We knew we would not be able to keep the fantasists in their seats. It would be like trying to coral wild mustangs without a high fence. They would have to be lassoed and harnessed one at a time. At least I had Captain Smith to help. He was still pretty looped but as long as he stayed close, he was manageable. We went to the science lab, ran the medical database, and found the strongest sedative in ship’s stores. The Captain carried the water bottle.
Paris was the easiest. He was still hiding in his box. I waited outside, not bothering to try to talk to him, and once he knew we were floating nearby he began to get nervous. His false partition began to bump around a bit. RJ dared to ease it aside and look in. The cardboard was quickly yanked back in place. RJ persisted. He pulled it back again, and after a moment, Paris’ face peered out the crack.
“Paris, take this. It’ll make him go away. That’s an order from your Captain.”
Withdrawn in shadow he gave us a dubious, fearful stare. He eyed me with complete distrust, but to my surprise snatched the pill rudely from RJ, popped it in his mouth, and accepted the water. To my relief, it was fast acting.
And that was one. As RJ strapped Paris’ semiconscious form into a seat, I took a moment to switch hell off the wall displays. From there it became a treasure hunt for crew. One by one we tracked them down and one way or another got the pill into them. With each success we hauled them to a jump seat where they were carefully strapped in and checked over. Fearing she was still naked, I had to override Erin’s sleeper cell door. She was inside wearing jeans, a white twill blouse, and a makeshift beauty pageant crown made from paper with pieces of a necklace glued to it. She hung one hand out expecting a bow and kiss, and then allowed us to tow her along as she looked left and right, chin up, nodding and greeting invisible admirers and subjects along the way.
Wilson was the last. He was still deep within the service module crawlspace. I had forgotten him during the waveguide work. RJ could not be left alone, so I begged him along and we followed the snoring. Wilson was at the very end of it. We coaxed him into taking the pill before he was fully awake. He had no idea what he was doing, and went right back to sleep, but even in zero-G, dragging him back by his feet quickly became a task. Clothing kept catching on things. His shoulders were too broad. There was cursing and occasional scrapes and bumps in the process.
With RJ sitting merrily in the copilot seat, I hurried through the pre-jump checklist, saying a prayer of thanks that all systems read nominal. It was one of those occasions where you are reminded you do not give thanks often enough. This time thank-you-God was clearly called for. All of the service module warning lights had extinguished. On command, the power systems lit up and the phase bar graphs all showed aligned systems. RJ was beginning to look embarrassed and humiliated. With a five-second countdown, the flight management system asked for light speed and we felt ourselves sink blissfully back into our seats as the stellar drives formed their fields and pushed us to light.
The medical database said sleep would last for approximately eight to ten hours. RJ became sullen. I could see the gears turning in his head as he tried to compartmentalize what was happening and mitigate the issues one at a time.
“You okay?”
“I’m not Captain, am I?”
“Nobody is. I’m just Mission Commander. The Captain designation is usually reserved for larger spacecraft, or special envoys.”
“Well shit, then.”
“That’s what we’ve just been through.”
“Did I stalemate you in chess?”
“Yep. That really happened.”
“Well there, then.”
“I am duly put in my place.”
“Still, crap.”
“You may be forgetting something.”
“What’s that?”
“You really did save the ship.”
“Don’t be patronizing.”
“I’m not. Even under the influence of the void, your willpower to save the ship overcame everything else. Could I have aligned that wave guide alone?”
“No.”
“So who, even under the delusions of the void, crawled into the service module and aligned that wave guide, and then reassembled everything so that we could escape?”
He didn’t answer but I could see some color flushing back into his face. He unbuckled and pushed up from his seat.
“Where you going?”
“To check on the others and use the loo.”
“I could use some coffee.”
“Okay, but remember your place, Ensign.”
They began to wake up one at a time. The majority of the void effects had worn off. It was like watching dazed passengers emerge from a train wreck. There was some bargain basement depression and some skyscraper embarrassment. Erin went immediately to her sleeper cell and would not come out. Apparently, they all remembered everything. Paris hurriedly folded up his cardboard cubicle and stowed it somewhere hoping it would quickly be forgotten so his previous illusion of grandeur could again take its rightful place.
