‘Oh, Mr Tyler’s all right,’ said Alex, which was the warmest opinion he had ever expressed about any journalist. Alex had his own ideas about Blaze Tyler, noting the skill with which he infiltrated and how quietly observant he was.
Alex was wrong, in fact. Blaze Tyler was not and had never been any kind of intelligence agent. He was just a good, a very good, journalist.
He was covering the story of the madly malfunctioning SEP, too, for all that he never brought cameras aboard – he was gathering information for a feature about it, with a journo’s instinct for something out of the ordinary, something which was even puzzling the Fourth.
He was not on the ship when they found the solution, though he turned up very quickly as news got about the squadron that they’d figured out what was up with the weird SEP.
‘What is it? What was it? How was it happening?’ he asked Oti, who was on the interdeck celebrating with her team – actually, arranging with Mako Ireson to make treats for the whole crew as a thank-you for all their hard work.
‘It’s hearing voices!’ Oti was still almost delirious with incredulous joy – when told that the Fourth had identified a track of micro-vibrations in the SEP, far too slight to be detected by normal sensors in the already high-vibratory environment of the starship, she’d been delighted enough. But the team meeting called in the lab to look at their data had resulted in a final, comprehensive solution. ‘Come here!’ she darted away from the journalist and grabbed a young man, hauling him back to meet Blaze, ‘Ecky did it!’ she declared, thumping Ecky on the back in her enthusiasm. ‘He saw it, when we looked at the data!’
‘I didn’t do anything, really,’ said Ecky, delighted but abashed, ‘I only said it looked like a lateral line system – the way fish hear through their skin with neuromasts.’
‘There, see,’ Oti was so triumphant, she was almost shouting, ‘That’s why this lab is so brilliant, who’d have thought in a billion gazillion years that a fish biologist would figure out our SEP?’
That was not really fair – the figuring out had taken a great many people and a lot of very advanced tech over three months to hammer down to that tiny thread of vibration which Ecky had noticed resembled the way that fish detected movement in the water.
It was, though, the final piece of the puzzle, and when put together with all the other data, fell into perfect place. It was no one element of the SEP, no particular part reacting to sound, no software glitch, but a highly complex combination of factors, a trail of micro-vibrations caused by a very specific sound, being picked up as garbled commands by the programming unit.
It could be fixed. Now that they understood the problem, in fact, it was ludicrously easy to fix it. All they had to do was interrupt that tiny vibration at any point in the ricochet path which distorted and amplified and reflected it into a ‘make something!’ command, or even easier, programme the unit to recognise such input as anomalous and ignore it. It was done, sorted, fixed, the unit would now only work when it was supposed to.
After all that time, data gathering, debate and speculation, it seemed, to Oti at least, almost too easy, as if it was something they ought to have been able to spot for themselves right away. She felt rather as if she had hauled herself up an enormous mountain, only to find that it was foggy, no view, so there was nothing to do but turn around and go down again.
And it wasn’t long, either – another day or so – before joy in the SEP being fixed modified into dismay at the realisation that they were stuck here now with nothing to do. There was no convenient ISiS which the Fourth could drop them onto or passing liners they could pop them aboard now that their project was done. They were stranded here, and as thrilling as it would be to go to Quarus, they were not part of that mission and would, at best, be observers.
Still, they bore up well under it – no point moping, as Oti observed. They would keep themselves busy, helping other people in the lab where they could, pitching in with what work they were allowed to do aboard ship and making the most of opportunities from taking a piloting course to learning the oboe. And there was Quarus, which, all other things being equal, they’d have given their right arms to go visit.
Alex and the crew were a little regretful that the mystery had been solved, too. It had occupied a good deal of their thoughts, and keeping track of the more absurd items it produced had been entertaining. And now it turned out to be merely a complex technical problem after all, sound vibration being read as commands because of the configuration of the tech. Satisfying, but not nearly as interesting as when it might have been anything.
