Panther and Giraffe

by Gregory Anderson

  After three days as predicted by the scientists a signal was being received from the third buoy sent into the gray nebula, the captain was informed and the pressures mounted.

  The plight of Zak Johns and the Panther had to become secondary to the problem on Edahni and he need to get word back home soon. On Edahni, Berdle, the leader of the survivors was trying in vain to encourage them to hang on despite the gloomy outlook. It was tragic, the terrible accident the took out the main power plant and most of the town but the few that survived were making do in the old container housing which at least was totally self contained and near the mines. There was still no communication with the off planet worlds but they were working on it. Federated was no help really, but was arranging to to get the processed Azurite off planet with vague promises of future payments and supplies.

  Giraffe was once again woken from a sound sleep by Panther who said , “Wakey wakey, wakey wakey.” Giraffe replied, “All I want is a solid nights sleep what is it now?” She was already pulling on her suit and heading for the bridge, professor Hicks was already there. “There is a buoy from the other side and it wants to talk to you!” Hicks said excitedly. “Zak get out here, wakey wakey, geesh,” she has me doing it now!” Giraffe yelled and not waiting for a reply commanded, “Report please, all data on how, why and where.” Panther stated. “Cyrillium explorer buoy, modified for self destruct on hostile encounter, no further data available until hail replied to properly.” Zak had stepped on the bridge and was listening to the report, “I will have to make the reply as it is a code that you or Panther would not know so may I?” Giraffe answered, “Make it so Zak.” To which he replied, “Panther please encode and translate to hegmon language the following; command code id 505 Zak Johns directive 7, redirect Giraffe royal.” Zak finished, “So now we wait, any idea of traverse time anyone?” Professor Hicks replied, “The best estimate we have come to would be three days.” Giraffe said, “Well maybe now I can get some sleep.” But sleep would not be coming so soon as another problem appeared, on the earth ship with it's secondary reactor. Panther explained, “The reactor is unstable beyond fifty percent and at that will only provide life support and one quarter for thrust.” Hicks broke in, “What she means is that it would take them three months to get home and food supplies will run out in one.” Zak suggested, “We could set them up with a mana-maker.” Panther came back, “Before my sweet professor interrupted me, the problem with the reactor is the same as with the one that blew, insufficient shielding, so the crew may make it home but most would die from radiation exposure.” There was a pause before she went on, “So dear, don't interrupt me when I am talking I am smarter than you.” One of the most distinguished professors on earth was put in his place by an AI so he replied, “So typical of a woman, always having to have the last word!”

  Zak had gone over to the earth ship to deliver the bad news. “Commander your ship is effectively dead in space, your second reactor is not safe.” Smyth replied, “Is that why we are locked out of it's controls? Zak replied affirmative and Smyth went on, “We are alive because of your help and now you seem to be saving us from ourselves again, this makes us feel like kids playing at grown up. Some how, we have been cruising around just one step from dead.” Zak answered, “You have to start somewhere and you have taken bold, first steps into space, perhaps we have helped you along a little because your problems are solvable.” Marx had a problem, he was in the Panthers aft engineering section but was also monitoring the conversation on the bridge and did not know if it was allowed. What he had heard about the cruisers secondary reactor did not sit right but he did not know if it was his place to say anything about it especially since the ships AI had made the recommendation. Marx still found it awkward to talk to the ship but, “Ah Panther, this is Marx can I talk to the Bridge please, “Go ahead” replied Panther. “Captain this is Marx and I have been listening to the conversation on the reactor and, um, ah, the information you have is wrong..” He was waiting for reprimand or at least a talking to for speaking out but what he got was entirely different. Giraffe came back with, “About time you spoke up Marx we thought you were lost, always speak up if something does not seem right so what do you have?” Marx was still a little nervous, “Ah, um, the secondary reactor should be throttled to only thirty percent not fifty, there is a hidden defect in all earth built reactors that is not acknowledged. That comes from fuel purity, the engineers are unaware because the final testing was dropped due to cost overruns. I mean no disrespect captain but Panther was wrong.” Panther replied, “Not wrong, just fed incomplete data, thank you for the correction, and I concur.” Giraffe said, “Marx, thank you, Panther adjust the reactor for safe operation please.”

