Space Voyage #1

[Llanea]

Llanea is stuck on an abandoned station alone and lonely, on the ships current course and sends a message requesting to be picked up and become a member of the crew.

[TheBigDog]

Captains Log (T+260)

We have been orbiting Io for far longer than we had ever planned. The sheer mass of scientific discovery is overwhelming. It seems like the whole crew is content to stay here gathering data for the foreseeable future. Considering the potential profitability of our discoveries I am in full agreement.

So far we have discovered deposits of metals far exceeding anything we had suspected. Copper, iron, lead, silver, gold, nickel, uranium, thorium. In particular a isotope of thorium that hold potential as an efficient fission fuel with much lower radioactive output than U235 and Plutonium, or at least that is what I am hearing from Mercedes Benzene. That alone could turn a profit for the company well into the future. As could any number of the other discoveries just here at Io.

In the end the decision of when to move on has been with me. I have let us stay here an extra 150 days already. The crew has appreciated this. Nobody wants to cut investigations short. But the mission of the Prophesy is investigation beyond just Io, and even the vicinity of Big Red. It is exploration of the space; anyplace that our fine ship can take us.

News from earth has just arrived that I did not expect. The time has come for us to move on…

End log

The log entry I had just made was hanging in my head.

Originally Posted by TheBigDog

. . . the mission of the Prophesy is investigation beyond just Io, and even the vicinity of Big Red. It is exploration of the space; anyplace that our fine ship can take us.

Exploration and profit that is. After all, the Prophesy is a private effort, and the execution of such a mission does not happen without considerable funding. The financial miracle of the Prophesy took just ten years to happen. It was a mixture of financial sources from private investors, to advertising, to marketing the naming rights, to official sponsorships. We pulled out every trick in the book and invented the other ones that we needed. And in the end through creative corporate three-card-monty I managed to keep total ownership and control of the company to myself, a fact that is not widely known. I have a figurehead back on earth who does all the figurehead things to make it appear that he is running the company. He is actually a childhood friend of mine who says and does all the right things publicly, and has become a media darling.

Trouble has been brewing on earth. Even as we were on our way to Jupiter, and the whole world was exalting in the glory of our mission, politics and people eager to take what they cannot invent or create themselves were making the first noises of their dubious intentions.

In August there was a motion in the United Nations that it was in the best interest of humanity for the Prophesy and her supporting organization to be controlled by the UN, and be used is such a fashion as that body determined. This was justified on the basis that the Prophesy represents such an enormous advantage to any nation state that for the safety of the Prophesy’s mission only the UN could fairly protect and distribute her valuable services. This represented a political power play by the UN to transform themselves further into a functional world government, using the Prophesy as the tool toward those ends. It met with mixed reaction from the member states, and I looked at it as typical international politics that would make great noise and lead to nothing. But the resolution managed to avoid both a vote and a death, and just lingered in backburner debate at the UN.

In January there was the official change of power in the US Congress. The debate in the US was the war, not the Prophesy. It was in January that things began to change. The President announced his plans for a surge of activity in Iraq against the popular opinion of the US and the rest of the world. There was outrage and the political lines were drawn on opposite sides of the debate. And that is the moment that the President found an olive branch to reach across the void, and try and bring everyone back together again. To show that the US was not a rogue state with interests only for itself he made a decision that has changed everything for me about the dream of the Prophesy.

It is time to discuss this new development with my command staff. I have called a meeting with them in the command conference room. One at a time they have come to the con where I am on duty. And one at a time I have sent them up to the conference room without an explanation. The sudden change of events has caught me completely off guard, and for the first time in a long time I do not know how to proceed. When the last commander had come past I took another minute to gather my thoughts.

“Con, I will be in the command conference room. Please don’t disturb unless it is vital.”

I headed to the end of the long room and trotted up the steps to the top level. I might not know what I was going to do next, but I would be damned it I would look like I was not prepared. Energy and confidence were what I was consciously exuding. When I entered the conference room it was abuzz with conversation. Everyone was casually lounged around engaged in the typical banter that happens among commanders when they are in a safe and confidential space. I stepped to the front of the room and was given their undivided attention without having to ask for it. I took a moment to scan their faces, and I began to speak.

“Yesterday in an unreleased letter to the UN Ambassador the President put onto the bargaining table the Prophesy and her supporting organizations. We are protected from such action by the laws of the United States, but the wheels have been put into motion to seize our ship and our mission and turn them over to UN control, with the UN to determine all missions and distribute all profits to member nations.”

“We are protected under the Constitution of the United States from such actions, but that may not help us. This is being framed as a bipartisan gesture of good will to the world on behalf of the United States.”