Wilson was just fine, having slept through the entire crisis. Danica needed another shower. She had won three title bouts before being sedated into a jump seat. Shelly just looked bewildered.
Seven more days in the void was enough time to dim the edges of memory so that things began to settle into routine again, although the absurdity that had plagued us remained in the back of everyone’s mind. On the morning of the eighth day, Shelly’s voice came on the intercom from the pilot’s seat and exclaimed, “Hey everyone, there are stars ahead!” It caused a mad rush to the forward airlock where eyes high and low struggled to focus through the haze to see the foggy specs of light in the distance. There was an immediate uplifting throughout the ship, as though a secret fear that there would never be stars again finally had been extinguished.
As the celebration around the flight deck began to subside, I quietly asked RJ and Wilson to scan for systems along our route. In less than ten minutes they came back with a doozie. A twin star with satellites too numerous to count not far to starboard. Shelly and Danica both gave me raised eyebrows when I asked for the deviation, but they were more than happy to program it.
We dropped out close enough to see the twin suns. The specs of lights from their satellites were so plentiful and varied they looked like Christmas decorations. A search for class M planets quickly came up with three. We chose the one with the most blue and green. A short jump was required. The mood became quiet anticipation as we strapped back in. The pulse from the stellar drives was so brief it was over before it began. Once again Danica jumped us a bit too close, but I let it go. The view was immediately spectacular, no matter which portal you chose. There wasn’t just one planet nearby, there were three, one sand-colored ball slightly smaller than our target, and one larger, its surface concealed by orange and white swirling cloud cover. We moved into a high orbit around the blue and green and the systems guys went to work. The planet seemed to have no oceans. It was heavily covered in green but with large cuts of wide, blue rivers. There were white-capped mountain ranges and canyons.
RJ seemed a little over zealous. “It’s safe, Adrian. About 80 percent Earth’s gravity, fairly rich oxygen atmosphere. Water and vegetation. We could stock up.”
“How can you be so sure it’s safe?”
“There is wildlife. Prey animals of some type. Herds of them. Some species appear to be grazing openly. If there were too many predators, they wouldn’t be doing that. There are plenty of open areas for landing.”
“Anything else?”
“No primates of any kind that I’ve seen.”
“Give Danica your best coordinates. Make it somewhere we can hover and take on water. Continue scanning all the way down. If there’s the slightest sign of trouble call out abort. Got it?”
“Got it.”
It didn’t take him long. Everyone nervously strapped back in. With the navigation computer programmed, Danica let us down through the clean atmosphere and then ma
de a slow spin around to backtrack to RJ’s coordinates.
We lowered until we were above rushing water. Fresh water processing systems took a few minutes to give the green light, then evaporator systems kicked in and began sucking up the mist. During the wait, RJ ran low-level scans and once again declared the area safe. When our processing tanks were full, Danica manually side-slipped us to a grassy clearing and let the ship settle on its gears.
Revisiting gravity did not quell the excitement. Once again we stationed Wilson with a weapon by the open forward airlock door. As Danica and Shelly went through their checklists, RJ, Erin, and I stepped down into the green with our own weapons drawn. The place was a tangled, unkempt garden, but it was beautiful. Twin orange suns hung in a blue-white sky. Behind us the two neighboring planets were bright enough to be seen through the haze. We were surrounded by a forest of tall trees that had red flowers draped over them. The river to our right was close enough that the sound of it filled the air. A clearing in the forest ahead opened to a wide plain. A herd of animals was grazing there. They resembled deer with white patches on their brown coats. We could faintly smell them in the warm breeze. They seemed disinterested in our visit.
With Danica and Shelly still at the controls, we let the Griffin idle at ready for half an hour. Our hand scanners were tied into the ship’s scanners. It gave us a 360-degree warning of any biology that might try to approach. There was nothing. If there were predators, our landing had apparently frightened them away.
RJ and I began short recon trips. The more we looked, the less threatening the place seemed. Finally satisfied, we let the Griffin wind down and declared the area secured. Wilson and Paris emerged, and with checklists complete, Danica and Shelly followed.
