Trek It!

by Robert T. Jeschonek

  "Well then," said Swift, rising from the command chair. "I guess we'll be paying them a visit."

  Expecting an argument, he turned to J'Tull, but she said nothing. She didn't have to; when it came to guessing her opinion on risky plans, Swift was a mind reader.

  "What's the current speed of the fleet?" said Swift.

  "G2, Captain," said Martin.

  "At any time since we've been following them," said Swift, "have they gone faster than G2?"

  "No sir," said Martin.

  "Good," said Swift. "If that's their best speed, we can get to Vox before they do."

  "And when we get there?" said J'Tull. "What then?"

  "Like Paul Revere," said Swift. "We offer a warning and ride out of town. 'The British are coming.'"

  J'Tull stiffened. Swift thought that if she stiffened any more, she would snap. "And what do you hope to accomplish with this warning?" she said. "Incite a global panic? Throw the planet into chaos before the fleet arrives?"

  Swift sighed and shook his head. "Honestly," he said, "I don't know."

  "It is illogical to take an action if…"

  Swift cut her off. "If that was Earth out there," he said, "and I was on it, I'd want somebody to warn me."

  J'Tull fell silent but did not relax her rigid posture.

  "All right then." Swift clapped his hands together, signaling that the matter was no longer open for debate. "How long will it take us to reach Vox at G5 speed?"

  There was no delay in Tanner's response, so Swift knew that he'd been running the numbers before the question was asked. "A little over twelve hours, Captain."

  Swift nodded. "Plot a course to Vox, Ensign. And give those ships out there a wide berth."

  "Aye, sir," said Tanner. Swift noted that the helmsman didn't touch a control, meaning that he'd already plotted the new course. As always, Tanner was a step ahead, thanks to a lifetime of piloting experience; having grown up on a deep space freighter, he'd been driving spacecraft since about the time he was in diapers.

  Swift keyed the communications panel on the arm of his chair, opening a channel to Engineering. "Zeke?" he said, calling for his chief engineer and good friend.

  Zeke's Southern accent filtered from the speaker. "Here, Cap'n!" He was shouting, so he must not have been near a comm panel.

  "We need G5 for the next twelve hours," said Swift. "Any problem with that?"

  "Not at this time," shouted Zeke through the speaker. "Thanks for the heads-up."

  Swift switched off the comm panel and lowered himself into the command chair. Leaning his elbows on his knees, he folded his hands and stared at the ships on the viewer, distant flecks of gold drifting into the glittering starfield.

  On the verge of throwing caution to the wind for the umpteenth time, he hesitated. Putting his ship between an invasion fleet and its target might just be the most foolhardy action he'd taken yet…which was saying a lot. Still, he could not dismiss his rationale for getting involved: if that was Earth out there, and he was on it, he would want to know what was coming.

  "Okay, Tanner," he said finally. "Let's go to Vox. And don't spare the horses."

  Tanner touched a button and Exogenesis leaped forward.

  *****

  Chapter Two

  Ensign Mariko Nakamura had had this nightmare before.

  She was on the surface of an alien world with her captain and crewmates. They all turned to her for help, for understanding. Lives depended on her making sense of an alien language that she had never heard before, which should not have been a big deal, because alien linguistics was her specialty…

  …but she found herself drowning in a sea of gibberish.

  A tide of babble washed over her, a wave of seemingly disconnected sounds from a mob of creatures. Billions of phonemes, the smallest units of language, crashed together, mixing with millions of clicks and lip-smacks that could themselves be part of a language or just random biological noise.

  The tide swelled and swirled and Mariko felt herself going under. Again and again, she grabbed at the current but could never make sense of it.

  The display on the multiterpreter that she carried--a device capable of translating alien languages into understandable onscreen text--blinked with indecipherable nonsense.

  She had had this nightmare before. The only problem was, this time, she was wide awake.