“This afternoon there was a vote in the UN accepting this gift from the President. Legal actions are underway now to transfer control of our operations. These legal actions are the cooperative efforts of the White House and the Congress. While there is a minority from both parties in our favor, the political fervor is clearly swinging votes the opposite direction. The world is calling for a demonstration of unity and a distancing from what is seen around the world as greed ahead of humanity. Our lawyers are preparing to fight this, but it may not be a fight that can be won in court.”

A couple of the commanders began to speak, but I gestured for them to please hold their words. The shock and outrage was clear on their faces.

“Gentlemen, this is not a good situation. We have enjoyed a great ride. We are modern day heroes. But all of that might disappear very quickly. If we do not cooperate with this you can expect that we are going to be demonized like you have never seen before. There will be investigations into our professional and personal lives, and second guessing of every mission decision we have made. It will soon be evident to the casual news believer that we have never been competent for this mission to begin with. I can almost hear the stampede of scientists who envy the members of this crew fighting for an opportunity to give expert testimony about our massive dysfunction. Like I said, it is going to get ugly. I expect that within a month we are going to be ordered home by our new masters. This has not happened yet, but I see it coming.”

“Before I ask you for your input about how we should handle this, let me give you my opinion on the matter.”

This is where my emotions finally got the better of me.

“Bullshit! The authorities that I trusted to guard my interests and my ideas, your interests and your ideas, those authorities have betrayed us. They are taking from those who can create new things and do new things, and giving to those who can only take. They are taking our dream of the future that we have invested in and gotten the world to invest in with us, and they are turning it into a dream where our continues participation is at the convenience of those who have not ever invested other than to now take away. And I say again, bullshit!”

“But we have one thing in our favor. They have our assets, they have our families, they have our homes, they have our launch facilities, they have our earth-side command facilities, but there is one thing they do not have, and it is the one thing that we have. We gentlemen, have the Prophesy. And I see no reason why we need to turn her over to the UN at any time in the future. We constructed the Prophesy in just five years of launches. Lets see if the new authorities can EVER get a ship launched, even with the entire infrastructure for the venture handed over to them at the point of a gun.”

“I don’t plan on changing our mission one iota. Except that I do not plan on returning to earth until this bullshit has ended, and we do not run the risk of losing our investment to those who are incapable of reproducing it. We continue to do our scientific investigations, and return data to earth as we have promised. But I will not hand this mission over to a conglomerate that will never have the balls to actually accomplish anything, and will rob the profits to be distributed among everyone who never invested their talent and fortune into the idea to begin with. We can sustain ourselves for a very very long time, almost indefinitely. We can continue our work in space until this has blown over, and sense has returned to the earth. Hell, once we get God’s Eye up and running we may find friendlier shores for us to someday call home. We have the Prophesy, and that never has to change until WE say so.”

“I have given you the situation. I have said my peace. Now, I want to hear from you.”

I scanned from face to face ready to listen.

[Pyrotex]

The silence grew thick enough to measure with an old-fashioned pair of calipers. Which I just happened to be carrying in the breast pocket of my silver and navy, mid-evening dinner jacket.

"I agree with Big Dog, it's all bullshit, and we should ignore it. No legislative action is worth more than the ability to enforce it. I dare say, the UN couldn't enforce the Law of Gravity more than a few miles over their heads.

As for our families and friends back home, I hope you remember that several dozen of them are lawyers. A few of them are specialists in space law. One of them has a close friend on the Supreme Court. They can tie this whole shebang up for years, so I say it's a bit premature to worry about it.

If that fails, we return to Earth and stabilize ourselves directly over Washington DC with one Gee of thrust."

I sat down to a rising background of laughter. Everyone in the room was intimately aware of how we produced our thrust.

[Jay-qu]

Phew thank good I didnt have to go first!

Now that Pyro had broken the ice with his idiosyncratic public speaking and humor, it was much easier address the room.

"Im with you all the way BigDog, I have seen this project progress from day one, Ill be damned if I will ever see it fall into the hands of incompetent money-hungry fools"

Little did most of the people in this room know, we still have an ace up our sleeves and it is the ultimate fall-back plan, though I hoped that we never needed to use it, it offered considerable comfort in this situation.

[Mercedes Benzene]

In my mind, everything that BD had just said made perfect sense.
But all I could do was chuckle.
About a half-hour previous to this meeting, I had an unforunate lab accident: the result of which was unintentinonal synthesis of some Bromoform.
Needless to say I was left a little tipsy, and it seems that the condition resulted in uncontrollable bouts of laughter. A few members of the audience eyed me mysteriously.

After Jay finished his sentence, I jumped up from my seat, and loudly mumbled something to the congregation, before falling to the ground and blacking out.

