“….Fuck.”
The word hung in midair. On the display, it became immediately apparent that the Very Bad Problem that Ghoti had feared had, instead, been the bettter option to have taken. He had been concerned that the FTL not disengaging and the course change would have simply taken them into contested Celzi space or into uncharted space…or, worse yet, into Hunter-controlled space.
The problem wasn’t where they were headed. The problem was how they were getting there; the sealed Corti FTL drive functioned by simply pushing the ship faster, the more power one dumped into it. Under normal circumstances, this would have had a predictable maximum limit on their vessel’s speed as a somewhat low (comparatively speaking) multiple of the speed of light. Apparently nobody had ever considered, however, what would happen if both drives, that is, the conventional FTL drive and the jump beacon drive that operated on stable wormholes, were online and simultaneously having suicidal amounts of power dumped into them from an overloading power core. The safety locks…heck, the system requirements on the power core…should have prevented anything like it from being remotely possible. The ship was continuing to accelerate, and at the same time creating in its wake unstable wormholes that followed like whirlpools in the wake of a ship on the water. What it was doing to the surrounding space and time, Ghoti didn’t even want to speculate, even if it had remotely been his primary field of study anyway. What was, however, apparent, was that some of those unstable wormholes were continuing to merge and form gyres in space and time, and in doing so, they were getting closer and closer to the vessel careening out of control.
Unable to immediately consider potential solutions, and feeling quite overwhelmed, Ghoti tugged the remains of the helmsman out of his chair absently and sat. And thought. He stayed that way for several minutes, until there was a bump at his elbow and an inquisitive rowr? All things considered, it was probably that combination of factors that enabled him to take it all in stride….after all, if they were going to be ripped into atoms by an engine malfunction soon, what was a carnivorous and overly solicitous predator asking for affectionate attention, in the grand scheme of things? One hand reached out tentatively and copied the human’s gesture he had seen earlier, as he gave the now-purring cat a scratch behind one ear.
The subdued hooting of the bio-hazard alarm (mercifully silenced in the cargo bay, but still audible from outside, particularly every time the door was opened), the flashing of lights, and the lack of food, familiar surroundings, toys, things to scratch upon, and water to drink had had an unpleasant result in the cargo bay. Most, if not all, of the adult males were still fertile, and had, with Mrs. Nesbitt out of the room (and thus not present to scold them), aggressively marked every prominent surface available. Several of the females were in heat. The older cats continued to assert their dominance over younger upstarts, who took exception to the “old farts” of the group and reacted as positively as juveniles of any species on Earth would be anticipated to. The entirely predictable (to a human) consequence of this combination of factors had created what could only be (charitably) described as, well, a catastrophe. Mrs. Nesbitt, upon returning for the second time with more stragglers in tow, and even as inured to the natural cat smells as she was after living by herself with that many of them, nearly gagged at the combined odors of cat-musk, cat-urine, cat-dander, cat-poo, and her own general catarrh. The level of discontented caterwauling was earsplitting.
Reuniting the fugitives with their fellows and getting them into the storage bay proved no easy task. None of them wanted to go in, seeing what was there and having had a taste of sweet freedom; it was only due to their faith in Mrs. Nesbitt as their Food Purveyor and Changer of Litterboxes that they had come this far. One by one, she patiently captured, lulled, and then tossed each one through the doorway and its one-way isolation field keeping the rest in. This took quite some time, and by the time she was done, she was very tired (it had been a long day already, and she had been about to go to bed when she was so rudely interrupted). There was nowhere to sit, of course, since apparently Martians also didn’t believe in such things. The combination of stress, lack of tea, worry over her babies, meeting Martians of all things, and the unexpected exercise suddenly came to a head, and she sat down on the floor just outside the storage bay. In moments, she was fast asleep.
Ghoti pondered.
If he were to disconnect the power supply manually from the FTL and the jump drives, he calculated at least an 83% chance of catastrophic meltdown, which would force them to stop, but would also result in total loss of the vessel.
If he were to divert power from one drive into the other, it might overload that drive, bringing them to a stop, but he calculated a 78% chance of it blowing out both forms of propulsion, leaving them stranded he-still-wasn’t-sure-where.
If he were to divert the power from both drives into something else capable of radiating away the excess energy, bleeding it off, they might have enough time to get the runaway power core’s generation cycle broken, and get it to subside to more normal outputs before the entire thing exploded, imploded, or something equally unfortunate. The only problem was, the only relays capable of handling that much power went….from the power supply to the two drives.