  12

  The cruiser was now able to operate on it's own but still did not have the power to get itself home and so, still attached to the Panther while they discussed the best way to proceed. Giraffe was reluctant to jump because then the whole crew of the earth cruiser would be aware of their jump capabilities. But bringing them back under thrust would take many days. While they were waiting for a return signal from the other side they would not be able to quickly move with the cruiser attached. There was another problem with jumping in and out. Zak explained, “Remember the first time you jumped, you were a little dizzy and disoriented?” She said, “Yes, for maybe a few seconds why?” Zak stopped for a minute to consider his reply then said, “No human has ever recovered from a jump as fast as you did, even for me with years of experience it still takes about five minutes to function. The grax can't even recover as fast as you did and it takes hegmons a good hour at best.” Marx piped up from engineering, “If we jump most of that crew are not going to say anything at all if it is as disorienting as you say, it did not seem to bad when we jumped out here, how bad is it really?” Zak said, “For first time humans, the recovery can take a day but there is no lasting effects. For some it can be horror the first hour with nonstop puking and dizziness.” The professor added, “I understand the effect of temporal shift and have to agree with young Marx there should be no problems with the cruiser's crew as they will be to busy to figure out what happened and, we will be jumping back out before they know what happened,” Giraffe added, “I think if we tell Murphy at station three what we plan so he can take care of the aftermath it will be alright. At the same time we must alert them as to their reactor shortcomings.” Zak took it upon himself to explain what they would be doing to Smyth and a few of his medical staff so once it happened they could explain it to the crew.

  It was decided that the crew not know until after. So the only thing the crew would know for sure is that they would recover and they had no idea how they got back. This would be an intense mission as there would be little time between the jumps so for the professor and Marx it could be real rough and Zak figured after the second jump it would take him an hour to recover. Giraffe was another story but Panther would be in charge if needed .

  Junes was sitting with captain Jings as they decoded the buoy's returned message and were astounded by the news. It seemed impossible that Zak would hand over the Panther to anyone for any reason but it seemed he had. They had verified the code three times, there was no doubt. Who or whatever Zak had encountered so far away was named Giraffe and was recognized as a superior, impossible as it seemed. They would share this information with the crew and get some ideas on how best to respond. The announcement to the crew would be quite a shock. The discovery of a stable quantum singularity plus Zak's news. “Attention all crew, attention all crew, we have confirmed the discovery of a stable quantum singularity that is navigable and that captain Zak Johns and the Panther are on the other side.

  Captain Johns has turned control of the Panther over to Giraffe, a superior. Please consider this and compose questions for the return message and congratulations for all your hard work on the discovery, captain out.” This discovery brought about many questions but boiled down to the few most important. What level of sentience, are they a threa
t, are we a threat, identify species. Jings also added a packet containing news of Edahni and a few other key things. Meanwhile, Federated was getting either curious or annoyed and planned to send a few ships to 'discuss' the matter with the Cyrillium explorer ship.

  Giraffe decided that the crew of the earth cruiser should be prepared to be sick by telling them that they would be accelerating extremely fast and that this might cause gee sickness, not entirely true but close. A time had been set and confirmed with general Murphy so that the station was ready to help out the ship which would probably be drifting till someone on board recovered and got control. Giraffe gave the command and they jumped, she felt a little dizzy but was able to make sure the grapples were retracted and the Panther had pulled away far enough to jump out. Again, she heard the professor trying not to puke.