‘Humans,’ Shion observed, to Silvie, ‘find mysteries far more interesting than facts.’
Silvie nodded. She’d expressed some bewilderment over why people no longer found the SEP interesting and even seemed a little disappointed that its problems had been solved.
‘Bonkers,’ she said, and Shion chuckled agreement.
‘Don’t worry, though,’ she said. ‘They’ll soon find something else to puzzle about.’
They did, two weeks later, and it was the most unexpected, puzzling event of the mission.
0042, and Alex was in his quarters. It had been a good day. They were at a psychologically important point – round about three that morning they would pass through the point which was precisely half way between Serenity and Quarus. From then on, they would be closer to their destination than they were to their point of departure, something which always made people really feel that they were making good progress. Alex would not be sitting up to watch it, though, and nor had he amended their speed so that they could pass through it in the daytime. Marking midway points on any journey was a big no-no for spacers, as you were pretty much asking fate, there, to mess up the second half of the trip. It would, therefore, pass quietly, unremarked. All the same, there’d be smiles tomorrow when they saw the distance between them and Quarus was less than that between them and Serenity.
Alex was content, anyway, and pleasantly tired. He had reached that stage of tiredness when climbing into his bunk felt so good, the air-support and the soft warmth of a cover deliciously comfortable.
The last thing he did, as always, was to kiss his fingers and touch them to the holo of his daughter which appeared when the cabin went into private, night-mode. Sweet little Etta, forever giggling and blowing Daddy a clumsy, puffy kiss. Night night poppet. Alex settled down and closed his eyes with a deeply relaxed mmmmn.
He’d been asleep for seven minutes when he was jolted awake by the combination of a very loud noise and a very bright light.
‘Wurra…?’
The noise sounded like trumpets, several of them, playing a tootle-tootle fanfare as loud as if they were right there in the cabin. And the light was blinding – even screwing his eyes shut and shielding them with his hand, he could barely make out a shape through the dazzle.
The shape was big – a man, Alex thought, and then as he was able to take in more detail, was not sure – a figure, but so androgynous it might have been male or female.
Whichever it was, it was astoundingly beautiful, a fine noble face with a look of great wisdom and kindness. It shone as if the skin itself was radiant. The whole figure was surrounded in light and the head was almost unbearably brilliant. There appeared to be a mass of pale hair but it was difficult to tell in the glare of halo. It appeared as if it was wearing light, even – robes of pale coloured but eye-stabbing light, swirling and floating around it like… like wings.
‘Greetings, Alexis Sean von Strada,’ said the figure, in a wonderfully resonant, rich tone, almost as if it was speaking in subtle harmony with itself, and still it was not clear whether it was male or female. Alex could feel the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rising, and the autopilot part of his brain prompted the information that this was static electricity. ‘My name is Trilopharus and I wish to be your friend.’
Alex groaned. ‘Oh, not now,’ he said, in a heartfelt protest at such a prank being played on him just when he was s
ettled to sleep.
‘Okay!’ Astonishingly, the figure accepted this as dismissal, gave a cheerful acknowledgement and with that, popped out of existence with a crack and a flash.
A fire alarm went off, replacing the silenced fanfare with ear-drilling shrieks.
Alex was out of bed automatically, scrambling into a survival suit even while he was looking at the screens above his bunk.
According to the readout, the fire alarm had been triggered right there, in his sleeping cabin.
Alex looked around, saw no hint of any conflagration, and went back to the screens for more detailed information. Not a fire, he saw. The fire alarm had been triggered by a flash of electrical energy, which had set off a fire alarm as a precaution.
It was, he saw, a discharge of static electricity, origin unidentified. It was relatively small, but a discharge of any size was a concern aboard a starship, even with all the precautions they took to protect their tech and keep potential flammable aerosols out of the atmosphere.
He was still trying to figure out what was going on when a damage control team burst in.
