by David Smith
His rage vented, he seemed to calm down, but his voice became a low growl and Dave listened uncomfortably as he snarled ‘She’ll pay for this. I’ll hunt that scheming bitch down and make her sorry she ever crossed my path . . . ‘
Dave would have reminded him that his actions were still subject to Federal law, regardless of what Shaw had done, but somehow he knew the professor wouldn’t listen. In truth, he wanted Professor Hubert out of Tiger’s Brig every bit as much as he wanted Professor Shaw in it, but he doubted that Hubert would believe him.
He didn’t have the chance to ruminate on it further. The professor rounded on him. ‘What am I supposed to do? My yacht is ruined, and you’ve let that scheming, murderous bitch walk away with everything I’ve worked for over the last five years.’
He stared at Dave evilly. ‘You owe me.’
Dave decided he didn’t like the professor. ‘I don’t owe you anything. You’ve been a victim of your own mistakes and even if Shaw hadn’t stolen your data, I doubt the Federal Council for such matters would have let you retain it anyway.’
‘So what am I supposed to do??’ growled the professor. ‘No ship, no data, no money, stranded in dangerous, hostile space. If you leave me here I won’t survive you know.’
Dave stared at him, but however much he disliked then man, he couldn’t just abandon him: it would be a death sentence.
Through gritted teeth he said ‘Very well, professor. I can’t leave you here without risking further breaches of the Prime Directive, so I’ll offer you the chance to stay aboard Tiger as a guest until we reach a place that we can drop you off safely.’
‘And how long will that take? I have research that I must finish. I can’t be hanging around while you idiot boy-scouts try to arrest everyone in the zone!’
Dave really, really didn’t like the professor.
‘It’ll take just as long as it takes, professor. If it’s of any consolation I’ll allow you to assist our science team in conducting their research . . . which will be undertaken properly and in full cognisance of all relevant Federal legislation’ he added pointedly.
The professor stomped off cursing under his breath.
Dave sighed. Marvellous. He was lumbered with an unwilling and possibly dishonest professor and he had an uneasy feeling that they hadn’t seen the last of Professor Shaw either.
He also knew he had bridges to build. He’d let his crew down badly, and needed to restore their confidence in him. To be fair, most of them would be blissfully unaware of his error. Even if they knew they’d most likely see it as the norm rather than the exception: they’d served under Captain Emmanuel LaCroix before his promotion, and were used to having a Captain of limited integrity in command.
As he reflected on the matter he shrugged to himself. That last thought was realistically a confirmation that the crew were used to having no-one at all in charge: Captain LaCroix hadn’t exercised his command of the ship in the entire time Dave had served as his Executive Officer or his First Officer.
Sadly, the failings of the previous Captain were no excuse for his own mistake. He’d have to do better next time. At least he knew the crew would get over it. They always had before.
All of them except one. His thoughts turned to Commander Isobelle Grosvenor, and that look in her eyes. With a sinking heart he knew it might take more than just a few words to win back her confidence.
Chapter 8: ‘It’s A Small World’
Science Officers Log: Lieutenant-Commander Aisling O’Mara
Star Date 9465.5
I’ve been spending a lot of time with Manny Vainatolo, the trader that the Captain has recruited as an advisor.
What a gold-mine of information the guy is!
He’s been travelling around Treaty Exploration Space for over three years and has visited nearly a hundred planets in that time, meeting over a dozen indigenous races.
He doesn’t seem to realise the importance of his knowledge, as he’s only focused on learning what he needs to survive in a potentially dangerous environment.
Fortunately for us, he’s more than happy to share everything he knows and we’re learning so much because of that. The anecdotes that he tells because he finds them amusing contain little nuggets of information that we find fascinating. They’re so intriguing that I’ve asked the Captain to reschedule our missions so we can investigate some of the things Manny has mentioned.
Conversely, I’ve found Professor Hubert to be an absolute nightmare. I assumed that being a fellow academic, he’d share our love of knowledge and eagerness to explore, but he’s just a closed book.