If he were to do nothing, the Inquisitive Terminus would continue to accelerate and eventually be ripped apart by a combination of the energy in its own motion and in its wake, which was also probably doing unknown and unrecognizable things to the local space and time…
Nearly 20 years later, August 15, 1977, Ohio State University
The event horizon from the Inquisitive Terminus’ engine malfunction reached Earth at the exact point in time that a SETI project was listening to the skies via the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University. To the sensitive instrument, one of the early human attempts at deciphering the heavens and the noise of the universe, the abrupt burst of energy registered on the 1420.556 MHz line, and was seen by one Jerry Erman, dubbed the “Wow!” signal, and entered human history as an unknown event of probably-alien origin.
Little did they know, they were absolutely right.
Aboard the Inquisitive Terminus – location and date wibbly-wobbly
Ghoti sighed. And pondered. The ca….gricka’s presence had become oddly soothing in a way, its deep purring rumble seemingly unending as he idly ran a gloved hand over its fur, actually aiding in his thinking. It seemed like the best option available of a variety of bad ones was to divert power out of the FTL drive and dump it into the jump drive, hoping that all it would do was burn out the latter, preserve the former, and allow the remaining workers in the engineering compartment to take the power core offline and restore some kind of functionality.
He sat up, calmer now that he had a solution, or at least a hope of a solution, at hand. Ghoti was suddenly aware that he hadn’t heard from the human in some time, and checked with the camera drone that had been accompanying her to find that she was catatonic in the hallway just outside the storage bay. Out of curiosity, he looked through the cameras into the storage bay and found the same scene Mrs. Nesbitt had dealt with earlier. Unable to suppress a momentary shudder, he closed that link down and opened one to the engineering compartment.
“Chief Researcher…is anyone else left alive?” the still-shaken engineering crew asked. The one answering the link call still had, even for a Corti, a wild-eyed look about him, as though an angry cat lady had forcibly disintegrated his only means of defending himself with a stick.
“A few are still alive. I have heard from a small group in the kitchens, and the research team in Biolab Seven were already in encounter suits, so they are fine. There are several others – individuals, mostly. I congratulate your group on getting so many into suits in time. Now. I am going to try to stop our runaway ship, and I will require manual assistance from the three of you.”
“Help from us…sir?”
“Yes. Why?”
“The…um…the senior techs are all, well, dead, sir. I think we got into the suits faster because we were younger; the Ship’s Engineer and all of his primary techs are…see for yourself.” The camera swiveled to one side, bringing into focus after a moment the small pile against the wall. “We’re the junior techs, sir.”
Ghoti steepled his fingers in a very human gesture and thought for a moment. “You will simply have to do what needs done. There is no other way – I will do my best to guide you as you work. The plan is straightforward, not terribly complex, but there is absolutely no room for error. What you must do is actually disconnect charged relays, in a particular and specific order, and one at a time, and then reconnect them in an alternate configuration. Once we begin this, we cannot stop for any reason, or the power core will continue to overload, will explode, and will kill us all.” There was an audible gulp from the other end, and then a nod of agreement.
Relay by relay, the team in Engineering followed Ghoti’s directions, as he manually recalibrated the power flow coming out of the power core. It was nearly at critical levels, and he exhorted the engineering team to work quickly. One by one, each connection and reconnection was made, until only the final one remained. The team slid it out of its original socket gingerly, slowly moved to the new location, and with an encouraging nod over the comm link, slid it into place, seating it with a click. Immediately, there was both a low rumbling WUMMMmmmmmmmmm as the FTL drive spun down, accompanied by a sizzling zorch and a loud pop as the jump drive overloaded. An immediate localized fire-suppression response doused the electrical components with foam, and the ship’s motion came to a sudden and complete stop with a lurch.
A quick power supply query found in Engineering that the power core itself had completely overloaded from feedback, and had burned out along with the jump drive, which left the ship with its emergency power backup and as-yet unknown effects on other ship systems. Then Ghoti tried the navigation system, simply to see where they had ended up, hoping that this much, at least, would turn out to be something decent to work with. There was good news, at least – they were in one piece, more or less, and they were close to a planet that a quick check in the database said was a balmy uninhabited Class 6 world. There was, however, also bad news.