  Successfully back by the gray nebula she called for crew to report. Zak said, “Wow, how do you do that?” As he shook off the lingering effects of the jumps. “Marx weakly said, “Ah, ah will be fine ah, hour.” The professor added, “Interesting, I think after a vomit again I shall recover, slowly.” Giraffe was fine, somehow not really effected by the double jump. She radioed back to the station an hour later asking General Murphy the ships status. Murphy reported, “Most of crew slowly recovering, a few went to sick bay. They are maneuvering into docking position, thanks again, the report on the reactor faults has gone to the presidents, the stuff will hit the fan soon, keep me informed, out..” And now the Panther waited.

  General Murphy was sitting in First Admiral Jalbahn's office along with commander Smyth tying to explain how battle cruiser three could seemingly just appear near the station and why was the crew confined to quarters. Murphy stated,” “We have been having problems with the radar systems lately and the ship did not just appear it only seemed that way when the radar started to work again. We had communication that the ship is was en-route which is why the shuttles were ready to meet it.” Smyth added, “He is correct we had to turn back from our mission when the reactor blew and that is the same reason the crew is confined, making sure there is no signs of radiation sickness, we lost good people and we almost lost the ship.” Jalbahn asked, “And the Panther happened to be nearby to help out? You will have to excuse me but the whole thing just does not quite add.” Jalbahn did not get to the top slot by being stupid, the question was, how much did he really want to know?

  Like it's namesake the Panther was an elusive ship with unknown capabilities. It also possessed a captain that until a few months ago was a EDF shuttle pilot, it was all just a bit much. Why had they given the earth an answer to the food shortages that were coming when very few on earth even knew about it? There was no indication of any hostile action from the alien and Zak Johns was quite forth coming with reasons for limiting contact. The presidents and specialist were together trying to come up with a plausible explanation as to why their EDF had been operating faulty reactors all these years. Truth was that none of the reactors had been run any where near capacity.

  Some of the engineers suspected the problem but more troubling was that the aliens were the ones to discover it and prevent a tragedy. Dr, Gurd was called on to speculate as to what position this put earth in but they all knew anyway. Earth was defenseless. Although the alien visit was supposedly an accident, who could say that they would not share earth's vulnerability with those not so benevolent. Even though they were provided with solutions to the reactor problems there were still too many questions and too few answers. Dr Gurd was also in touch with another group, who believed that earth was not defenseless and the solution was rather simple.

  There is a bit of false logic that states :if something is near the truth then it must be truth, this is what conspiracies are born of and politicians thrive on. Henry Wadlow, formerly of station three and hero to some for almost taking down the alien space ship Panther. He had created a focus for certain groups who already wanted the aliens gone. On station three there was one of Henry's co-conspirators that had escaped notice because his name never came up, Mike Nerdahl. Mike was a communications specialist that listened in on all sorts of things. Mike may have been embellishing what he heard but for those on earth it was good enough.

  Too bad Henry Wadlow was out of the loop, forgotten in a prison cell, he would have reveled in it. What Dr Gurd and others had concluded was that the alien had somehow come from the gray nebula, this made sense and made for the basis for the 'gateway of the devil'. This became the core of a growing group that felt that the alien devils could not come in if they blew up the gate, no gate no way in, simple. There was proof in the pictures of the Panther, the glass in the desert of Americas and the ship that appeared out of nowhere. This was proof that the aliens were evil. Since things on earth were relatively calm the 'destroy the devils gate' movement gained traction, and money. There were plenty of rockets laying around left over from building the space stations and ships. Also, there were thousands of nuclear warheads laying around from the era of mutually assured destruction. Add some money, buy a few scientists, a rocket, and some nuclear materials and they would have a solution, destroy the gate!

  The most astounding and significant discovery of all worlds and sentient species, a quantum singularity, was about to be confirmed and on the planet earth a group was looking for a way to destroy it. On the Panther the return signal had just come in from the other side and just having that gave them enough data to map the singularity. They also had a buoy ready to send through which, if received, would add the confirmation of physical transport, a navigable gateway. Panther made to unpack the message and found that it was encrypted with Giraffe as the key so it would be Giraffe alone that determined what was shared,. Zak was concerned. “This is more serious than a simple reply, something must be really wrong, use your discretion but feel free to ask me, about, anything.” Since Zak was worried so was Giraffe as she went to her cabin to sit down and read the messages. 'Wow, this is not good,' she said to herself, the visual of Captain Jings was startling in that he looked a lot like Zak but, what was more shocking was the responsibility he was putting on her. Two thoughts were on her mind when she went back to the bridge.