He won’t talk unless we ask him a question, and even if we ask him a question he’s evasive or obtuse, and sometimes just downright rude. He’s been in Treaty Space as long as Manny, and I assume he must have visited nearly as many planets, but he won’t share anything with us.
I know he’s got a huge amount of knowledge, but he just won’t share it. I can’t work if that’s some kind of professional jealousy or if he’s trying to hide something.
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Lieutenant-Commander O’Mara bounded onto the Bridge, full of energy and excitement. Manny Vainatolo followed her much more sedately, looking slightly bemused.
‘Captain, is it possible we could delay the survey of the Sigma Epsilon Theta Seven system for about a week?’
Captain Hollins looked surprised. ‘I thought you were keen to start surveying systems Aisling?’
‘Oh I am, I am, but Manny, um, Mr Vainatolo tells me there’s a much more interesting system not far off our route. I think it might prove far more interesting to make a detour and go there first.’
She skipped over to the science console and put a star-chart up on the Bridges main view-screen. On it, Dave could see a number of star systems represented by discs of varying colours, including the one they were heading for now. He suspected that Sigma Epsilon Theta Seven would be an unremarkable system, although a brief initial survey by USS Magellan had noted a planet with an unusual ring structure that warranted further investigation. From her excitement Dave guessed that O’Mara thought she had come up with something far sexier.
‘What did you have in mind, Aisling?’
‘Well, it’s like this.’ began O’Mara as she normally did when trying to convince someone of something she thought was important. ‘Manny here has passed through Sigma Epsilon Theta Seven before and found nothing of great interest. However, he’s also been to this system here on a regular basis to recover scrap from destroyed vessels.‘
She pointed on the screen to another disc, but this one was coloured grey. Dave knew that the grey discs were systems that had been accorded a lower priority for survey as available information indicated it was unlikely the system would reveal anything of significant scientific interest.
‘He wanted to visit the uninhabited planet at the centre of the debris field, but couldn’t because of improbably high levels of background radiation.’
Dave didn’t get her point. ‘What of it?’
‘Well there’s nothing in the data we have that suggests the planets in that system would have high naturally occurring background radiation!’ she beamed.
There was an awkward silence as Dave waited for more information and O’Mara waited for him to grasp the significance of what she was telling him.
As was normally the case, O’Mara lost patience first. ‘If there’s no reason for natural radiation, the levels Manny observed are obviously artificial. The only thing that chucks out that sort of radiation is very old and dangerous nuclear fission reactors . . . ‘
‘Or very old and dangerous weapons’ Dave concluded as O’Mara nodded excitedly. ‘So you think this planet was attacked because it was the home of one of the lost races of this sector?’
O’Mara was so excited she could barely stand still. ‘Can’t think what else it could possibly be!’
Dave thought about it. This was exactly the reason he’s asked Vainatolo to join them, and exactly
the reason why their standing orders allowed him so much freedom of choice.
However, something was making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. Were recent events making him overly cautious? It was a small detour and there was no apparent risk. If they got there and things did become dangerous they could always change course again.
Easy. No risk. Safe.
He still felt peculiarly nervous as he agreed. ‘Ok, O’Mara, I’m sold. Lieutenant Dolplop, plot us a course to . . . what’s the system called Aisling?’
‘Sigma Epsilon Theta Six Iota. The planet is the fifth moon around a gas giant fourth out from the star’
‘Snappy name. Lieutenant Dolplop, lay in a course for Sigma Epsilon Theta Six Iota D five.’
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They began long distance scans as they approached the system but didn’t find anything of note immediately.
A small white dwarf sun, fourteen planetary sized bodies, half of which had a significant system of moons and rings. Beyond that lay a sizable Oort cloud of small planetoids and asteroids.
They swept past the Oort cloud and a couple of gas giants, and had dropped to sub-light speed before something beeped on the Helm console. Crash checked the alert and said quietly ‘Got an issue Captain.’