The stars were wrong.
Hallway, Inquisitive Terminus location and date probability 8372:1 and falling
The ship lurched, and there was a groaning sound that faded away. Mrs. Nesbitt awoke with a start, fumbling at her glasses and walking stick, wondering just where the devil she was for a moment. Then she remembered…Martians. The rest of her day before finally falling asleep came back a piece at a time, and she sat up slowly with the inevitable chorus of pops, snaps, cracks, and other assorted noises of age. Her back ached fiercely, and she was sure her hair was an absolute fright. Getting to her feet was an exercise in frustrated impatience, but she eventually managed it and stood leaning on her walking stick with a bit more emphasis than before. She looked up at the still-hovering drone, still a bit agog at the fact that she was apparently on a Martian flying saucer. What would Hazel make of this?
“Hey,” she said out loud, and (remembering the glass) reached out and gave the floating thing a tweak with one hand. “Mister Space Martian…are you there?” There was a long pause.
“You are awake. Excellent. I need additional sweeps of the crew quarters for your creatures; please follow the drone, and it will guide you,” came the impersonal voice of the Martian she’d seen before. She sniffed.
“Certainly not. Since there is no tea, and you have no change of clothing for me, or even a bed, I will not be doing anything more until you answer some questions,” she replied testily. The nerve of this…this…whatever he is.
There was another long pause. Had Mrs. Nesbitt been able to see the diminutive alien on the other end of the circuit, she would have been witness to a probably-hilarious and uncharacteristically non-Corti stream of expletives in multiple languages combined with actual stomping on the floor (which would have actually been cute to a human). Eventually, Ghoti calmed down enough to respond intelligibly.
“Human, I must explain some things to you. As a direct result of your creatures escaping the quarantined storage bay in which you and they were safely contained, we are now stranded somewhere I have not yet been able to identify in space, without primary power, and possibly without an engine, on a ship where most of the crew is already dead from exposure to your creatures. We are unable to work on the problem adequately, because some of them are still outside the quarantine and any exposure to the microorganisms they carry will be immediately fatal, thus we must stay in encounter suits. They are also predators, eminently capable of killing everyone on board but yourself. Unless you are attracted to the idea of slowly starving or freezing to death with your creatures after all of us are dead, you must get them back into the quarantined area until I can render them as safe for us as you are for now.” His tone was as patient as he could make it, although the translator rendered it a bit flat.
Mrs. Nesbitt thought for a moment. It was true, she had seen a number of apparently-dead Martians in the hallways, and although she didn’t see any now, that didn’t mean that they weren’t still quite dead. It was also true that apparently they had all been fine, until her babies had escaped through the air vent thing, the clever darlings. That meant that this Martian was probably telling her the truth (although she found herself instinctively distrusting anyone with manners that atrocious, just on general principles). This, in turn, meant that resurrecting the Mrs. Eufegenia Nesbitt from the War years was in order, because the rest was also probably true. Mentally putting on her flak helmet and stiffening her upper lip, she gave the camera a steely look of truly British perseverance and a nod with nothing befuddled or whimsical about it. Keep Calm And Carry On indeed she thought. This was possibly more serious than tea.
For his part, Ghoti was taken aback at the figure he saw on the screen. As frustrating and subtly menacing as the human had seemed to him, he had on some level felt that she was harmless. This…this was a different person, and he suddenly understood the gibbering fear underlying the attitude of the engineering crew, who hadn’t actually said that anything had happened, but if they had seen this Deathworlder instead of the one he’d been observing… What a fascinating transformation.
It took hours, but eventually Mrs. Nesbitt had rounded up all but two of her wayward clowder. The last one unaccounted for was a small Russian Blue named Josef, who was both somewhat timid and extraordinarily sneaky even for a cat. Ghoti had finally managed to attune the internal sensors to locate the cats, which had gone a long way towards speeding up the process of recovering them, but Josef had managed to elude the sensors for quite some time through a combination of black magic and a knack for hiding where the sensors weren’t looking.
The sensors had found a fleeting ghost of a cat-sized shape somewhere around the Ship Master’s private quarters (and how Josef had gotten there was anyone’s guess, as it was beyond several layers of sealed bulkheads and conduits that really shouldn’t have accommodated any interlopers at all). Mrs. Nesbitt went dutifully tromping along in her galoshes and began a systematic search, calling “Kittykittykitty,” repeatedly and getting nothing for her trouble. Ghoti had already informed her that the area she was searching had been assigned to crew that was deceased, so she had no concerns about startling or scaring anyone. As she went through the surprisingly spacious room, a thought struck her.