Alex looked at the damage controllers, standing there in their survival suits and carrying fire kit.
They looked at him, standing in his cabin, which was definitely not on fire. Nor was anything else.
‘All right, skipper?’ That was Tom Porter, junior officer of the watch, peering through the door and looking startled.
‘Yes, fine,’ said Alex, and told them all, ‘Stand down. It was just Excorps having a laugh.’ He silenced the fire alert, confirming that no damage had been caused, and began to peel out of his own survival suit. ‘Goodnight!’
They went away, giving rather uncertain goodnights. When they’d gone Alex said something rude about Excorps, got back into his bunk, composed himself for sleep again, and tried to glide himself back into that lovely tranquillity.
It wasn’t till the following morning that the odd little incident turned into a mystery. Alex went to have a quiet word with Mel Farah. He didn’t want to be heavy handed, but at the same time, the joke had crossed a line into generating a potentially dangerous electric spark and that did require some response. He was pretty certain, himself, who was responsible, and so called in for a chat with the Excorps skipper.
‘Static discharge?’ Mel Farah queried crossly. ‘Bright lights and figures? Don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Sorry, Mel,’ said Alex, willing to accept her word for it, since he really did not think that this was her style, ‘but would you mind, please, checking with your people and ensuring that they understand that what they did caused a spark which set off our fire alert.’
‘Oh, I see. Number one suspects.’ She grinned, but nodded. ‘Okay, ’kay, I’m on it.’
Ten minutes later she was on the command deck, assuring Alex that none of the Excorps guys had anything to do with this.
‘Static charge?’ she shook her head, having seen the data by then and evidently as shocked as they were. ‘Only an idiot would do that. So, one,’ she told him, ‘we would not do anything that stupid, two, doing something like that would presumably involve hacking your systems and none of us would even know where to start, three, we wouldn’t do that even if we could – line crossing, totally line crossing, really not us at all. So no, Alex, not us. You have my word on that.’
‘Good enough for me,’ Alex conceded, though they had learned some more about it by then, running in-depth diagnostics on everything they could think of. ‘Though it doesn’t look as if our systems were hacked, in fact – seems like it must have been, you know, a gizmo, something planted in my quarters. We can’t find it, but…’ he shrugged. ‘Anyway, sorry Mel, I do apologise. I hope you can understand that in the circumstances, it was my first thought.’
‘We might dress you up as Oceanicus and pinch your bum, Alex,’ said Mel, ‘but we would never do anything that monumentally dumb. But if our pranking has generated an environment in which someone feels that this was an acceptable joke, then I’m sorry too, and let’s call it quits on that right here, yes?’
Alex agreed, they shook hands on that, and she left him to mull over what had happened.
‘All right,’ once he’d given it some thought, Alex activated the shipwide PA. ‘All hands…’ he paused to be sure that everyone was listening, then went on calmly, ‘There was an incident in my quarters last night, which I am taking to be an ill-judged prank. This incident involved projected images and the generation of a 4.2k volt electrostatic discharge.’ He waited for a moment for the exclamations and swearing to stop. ‘Indeed,’ he said drily. ‘I would be very happy to learn that this was inadvertent and accept the apology of the person or persons concerned. If, however, I have not received such an apology by 0800 I will be handing the matter to Commander Leavam for a formal investigation, after which, of course, the matter will become one of official proceedings. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen – freefall in one minute.’
It was shortly after 0750 that Ali Jezno came to the command deck. He wasn’t alone – Ab Abnedido was with him, as was a petty officer who’d been Ali’s accomplice in several high-tech pranks.
‘We just want you to know, skipper,’ Ali said, with a fixed look at Alex, ‘that it wasn’t us. People are kind of looking at us… but it wasn’t.’