Crash sounded more confused than worried, and Dave asked ‘What’s up?’
‘I’m getting some odd feedback from the controls. We seem to be veering off course, slightly to port.’
O’Mara was sat at the Science Console with Chief Benoit, her specialist in planetary geology and Dave was aware of quiet whispers between the two as they verified and checked the data from the ship’s inertial sensors.
The two scientists were frantically poking buttons and checking data and Dave’s curiosity mounted. ‘What’s occurring team?’
‘Um, not really sure, sir. We can only assume there’s some kind of gravitic anomaly off the port bow.’
That caught Dave’s attention. Fleet history was replete with stories of ships falling foul of such anomalies. ‘Yellow Alert! Crash, slow to point zero five light-speed. Dolplop, ASBeau, full sweep with navigational and tactical sensors.’
The Bridge was bathed in flashing orange light and a klaxon sounded across the ship to warn the crew of potential danger.
The ship slowed appreciably and every sensor available swept across the void, looking for the source of the anomaly.
Dolplop’s navigational sensors were designed to watch the void ahead of the ship to warn for such dangers and he had the first significant data. In his artificially generated voice he stated ‘Significant gravity well bearing three two five mark thirty-two.’
O’Mara’s more accurate scientific sensors were picking up the same thing. ‘Reading a gravity field that equates to a mass of around six point four sextillion tonnes. That’s a body around seven or eight percent more massive than Earth.’
‘On screen, please’ Dave ordered. The Comms Officer directed the ships telescopes to the bearings given, but nothing appeared on the screen. Dave peered at the star-studded blackness but couldn’t see anything. Feeling slightly silly, he asked ‘Where is it?’
There was an awkward silence. Chief Benoit suggested ‘Maybe it has an exceptionally low albedo?’
Dave was no expert but knew that albedo was a measure of how much light the surface of a planet reflected. The telescopes would struggle to see a really black planet against the dark background of space. If it wasn’t reflecting visible light, that didn’t mean it wasn’t reflecting any radiation at all. ‘Anything in the ultraviolet or infrared?’
O’Mara had already come to much the same conclusion, but had an unusual answer. ‘No, but we are picking up an x-ray source on that bearing.’
Again, Dave knew enough to know this was unusual. In astronomical terms, the production of x-rays was normally the province of enormously energetic bodies such as neutron stars or black-holes. This was even more reason to proceed with caution. ‘All stop! O’Mara, what’s our distance? Are we at risk?’
O’Mara and Benoit were now focusing every sensor they had on this source. ‘We’re about half a million klicks away and weirdly, no, we’re not at risk. Something is producing x-rays, which is incredibly unusual, but only in tiny, tiny quantities.’
‘Any clues?’ asked Dave hopefully.
‘Not a one. Don’t have the foggiest’ replied the scientist quietly.
Dave shifted uncomfortably in his seat. As well as exploring new worlds a key objective of their mission was to log any navigational hazards that might endanger future travellers. They were obliged to investigate and find out what this formless gravity well was.
‘Crash, edge us forward, low delta. Eyes peeled everyone, let’s find out what this is.’
There was notable tension in the air as the ship crept forward. Chief Benoit had left the visual display on the screen, but it still appeared to be empty.
They’d been edging forward for nearly five minutes before O’Mara whispered ‘Well I’ll be buggered!’
Everyone on the Bridge turned to face her, but she ignored them, concentrating instead on the controls of the ships telescopes as she began adjusting the view.
She put an image on the main view-screen which appeared to be a planet. It swam into view, but appeared blurry and indistinct. A dirty, fuzzy white-brown ball, but quite obviously a planet.
Dave was surprised. ‘Hey! How did we miss that?’
