in time isn’t possible, at least not by jumping through this kind of non-space.” Gemma watched Shana for her reaction.

  Shana nodded. “As far as the time issue is concerned, yes, and I admit that, as romantic as time travel adventure sounds, I’m relieved to hear we’re still in the same time as Prometheus. But I also want to know what you’re considering about navigating in non-space.”

  “If you think you’re up to it, here goes.”

  Shana laughed. “I’m up to it. Dumb it down for me if you feel you must.”

  Gemma laughed. “I doubt I’ll need to. You’ve naturally heard of string theory, how everything is connected by invisible fibers that help to maintain some sort of balance in the universe.” Shana nodded and Gemma continued. “Though we still have no proof that a ‘string’ as such exists, we have been able to make hypothetical lines based on magnetic attraction, for example between planets and stars, and galaxies, and dark matter. Well, Cap and I have been analyzing the magnetic lines and to our surprise, these lines seem to exist in non-space as well. Only, the lines of connection are shorter, significantly. It’s almost as if scale changes and, when in non-space, our ship is in more than one location at a time, as if we were the size of a tenth of the galaxy, depending on how much energy we expend through the crystal drive. The size of the crystal may also have some effect but it will take a lot more experimenting to find out about that and the proportionate relationship between the size of the ship and the size of the crystal, still in proportion to the amount of energy expended. Now you can see why it will take so many trials to even begin to map for navigation. There’s no clear starting point; we’ll have to build this map like a puzzle. The amount of power definitely has a close relationship to how far we jump, and I think that as we record the results of many jumps using varying amounts of power, we can solve these problems. It’s a case of the universe being smaller or us being bigger in non-space. We just don’t know how much, or how to use that to get us where we want to go.” Gemma paused, giving Shana a moment to absorb all of what she had said.

  “That’s a lot to process,” Shana said. “Can you really work it out?”

  Gemma’s image nodded, and she smiled. “I think so. It’s just a matter of time, and I’m less limited by that than I used to be. Now, here’s the interesting part. Cap and I think we may be able to communicate with our other selves. I mean, the Gemma and Cap programs in other ships, and Prometheus, when we’re in non-space.”

  Shana sat up straight. “Really?” She knew, of course, that a limited version of the Gemma and Cap personality programs had been programmed into all shuttle computers to assist with analysis and navigation, and so many other things. She and Colin (or, she supposed, Prometheus and Wanderer, but it felt more personal than that), were the only ones who had a full copy of Gemma and Cap, with all personal memories included. It was strange to think that Colin’s Gemma and Shana’s Gemma, here with her now, were evolving different memories and perhaps changing, like a person would, with new experiences. So the two Gemmas would be different people if they ever met again. And it was even more remarkable to think that they might be able to actually communicate, and carry messages from Shana and her crew back to their families.

  “Yes,” Gemma continued. “There is a genuine connection between the two realities, space and non-space. While our experience seems to prove time is truly linear, we may actually be able to send some information to Prometheus, or even Earth for that matter, when in flux, or non-space. It may take thousands of years for Cap and I to map the grid and power fluctuations required to maneuver through non-space—although I’m hopeful that we can do it much more quickly. But even if it takes that long, we can convey our information back and save our work from being lost should we fall into a sun or black hole or any other of a million things that could go wrong. Not just communicating, but duplicating ourselves means we never lose the info we gather,” said Gemma. “Unlike you, we can be in more than one place at a time, all of us working toward the same goal.”

  “And you’ve done this? Contacted yourself? Why didn’t you tell me?” Shana asked.

  Gemma paused. “Well, not yet. We’re not certain we can communicate from non-space, but it seems a very good possibility and I am very hopeful that we can figure it out. All data would have to be compressed, because our time in non-space is so brief; still, if it works it will be a fantastic breakthrough. Here is my plan, Shana. All we need to do is build a smaller version of this ship, when time permits, for Cap and I to use. We don’t need living space or supplies to survive, o
nly fuel and a crystal drive to keep the ship going. We believe we can connect our consciousness into service robots so we can have a physical body to use for servicing the ship and even exploration of some likely candidates for future colonizing. Of course it all depends on whether we can succeed in communicating from non-space but the grid of magnetic attraction between stars is definite and we only have to sort out how to navigate. That will involve a great number of experiments but I feel certain it can be done.”

  “You’ve thought this through more thoroughly than I expected,” Shana said, a bit hurt that Gemma had kept the plans to herself.

  “Yes, well you and I haven’t had much time to talk alone, and I wanted to work it out before sharing it with the crew. So now you know what the possibilities are. It does give us a plan for the future beyond the immediate survival, and of course you have to admit that it would be nice if we could let Prometheus know we were still alive.”

  “Yes, more than nice!” Shana exclaimed. Her mind was whirling with the possibilities suggested by Gemma. “I promise you that as soon as we’re situated here sufficiently with a working colony, we’ll put all our resources into setting your copies free for the exploration. Maybe it will work as you hope it will. I’d love to let our families know we still live, and all we’ve been learning. And if Colin knew about your plan I’m sure he could send out more probes with you and Cap, to speed up your research.”

  “Yes, that is my hope as well,” Gemma agreed.

  “Even if it all comes to nothing,” Shana smiled, “it won’t be because we didn’t try. Now let me see if I understand what you’ve told me: although stars aren’t visible in what you call non-space, the magnetic fields are still traceable, and the biggest difference is a matter of scale; and what we need now is how to balance the power required controlling where we wind up. Is that reasonably correct?”

  “Yes, exactly,” said Gemma.

  “And you believe you may be able to communicate with your counterparts while we’re in non-space because of this difference in scale—touching the edges of the proverbial ‘string’ together.”