If what that Martian said was true, we might be landing on another planet soon, and I don’t even have a hat. She looked around, noting that there was material available in things hanging on the walls…and she did have her scissors…well. It wouldn’t be fancy, but she could certainly come up with something. A proper lady did not go out in public without a hat, and if the Martians were going to whisk her off without letting her bring one, she’d just have to make her own. Her hand strayed, completely of its own accord, into her apron pocket and brought out her scissors.
There were problems one could deal with, problems one could accomodate, and problems one could avoid, Ghoti thought to himself. All visible stars being in the wrong place was not one of these options, unfortunately. This was more of an “I have no idea what to do now” sort of problem, and it was something he was ill-equipped to handle. The computer said that the star configuration was aligned with being more or less 75,000 years in the past, which was obviously a crazy notion, because…well, he wasn’t quite sure why, but he was sure that it wasn’t okay. Theoretically, travel through space was travel through time in a sense, but to his albeit-abbreviated knowledge of the subject, actual travel backwards was unprecedented.
What was, unfortunately, certain was that they had enough power to get to the planet below, and very little else. It was possible to supplement the emergency backup power to a small degree, but that would not last, and it certainly wasn’t enough to get them anywhere other than where they were. This, however, was not the only issue…he calculated that there was probably enough power to get them to the planet, and to do something about the cat/gricka problem but not much else. It would have to do.
Ghoti feverishly worked on the cat genome, reconfiguring one of the science stations to be a genetic recombinant work station, and set it to notify him when its analysis was complete. It was fortunate that he actually had one with him to work on, and it seemed to take the limited prodding in stride, giving his hesitant testing little but a toothy yawn and a nervous-wreck-inducing stretch that seemed to be all lean muscle and claws. The terminal chugged away steadily at analysis within the perameters that he had set, and he moved on to landing zone analysis. Unfortunately, he ended up having to do both on his own, as every attempt at summoning help to the bridge had failed when his proposed help had arrived and seen what was sitting next to him still purring insistently.
The class 6 world below them appeared to have many possible excellent landing places available. He selected one with ample water, forest, and caves nearby at not-quite-random, and set the ship’s auto pilot to land; as he was about to press the final execute command, the bridge door hissed open. The human stood in the doorway, a cat in one arm, walking stick in the other, and with an outlandish head covering unlike anything he had ever seen or conceived of in this universe or any alternate one.
“I had the most impossible time getting this flying thing to show me where you had gone, Mister Martian Man,” she said in a very pleased voice. “It really needs some work on its English, but I think we’re making progress…oh my.” She trailed off, looking at the view screen which showed their new probable home approaching quickly.
“What…is that on your head?” Ghoti asked, the question seemingly the only thing he could come up with in a long list of things that really shouldn’t have happened today.
“Do you like my hat?” she asked girlishly, and turned around so that he could see the whole thing. “I got it out of one of the rooms you sent me to looking for Josef here,” indicating the cat hanging from one arm. “The fabric was just hanging there, and since you said we were going to be actually going somewhere, I couldn’t pass up the…what’s wrong with your face?”
Ghoti normally prided himself on his emotional detachment from his work; his dispassionate analysis and methodical nature had made him a researcher of great repute. Had Mrs. Nesbitt known this, it probably would not have fazed her in the slightest, although the sudden shaking and moderate frothing at the mouth did make her wonder for a moment if he was having some sort of fit (her friend Hazel had told her all about how sciency types had fits, on account of their genius being too much for their brain to actually handle, and this time it appeared Hazel might be right even if he was a Martian and not an actual man), until he began speaking. Even the translator was spluttering.
“You…you….that fabric, as you call it, was an eight century old family heirloom, documenting nearly a millennium of achievements by some of the most accomplished minds from my people. It was priceless, a unique and subtle work of art…and you cut it up to make a garment??”