The planet swam in and out of focus as O’Mara repeatedly adjusted the telescopes. It appeared this was a surprisingly complicated task: O’Mara was concentrating hard enough that she was subconsciously sticking her tongue out as she spoke in between making fine adjustments. ’We missed the bugger . . . because . . . it’s only . . . ’
On the screen the planet finally came into sharp focus. They could see what looked like a slightly muddy snowball, with an uneven, lumpy surface.
‘ . . . one hundred and thirty-eight metres across.’
Dave didn’t understand ‘What? I thought you said it was bigger than the Earth?’
O’Mara smiled the smile that showed she now understood and was quite excited by what she knew. ‘No, I said it had a mass about seven or eight percent greater than the Earth.’
‘But it’s tiny?’
‘Ah, well therein lies a mystery sir. Even for a dense iron-cored world, a mass like that should equate to a sphere several thousand kilometres across. But in this case it doesn’t. One hundred and thirty-eight metres. That snowball is hundreds of millions of time more dense than it has any right to be.’
‘How can that be?’
Benoit looked up. ‘Unknown, Captain. It doesn’t conform to any theory of planetary evolution. This is an absolute first.’
Dave considered this. Benoit had his faults but there was no doubt that he was an expert in everything to do with the formation of planets. ‘Well, that’s why we’re here, I suppose. Maintain yellow alert. Crash, take us in for a closer look.’
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Taking USS Tiger into orbit around the tiny planet was a bizarre experience, even for a Helmsman as skilled as Crash.
Physically the ship was longer than the planet was wide, and to get close enough for the ship’s sensors to take detailed readings they were in a circular orbit two hundred kilometres above ground. To maintain that altitude they were travelling at thousands of kilometres an hour and orbiting the tiny planetoid in a matter of seconds.
Dave was forced to turn off the view of the planet as it was just a motion-sickness inducing blur.
The speed wasn’t just affecting the crew. It quickly became apparent that it was hard to gather useful data when travelling so fast in relation to the ground below.
After an hour trying to calibrate the ship’s sensors to account for the motion, O’Mara gave up.
Growling in frustration she shouted ‘Oh for feck’s sake. This is ridiculous. Captain, I’d like to take an away team down to the surface.’
D
ave hadn’t even considered the possibility. ‘Is that safe?’
She shrugged. ‘Why not? Gravity is about one point one gee at the surface. Some odd x-rays as we know, but not enough to stop us spending a few hours on the surface. No atmosphere to speak of, but nothing an environmental suit can’t handle. Other than that it’s just a hunk of rock and metal. Which completely defies logic.’
‘I’m not entirely comfortable with that Aisling. Can we configure a scout robot?’
‘We could, but I’d like to take a team down and do some proper investigation. If we send the scouts we can look at specific things, but if we find something unusual we’ll have to bring them back and reconfigure them. Much easier to do it with a scientist or two’
‘And I for one would rather risk a scientist than a valuable scout robot’ mumbled Commander Romanov from her position at the Engineering Console.
Dave ignored his Chief Engineer: She still hadn’t forgiven O’Mara for risking the ship with her crazy ‘Jeyklls’ scheme and had insisted on having her entire office sterilised when she’d fond out that O’Mara had sat in her chair at her desk whilst naked and under the influence of the Sigma 2000 virus. She couldn’t resist the odd sarcastic comment.
Whilst he didn’t agree that the scientists were expendable, Dave did see that O’Mara was right about them being more flexible and adaptable than the scout robots. Taking a deep breath he said ‘Crash, take us further out. We need a slower speed above ground to make it easier to transport a team to the surface. O’Mara, saddle up. Take a team of four, you can have two hours on the surface.’
She was scampering for the turbo-lift before he’d finished speaking.
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O’Mara took Chief Benoit, Petty Officer Carys Van der Vaart and Crewman Arturo Liuzzi. Van der Vaart was a chemist, whilst Liuzzi was another experienced geologist.
Each conducted their own investigations and experiments and although they were gathering huge amounts of data, they were still none the wiser as to the planet’s bizarre structure.