  The fact that she had experienced this moment, or one very much like it, so many times before in her dreams, made her panic build more swiftly than it might otherwise have done. The fact that it tapped so directly into her innermost fears lent the scene a power and malevolence that were larger than life.

  Her heart raced. She looked around at the crowd of beings who surrounded her, sleek-furred and slender like otters, and a chill shot down her spine.

  Then, she felt Captain Swift touch her arm.

  "Mariko?" he said softly, his voice laden with concern.

  She took a deep breath and gathered herself up. Enough of this.

  She was not having a nightmare. She was on the surface of the planet Vox with Captain Swift, Commander J'Tull, and Commander Turner. It was up to her to warn the inhabitants about the approaching invasion fleet. It was time to start acting like a professional.

  Nodding to Captain Swift, she took another deep breath and turned to the crowd.

  "Quiet!" she shouted, as loud as she could, her voice rising over the tumult.

  She got her message across. Suddenly, the chaos of noise and chatter subsided. The gleaming black pearl eyes of the dozens of Vox in the city square all slid around to focus on her.

  Mariko cleared her throat and took a step forward, fixing her attention on a single brown-furred being. She had to look up to meet the alien's gaze; like all Vox, he (she guessed it was a male because it was bulkier and had a deeper voice than others in the crowd) towered a full head higher than the tallest member of the Exogenesis away team…which came out to a head and a half taller than Mariko.

  "Hi," said Mariko, mustering a smile.

  The brown-furred Vox rattled off a stream of incomprehensible syllables, at the same time gesturing at a furious pace and click-smacking up a storm.

  For a moment, Mariko listened and watched the Vox's four-clawed hands flutter and weave. Then, she closed her eyes, blocking out the movement and letting the flurry of sounds rush through her.

  Pared down from dozens of voices to one, reduced further from sound and motion to sound alone, the communication seemed less overwhelmingly chaotic. As she absorbed it, Mariko realized that it could be simplified even further.

  Opening her eyes, she interrupted the Vox by raising both hands, palms flattened toward him. "Only this," she said slowly, pointing to her lips.

  Then, pronouncing each letter with slowness and clarity, she recited the English alphabet. She hoped that the Vox would get the idea: she wanted to hear pulmonic sounds only, those created with an air stream from the lungs…sounds like the vowels and consonants of the alphabet. All the clicking and smacking was getting in the way.

  When she was done, she raised her hands toward the Vox, palms up, indicating that it was his turn.

  Message received. This time, the Vox's speech was slower and free of clicks and smacks. Finally, Mariko could pick out distinct syllables arranged in patterns.

  She had isolated a spoken language, one using pulmonic vowels and consonants, not hand signs or clicks or smacks…and therefore easiest for the multiterpreter to process.

  Not that the hand signs, clicks and smacks weren't part of a language themselves. Mariko was sure that they were, which had been the problem. The pulmonic syllables formed one language. The clicks and smacks comprised a second language. A third language consisted of hand signs.

  The Vox had three different languages, and they used them all at once. They carried on three conversations at the same time, or one conversation with three levels.

  No wonder Mariko and the multiterpreter device had been stumped. Neither was wired to process
so much simultaneous, multilingual input.

  As the Vox spoke, Mariko's multiterpreter took in everything, identifying repeated patterns and relationships between sounds…comparing them to language models in its database…constructing a rudimentary vocabulary and a framework of syntax on which to hang it.

  Before long, the chicken scratch on the multiterpreter's display became readable output – lines of text representing the alien's words, printed phonetically, laid out alongside an English translation of those words.

  At about the same time that the multiterpreter kicked in, Mariko started to put it together herself. Her heart beat fast, this time with the familiar thrill of making sense of what had once seemed an indecipherable puzzle.

  Listening and studying the multiterpreter display for a few moments more, she collected her thoughts. Touching keys on the device, she accessed the newly created vocabulary database for the Vox tongue, clarifying the choice of words that she would use.

  Then, she interrupted the brown-furred creature (who seemed willing and able to carry on an endless monologue) and rattled off a sentence.