“Don’t you get testy with me, young man. If we’re landing on a planet, and I’m the first human to set foot there, I can’t go without a hat. Even if you still haven’t managed to get me some tea, you must be able to understand that much. I think it’s quite nice and turned out surprisingly well. Look at these ornaments I found…I think they set it off nicely, don’t you?” One hand came up and gave the gold, platinum, and polished tungsten medallions denoting ingenuity, bravery, and creative thinking awards a tweak. If Ghoti had had a frame of reference for religious sacrelige, he could not possibly have been more deeply offended; as it was, this…this creature had made a mockery of his mission and his work on a level that defied comprehension. As if to celebrate the moment, the terminal on the other side of the room working on the cat genome chose that moment to make a ding not unlike an egg timer, indicating that it was finished. Ghoti, with a visible effort, picked his jaw back up, focused his attention on the science station, and addressed the computer.
“Computer, report,” he ordered. Behind him, Mrs. Nesbitt came stomping over for all the world like she were trying to leave footprints in the deck plating.
“Solution found. 98.339% chance of success…begin aerosolized retroviral treatment?” the machine’s voice replied with what sounded suddenly to the frazzled researcher like smug amusement at his predicament.
“Affirmative – begin aerosolized release of nano-particle and retroviral encoding, maximum internal dispersement in all compartments. Triple saturation in Cargo Bay 3 and bridge.”
“Confirmed,” was the terse reply. There was a long moment, and then a silvery greenish gas burst out of the air system, flooding the room in a hazy cloud.
“Computer, begin landing sequence and take us down to designated landing site. Lock out all further instruction from anyone other than myself,” Ghoti said quickly. After the surprising aptitude for adaptation from the Deathworlder, the last thing they needed was her figuring out voice commands to the ship’s systems.
“Confirmed,” the computer replied again.
Mrs. Nesbitt’s response to the gassing was eminently predictable. It was immediately obvious to her that this Martian was trying to poison her and her babies. His lack of manners was well-established in her opinion; although she didn’t feel faint or confused or anything, she was still quite tired from her exertions, emotionally overwrought, and her mental health had, if one wanted to get right down to it, suffered over the last several years. The combination of fatigue, unfamiliar surroundings, fury at the apparent betrayal, and the strangeness of it all was simply too much, and she once again reverted to the Mrs. Nesbitt of Coventry, who had only finally moved away from the city of her birth in December of 1940. She let out a berserker yell worthy of her several-times-removed ancestor, (a Viking shieldmaiden who had settled in southern England, well before the coming of the Normans) and descended upon the hapless researcher with her walking stick, hitting him several times but not quite killing him, more by luck than intention.
Otherwise undesignated class 6 temperate world in the Saggitarian globular cluster, ~ 60k years ago
The small lizard-like creature sitting on a rock in the sun blinked its five eyes simultaneously, as a large black rectangular object descended from the sky and came to a rest on the ground. It scuttled away in fright at the resulting cloud of dust, hiding under a nearby bush as though a larger predator had just arrived.
Presently an opening yawned in one side, a shimmering curtain of light forming a ramp down to the surface. A number of small humanoid figures came fleeing out, pursued by one larger and many, many smaller four-legged ones….
Mrs Nesbitt was long-lost to the ages by the time gricka were discovered by a long-forgotten survey team. Being predators from a class-12 world, they had little problem becoming the premier predator (although not the largest by any means) in their new home on a class-6. They quickly spread to every corner of the planet they had landed upon, and by the time they were (re)discovered, their natural curiosity and basic intelligence had sharpened measurably. Their natural curiosity led them to stow away aboard the various vessels that came by over the centuries, and from there they spread to every corner of the galaxy.
No trace of Mrs. Nesbitt or the Inquisitive Terminus or her unfortunate crew were ever discovered….but of course, no-one ever knew to look.
Some additional story notes:
The march referenced at the beginning is the Easter Aldermaston March protesting nuclear weapons in the UK. It was the first such protest, and I felt it deserved some recognition.
Mrs. Nesbitt is a survivor of the Coventry Blitz in World War 2, which was a massive series of raids by the Luftwaffe resulting in massive destruction; it had a formative effect on bombing doctrine for the rest of the war.
The Irish blackthorn-wood shillelagh) is both a formidable traditional weapon with a fighting style all its own and a traditional walking stick. Mr. Nesbitt may have had Irish ancestry, or perhaps Mrs. Nesbitt simply liked it…
The Bengal housecat is a popular breed for cat-lovers, and is the basis for how I see the gricka. The two Bengals referenced early on would have had a number of advantages in size and aptitude over many of the others, and thus would have (in my opinion) had a greater number of descendants.