‘Thank you, Mr Jezno.’ Alex had not seriously suspected Ali or his mates. Ali was smarter than that, and his pranks had a particular quality, too, which had not been evident in what had happened last night. Ali, after all, was a story-teller, and when he set up something like the Ghost of Cabin Fifteen there was drama to it, a build of atmosphere and a compelling back-story, too, to flesh out the special effects. The figure in Alex’s cabin had been crude, in dramatic terms, with the tootling trumpets and everything too bright and too loud. ‘I didn’t really need that assurance, but thank you. And if nobody owns up, perhaps you would be kind enough to lend your assistance to Commander Leavam in figuring out how it was done?’
‘Be happy to, skipper,’ Ali said, with a determined note. Playing practical jokes on a starship was always a delicate matter, especially when in involved high powered tech. Ali himself was a master of the art, and it had appalled him to think that anyone could pull such a stupid, dangerous stunt – and appalled him even more when it had dawned on him that certain members of the crew were wondering if it might have been him.
Nobody owned up, so at 0800 Alex handed the matter to Commander Leavam amidst an atmosphere of unhappy tension. There was an IA investigation on the ship for an offence which could get someone sent to prison if they were deemed to have sabotaged or to have recklessly endangered the ship. Nobody was laughing.
‘Thank you, skipper.’ Hetty Leavam was brisk, impersonal. ‘May I have access to the cabin recording?’
Alex signed his agreement to that, and with Buzz also granting permission, she was able to access the blind recording which was going on across the ship all the time. She watched it on a private screen, giving nothing away by her expression, then looked across at Alex. ‘I will start by interviewing you – in the daycabin, please.’
It wasn’t a request. For this, it was Hetty who was in charge and she was making that absolutely clear right from the outset.
The interview did not go as Alex had anticipated. She questioned him far more closely than he had expected about the figure he had seen, what it had said, and exactly when it had vanished.
‘And it was audible, too, throughout? You could hear..?’
‘Trumpets,’ Alex repeated. ‘Five or six of them, I think, doing a fanfare.’
‘Could you please describe the fanfare?’
‘If you think it’s important,’ Alex thought back. ‘It was like the kind of fanfare you get in history flicks when the king is putting in an appearance, trumpets on the battlements style of thing, but it was going on and on…don’t ask me to sing it, I wasn’t paying that much attention, but ta daa, ta daa daa, you know the sort of thing.’
&nb
sp; Hetty wrote down ta daa, ta daa daa.
‘And the voice?’ She asked. ‘It reacted – responded to what you’d said?’
‘I suppose it did,’ Alex said, mildly surprised. ‘But it’s not difficult to pre-program responses, is it?’ He was giving her a perplexed look. ‘But you’ve had access to the cabin recording, you’ve seen it yourself.’
‘Well, there’s the thing, skipper,’ said Hetty. ‘Because the camera hasn’t recorded anything but you.’
There was a silence.
‘I did see it,’ said Alex. ‘I wasn’t dreaming.’
‘I know,’ Hetty assured him. ‘I would have taken your word for that, frankly, even without the corroborating fact that there was, beyond doubt, some kind of technology operating in your cabin which generated a significant electrostatic spark. But do, please, see for yourself.’
She played the cabin recording, Alex watching it closely.
It was played from the perspective of the above-door camera, giving broad angle view of the whole cabin. Alex watched himself, fast asleep, suddenly start awake, grimacing and shielding his eyes, giving a heartfelt ‘oh, not now!’ at the empty cabin, and making a move as if to roll back down and throw the bedcover over his head. As he did so, though, there was a crack, a blue-white flash in the middle of the cabin, and a moment later the fire alarm went off. Alex immediately scrambled out of bed and grabbed a survival suit.
Hetty ended the recording at that point and they looked thoughtfully at one another.
‘All right,’ said Alex. ‘So – it was intended to be visible to me, and only to me. Narrow band projection? Direct to optic?’
‘Possibly,’ said Hetty. ‘But a thorough diagnostic of your quarters has failed to locate any device.’
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