  “Listen up everyone, send the buoy and send signal through with this message 'received, messages verified, document, send buoy back immediately, Giraffe.” Everyone was waiting, looking at their captain expectantly. “We have a mission, and it is extremely dangerous, Panther, open weapons bay control for Marks, also all mapping of Edahni, Zak you will be teaching him how the defense systems work.” After a breath she added, “Professor you, Panther and I will be coming up with a strategy on how to pull off a rescue. As soon as the buoy comes back we will be going through, that leaves us maybe two days to figure this all out.” Giraffe had already added a private video message to captain Jings. She had a hard time understanding why Captain Jings seemed to have full trust in her abilities. Later they all met in the galley for dinner, “Marx this smells wonderful,” He had been experimenting and explained, “This was a tough one, spaghetti with meat balls, the noodles were hard to figure out.” Sitting down there was quiet, noises like mm and ah went on for a while with everyone clearly enjoying Marx's efforts. It was Zak who spoke first, “Never had any thing like this before, your earth human food is truly a wonder and Marx, you have a future as a chef if you get tired of being an engineer.” Marks replied, “Thanks, my mother taught me how to cook and it is engineering that make it possible to turn mana into these different foods.” Hicks added, “If I had known how good the food was going to be I would have insisted on coming on board sooner!” Despite the tension from the upcoming mission they all were relaxed for awhile and Zak looked at Giraffe with a look of something he had not felt in a long long time and that was not bad.

  The Cyrillium explorer captain, Jings was having misgivings, he had laid it all out for Giraffe. Giraffe was a total unknown, yet he trusted Zak Johns and he hoped his trust was not misplaced. The Cyrillium worlds did not get involved with other worlds problems b
ut, there were Cyrillium citizens on Edahni who for one reason or another, needed to be extracted. This was not policy as once you left Cyrillium space and living on another planet you were no longer Cyrillium. There were some exceptions like if you were a trader, diplomat, or fleet. So he had dumped the problem on a total stranger using the rationale that the problem could not be solved diplomatically with Federated. It was not within his purview and the explorer ship was not staffed or equipped for such a thing. It would be a surprise then when the expected message coming in three days was instead, a buoy in a day and a half. Jings sent a coded message to Edahni and Berdle quietly started preparations to make the two containers they were living in space-worthy.

  General Murphy was quietly cursing his over-sized closet of an office, trying to organize the major reconstruction of the stations reactors. To compound the problems was Admiral Jalbahn looking over his shoulder constantly. What he did have going was the two engineers, Simpson and Colby whom he could trust with special projects and who were directly overseeing the reactor rebuilds. Both he and Smyth were concerned with the amount of information regarding the station and ship that was in the public domain. There had to be a leak, but neither had any idea where to start looking. The crew that helped Henry Wadlow were all cooling their heels behind bars unless someone had been missed. The mystery of how Henry had been picked up in the desert fueled some peoples imagination. The 'devils gate' movement had been gaining traction and a few politicians had taken up the cause in all three continents. This in turn brought it to the presidents. The Presidents talked to the Admiral who talked to the scientists who talked to the presidents. Dr. Gurd the current expert on the alien situation tried to put it in perspective, “The aliens have left, we do not know how or where, nor did they seem interested in anything we have so we have no idea what to expect.” The presidents wanted to know if the Devils Gate group was a threat to their power more than any threat from aliens and seemed satisfied that the aliens probably weren't coming back. The Admiral up on station three was asking if the gray nebula was indeed a gateway and if so should they go blast it with nukes. They had lots of those after all.