[Pyrotex]

It was a good meeting, but my tolerance for community yap-yaps is inordinately low. I always figure that the meat and core of what is going to be said, is always said in the first 45 minutes. I gave it an hour and a half. Phew! However, I must admit that Mercedes' performance was worth the applause it garnered.

I was headed for ten-forward, but took a wrong turn. Instead of going back, I just kept going. I eventually wandered by the "radio shack", where all the comm comes in and goes out, and heard somebody hollering. I slipped in.

"But, dude! It's like, no way! Go check your freakin numbers again and fix the problem! Like, outa my face, dude!"

I vectored toward the arguing pair and volunteered my services. In short order, the scheduled floorchief told me to go off and train the 'dude' how to fix his silly UFO problem. UFO?

I took the 'dude' by the arm and casually pulled him away from the biggest source of noise in the room. He pointed out his station. Pretty vanilla. Two 28" flat panels, one for databases, searches and such, the other with specialized apps for displaying radio flux from "out there". I asked to show me his 'UFO'.

He pointed to a red pixel in a sea of navy blue pixels and said, "It's not no goddam UFO and mister bigmouth knows it. He just doesn't want it reported on his shift, if'n you know what I mean."

I peered over my platinum framed pince-nez reading glasses and stared at that red pixel while 'dude' filled me in on all the rambling details of how he found it, what happened next, what he did, what the apps said, blah, blah. I grunted appreciatively every 22 seconds. I got him to pull up a Fourier transform app displaying frequency/amplitude discretions over time squared, and twiddled the discriminators, until I was zeroed in on the phantom signal.

"Ya see," whined 'dude', It ain't no natural radio signal, and it's moving with Europa. It's on the moon's edge right now, so if I'm right, the signal should wink out when Europa turns a few more degrees. I grunted. We waited. The signal blinked out. I grunted even more appreciatively.

"Ahh, dude, what's your name?"

"Anthony, but my friends call me Tony."

"Tony, let's keep this between ourselves, shall we. There may be a big reward in this for you, if this is what I think it is."

"Sure. Remember, it's Tony, okay?"

"Right! Check you later, Tony!"

I had surreptitiously piped the critical info to my stateroom monitor, and after several hours of analysis, I came to the following conclusions:

Something or somebody on Europa was sending a radio signal.
The signal contained intelligent information, therefore the sender was intelligent. Probably. MTV sends signals with intel info, but nobody accuses *them* of being intelligent.
The signal was being aimed at the Prophecy, so there was an intentional message. Part of the message, maybe all, was graphical in nature, carried in multiple displays of 53 by 59 pixels.
One of those displays carried a fair representation of the Prophecy.
There was also some phonetic information.

The sender appears to be named "Llanea".

And I'll be damned, but I think it/he/she wants to hitch a ride!!!!!

[ronthepon]

<During the meeting, for god's sake, Pyro>

For a moment, it seemed like I was missing something. But I relaxed when I saw Mercedes collapsing. Someone helped him back to his chair, I didn't bother to look that way.

It was clear. This group would refuse to buckle so easily. had seen this scenario coming for a long time. It however came quite late. Most of them were surprised... perhaps it was my little part in it that prevented my reactions of surprise. Countless messages, well encrypted and containing snatches of the ship's achievements and developments had been sent by me back to my seniors. I never used the somewhat vulgar term 'information leak'. After all, most of it was scientific stuff.

But this was suicide. They could not straight out refuse to cooperate as their current tone suggested. I stood up. I had no idea of how to tell these guys.

"What are you suggesting? Do you realise the magnitude of the trouble that you're bringing down on yourself?"

I realised that I was shouting. So much for staying low profile during the meetings. I took a gulp of air to try and calm my self. Too bad the others had already planted their somewhat hostile eyes on me. I'd have to continue more carefully.

"Look. I know that you're aware of the consequences of this opinion, but I have to warn you all..." My voice trailed off. I had no idea about how I could persuade them.

I tried to use the first idea that cropped up in my mind. I remembered the self control classes I had when I was ten.

"Look. There are a great number of people who are contributing positively to this ship. The working of this ship determines the future of almost all the fresh ... brains that are involved with the project. Do you realise what I'm refering to? Yes, I am reffering to every one else, present outside this room. All of them, working... playing their parts in the ship, so that everything goes smoothly and as brilliantly as it is. They are perhaps the most qualified people for the jobs they are alloted to. Most have been handpicked from all over the home planet."

I eyeballed some of them. They were listening to me. My stomach churned.

"You are prepared to offer resistance to attempts of external control. The consequences of failure in this regard will be serious. Each person associated with the project could be..." My vocabulary failed here. "...screwed for the tiniest bits of incompetent moments, or whatever they get their hands upon."