  The Vox reared back, the whiskers on his stubby snout twitching. He gestured excitedly, then caught himself and clasped his hands together to stop the movement. Again speaking slowly, without the static of clicks and smacks, he released a few clear words; then he waved, beckoning for Mariko and the others to follow him. The assembled crowd parted just enough to make way.

  Mariko turned to Captain Swift and the others and repeated the Vox's gesture, waving for them to follow. "Come on," she said. "I think we're finally getting somewhere."

  "What did you say to him?" said Captain Swift.

  "'Take us to your leader,'" Mariko said with a little smile.

  *****

  Chapter Three

  As Mariko and the rest of the away team followed their guide through the Vox city, she again felt chills run down her spine…but this time, the chills were inspired by awe, not fear. Though she had seen the wonders of Earth and some amazing sights on alien worlds, she had never in her life seen anything as beautiful as this.

  It was a see-through city made of pastel stained glass.

  Towers scaled remarkable heights – some squared, some cylindrical, some spiraling into feathery clouds. Vast castles straddled block after city block, turrets shooting sky high. There were domes and cones and pyramids, spheres and cubes. All of it was connected from ground level to highest spire by a filigree of crisscrossing strands, a web of tubing laced around and over and through every structure.

  And every tube, every wall, every surface was transparent and flowing with pastel color. Pale yellows and blues and reds and greens and violets swirled and rippled like the clouds on a gas giant planet, mixing and pulsing…but never obscuring the perfect view of what lay behind them. Mariko could see right into every room and tube, could see

  fur-covered citizens in motion and at rest and staring right back out at her. Even more, because the floors and ceilings and walls were all transparent, she could see through one building and into the next, could look all the way up through every level of every tower.

  It was at once breathtaking and disconcerting to see such a city of people stacked to the heights and strung all around, all seemingly floating, supported only by whorls and bands and streams of color.

  Mariko felt like she was floating, too, and not just because she was caught up in the spectacular surroundings. Thanks to the low gravity on Vox, she weighed only half what she did on Earth or onboard the Exogenesis. She felt airy and light on her feet, as if at any moment she could push off from the ground and rise up to glide and pirouette among the filigree and spires.

  According to J'Tull, it was the light gravity that made the city possible, enabling such fragile, lofty structures to stand. The chief building material was a light polymer with electrostatic properties that produced the colorful tints. Even stretched into impossibly thin sheets, its high tensile strength supported amazing weight…but on Earth, at twice the gravity, it would have shattered under a far smaller load.

  As she stepped lightly down crystalline walkways, her body lit with shifting pastel colors cast by sunbeams poured through rainbow walls, Mariko was glad that she wasn't on Earth.

  Alongside her, the brown-furred Vox – whose name was Nalo – chattered away, but Mariko didn't pay much attention. Behind her, a growing mob of similarly vocal Vox generated a rising clamor, but she didn't listen.

  For once, she was all eyes, not ears. The linguist was at a loss for words.

  *****

  When Nalo led the away team into one of the soaring towers, Mariko gazed upward…and realized that her view was unobstructed by even the tinted, transparent walls and ceilings that honeycombed other buildings. She could see all the way from ground level to the distant pinnacle, seemingly a mile above. It was all one vast cathedral, walled in light and color, empty but for a ring of slender glassy pillars that corkscrewed into the heavenly heights.

  As she peered up into the otherworldly steeple, Mariko half-expected to see a host of angels drift downward...so she was startled when she noticed that faraway figures were indeed descending from the upper reaches. At first, they were so distant that they were little more than specks, but even then, Mariko could see that they were acrobatically inclined. The five figures moved fast, zipping down the slender pillars…and amazingly, leaping from one pillar to another at high altitudes with perfect ease and grace.

  As they drew closer, she realized that they were Vox, and they were climbing down headfirst, like squirrels descending the trunks of trees. They scurried downward fearlessly, skinny bodies twisting around the corkscrew pillars, making heart-stopping dives from pole to pole with no more visible effort than kids playing on monkey bars.