To keep it clear, I did the quotation marks finger gesture and gave a special emphasis on the word 'they'. But the idea was already clear by now.

"Are you willing to take the risk? The risk of destroying the careers of the large number of members associated with the project? If I'm not wrong, then there are a large number of people here who will consider their participation in this project as the strongpoint in their future... profiles."

I really needed a thesaurus. But my words were getting the effect had hoped for. They were thinking on this. This could work for me.

"At this point - excuse me for saying this - you are almost gambling with their futures. Are you really willing to do this?"

Too bad, the tenseness had returned. But I sat down. Yes, I was perhaps one of the very few who were actually immune to the future effects of this business, but for now it was meant to sound like I was one of the worst affected victims.

[Pyrotex]

I have decided not to attempt any communication with the being on Europa ("Llanea") until discussions with key members of the crew, despite the tremendous urge to do so right now. Better safe than sorry.

I put my calipers away in my MacGyver box, and after due consideration, took out a vintage Sans & Streiffe bamboo sliderule, fully restored of course, in a tooled faux-leather hip case, and a variable nib electronic draftsman's pencil.

I flipped on the comm and dialed it for bridge conference room, playback, double speed, to catch up on anything I might have missed from the big yap-yap. It was getting late, so I changed into black and plum, full-formal silk tuxedo pajamas, with crimson sash and matching full-contact juditso sandals. I strapped on the sliderule and slipped the pencil into the jacket pocket--just as ronthepon got hot and heavy into his speech.

I stopped and listened. I began to burn under the collar. Then I froze.

At first, I reached for the obvious conclusion that RTP was either naive or... or very naive. Then I remembered that this could not be true. Therefore...

...therefore, RTP had something up his (rather out of fashion) sleeve. Something big. Something dangerous. And he was keeping it a secret. For all the wrong reasons. Despite his good intentions, there was another piece of information that *I* had and *he* did not -- that changed everything.

I bolted from the room and headed out into the hallway at a brisk walk.

[Llanea]

Stuck on the station and floating in geosynchronous orbit:

I have attempted to make contact with the unidentified ship, my scanners show that these are humanoid lifeforms, my attempts to make contact have been unsucsessful so far, though i have only tried graphic communication believing this to be mainly universally understood, perhaps they do not understand? My ststion is now out of range and with no power to move from behind the moon i will have to wait almost 38 cycles(minutes) My situation is getting desperate and lifesupport systems have been damages beyond my capabilities to repair, meaning i have no more than a week of air left due to the artificial CO2 scrubbers which are aso at critical. I truly hope that the universal translater(Dr. Who :>) will function or that they will understand my tongue.

M scanners show that somone aboard the ship has picked up the distress signal prior to my loss of communication. Perhaps, one of the humans have taken the matter up with a superior?

38 cycles later:

The ability to communicate with the ship has been regained, though i had to do some bypassing and rewiring, if this attempt is unsucsessful it will eat up all power and i will have 30 Quartz(hours) of life support left, i must take the risk and hope that these beings aren't hostile.
"Mi khan du samareznah, Mi khan du samarezna, zine taras Llanea, persu omren nien"
(attention alien vessel, attention alien vessel, this is Llanea, please render assistance)

At this point i activate the universal translater and hope they understand because i am now down to 29 Quartz...

[Pyrotex]

I was just about to head off to RonThePon's stateroom (funny, but I always think of him as 'Ron, The Pon', as if 'Pon' were some kind of noble title--exactly what is a 'Pon'? short for Pontiff? somehow I doubt that. Pontificator? that's better), but on a hunch, I went to the radio shack.

Tony (the 'dude') and his supervisor were at it again, shouting and shaking fists. Without a word, but with a big smile, I gently grabbed Tony's arm and led him to his work station. I said, "show me". He showed me. I printed out the very recent message from LLanea. The graphics were very understandable. LLanea had left the surface of Europa and was now in an orbit synchronous to Europa's surface. The graphic of a "fuel tank" or "energy reserve" becoming empty was painfully obvious.

There were two graphics showing two configurations of Jovian moon orbits. I took a guess and assumed it was a way of describing a length of time. I whipped out my Sans & Streiffe, my fingers moving so fast, they were a blur. Tony's jaw dropped. If I was right, LLanea was trying to tell us that in... (mmm, divide by 60, move the decimal point, mmm...) 28.3 hours from transmission, he/she/it would be dead.

"Tony, when was this message received? Quick!"

"Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh... exactly 17 minutes ago, mister Pyrotex."

I turned and ran, simultaneously slipping my trusty Sans & Streiffe into its case, executing a perfect "six-gun twirl and slam". Next stop, The Big Dog. We didn't have much time.