  Mariko's shipmates were near, all craning their necks to watch the spectacle. Captain Swift whistled softly in amazement and Commander Turner muttered stunned exclamations. J'Tull said nothing, which was no surprise, but there wasn't a peep out of Nalo or the mob who had followed them into the tower, either. If even the chatterbox locals maintained a respectful silence here, Mariko supposed that the away team was indeed in the presence of some kind of leadership.

  Leaping and zipping down the pillars, the five acrobatic Vox closed the distance from the pinnacle in a twinkling. As they approached, Mariko could make out their differences in coloration: two had black fur, one silver, one gold, and one red. Like all Vox, they wore no clothing, though their fur coats were daubed with colorful designs on the scalp, back, and belly – circles, spirals, triangles and starbursts in white and green and pink and black, whatever color showed up best on their coats.

  The five Vox dropped further, then stopped a few yards overhead. They twined themselves around the pillars and hung there, peering down at the visitors with gleaming opal eyes.

  Mariko was so dazzled by the wonders she had been witnessing, it took a moment for her to remember that she had a job to do. When Captain Swift cleared his throat, she snapped back to reality and activated the multiterpreter device.

  "Mariko," said the captain. "Ask our friend here," and he indicated the

  brown-furred guide, "if these are the leaders of the Vox."

  Touching keys, Mariko found the words she was looking for, then turned to Nalo and repeated the question in his language. Whiskers twitching, the brown-furred

  otter-like being answered, speaking slowly and without clicks and smacks for her benefit.

  Mariko watched the translation on her device, though she had picked up enough of the language to get the gist of what he had said. "Nalo says that they are planetary ministers," she told the captain, "and the red one is Regent Ieria. You should speak to her."

  "Anything else I should know?" said Swift, looking up at the red-furred Vox wrapped around one of the pillars before him.

  "Use her title when addressing her," said Mariko after a brief exchange with Nalo. "Don't talk with your hands. I'll take care of the rest."

 
Swift nodded and stepped forward, turning his attention to the regent. Mariko posted herself alongside him, raising the multiterpreter so its pickups could best catch the words of the Vox leader suspended overhead.

  Clasping his hands behind him, Swift spoke to the red-furred Vox. "Regent," he said. "I am Captain Joshua Swift of the Earth star cruiser Exogenesis."

  Briefly consulting the multiterpreter device, Mariko repeated the captain's words in the Vox language, taking care to speak loudly and enunciate clearly enough for the leaders to hear and understand.

  Swift nodded at Mariko. "This is my translator, Ensign Mariko Nakamura," he said.

  Mariko told Regent Ieria what Swift had said, then smiled and bowed.

  The red-furred Vox stared down at them, blinking her black pearl eyes…then fired off a storm of syllables, clicks, smacks, and gestures that baffled Mariko and the multiterpreter device alike.

  Fortunately, Nalo quickly came to the rescue. Appearing at Mariko's side, he let loose a sequence of chatter, noises and hand signs of his own, directed at Regent Ieria. It must have been an explanation of Mariko's conversational limitations, for when the regent spoke again, it was without clicks, smacks, and gestures. The multiterpreter resumed normal function, displaying its conversion of the leader's speech.

  "Welcome," Mariko read from the screen to Captain Swift. "What brings you to Vox?"

  Swift considered his next words carefully. "A fleet of vessels is headed toward your world," he said. "Many ships, heavily armed."

  Mariko translated, then delivered the regent's response. "Your ships?"

  "No," said Swift. "We don't know who they are or what their intentions might be. All we can tell you is that they are headed this way."

  Again, Mariko translated. She was startled when the gold-furred Vox minister flung himself onto the regent's pillar, interjecting his own streak of chatter. Apparently, the minister had caught on to the need for conversational simplicity, for his speech, though quick-fire, was free of extraneous sounds.