We switched to the gravity medication regiment. In about two hours select neural impulses were being blocked and the correct neurology substituted to give us a chemical approximation of normality. There was strange fruit that was quickly approved in the science lab; a banana-shaped apple that you could peel, and a pear shaped tangerine that did not need to be peeled. RJ was in his element. He had a fire pit dug in the first hour and went about dragging porous white stones from the river to put around it. We explored and photographed in teams of two, taking samples of plant species as we went. Whatever wildlife had been close seemed to be staying away.
Toward the end of the day, RJ’s fire was blazing. People were experimenting with food stores to see which could be cooked on an open fire and which could not. Later, someone found marshmallows and there was whooping and hollering and a race to cut sticks quickly followed by the flaming marshmallow and burned tongue ceremony. It was the most social I had ever seen Paris. Whether it was the long spell of zero-G or the phantom man in the black cloak, something had softened him. He joined in around the fire with his marshmallow on a stick, though in keeping with his usual prudence had attached a piece of wire to the end of it as a caliper to indicate the exact distance from the fire a marshmallow should be.
We sat around the fire in long periods of silence, staring at the flames, our minds finally purged of all things despondent. RJ held a marshmallow up to his face and inspected it. He spoke without looking away. “The only thing this campfire is lacking is a guitar and harmonica. I’ll bet with all the expensive talent sitting around here, not one of us plays a darn thing.”
It worried me. “Oh boy. Look out. Here he goes.”
To everyone’s amazement, Paris answered. “If you must know, I was a concert pianist in high school, driven there at the whim of my mother who, to my great misfortune, happened to be a music teacher.”
Everyone stared in disbelief that Paris had offered something about himself.
Erin said, “I’ll bet none of us are even married, are we?”
Danica, who had been testing the combustion limits of marshmallows, blew out the flaming black one on her stick. “We’re all too smart for that.”
Erin persisted. “How can it be that not one of us is married?”
RJ smirked. “Because we wouldn’t have signed on if we were?”
“That’s not true. Some people would give anything to get away from their spouse,” said Danica.
Erin continued, “Hasn’t anyone here been married even a little?”
Wilson laughed. “The little bit part doesn’t work there, honey. It’s like being pregnant. Either you are or you aren’t. There’s no halfway.”
Once again, Paris’ surprised us. He spoke with a distant tone. “I was, once…”
Everyone looked on in disbelief.
“What happened?” asked Erin.
“She was a doctor, but she passed away.” He stared deeply into the fire. “That’s one mistake I won’t ever repeat.”
Everyone waited for more. Paris wasn’t offering. Wilson’s inevitable comic ineptness kicked in. “So Shelly, Danica tells me you really know how to make the shit fly?”
There was another pregnant pause. Shelly glared at him. “That’s it, Wilson. You’re on probation.”
Wilson stuttered, “But I just got off probation.”
Laughter erupted.
Erin asked, “Okay then, what about you, Wilson? How come a hunk like you isn’t married?”
Somewhere in the back of my mind I had the feeling Erin had been sneaking around to that question from the beginning. Wilson slugged back the last of whatever he was drinking, making me wonder exactly what it was. He held up his empty cup in a lame salute. “Three times I suckered them all the way to the ring, but then they all smartened up and gave it back.”
Danica said, “I’m not afraid of marriage. I’d do it in a heartbeat as long as it was someone who could keep up, shut up, give it to me good in the ring, not want children, and loved dogs.”
RJ raised his cup to his lips. “Well, that narrows it down.”
Shelly laughed. “Give it to you good in the ring, Danica?”
“You know what I mean.”
“And you, Adrian? Never a band on the left hand?”
RJ ran interference for me. “Too much of a maverick. He’s a desperado. You’re wasting your time with that one.”
“That’s another thing. Adrian, I can’t imagine someone like you signing on for a mission like this. What’s the deal?”
“It was a debt I owed a friend. That’s all.”
“Must’ve been a damn big debt.”
Wilson cut in. “So Adrian, one more leg and the hunt begins. Any guess what we’ll find?”
“You all pretty much have the whole story. The lost ship was a Nasebian Object Repository. At least that’s the closest description of it we have. Just like us they explore the galaxy and gather knowledge, except they do it in a lot bigger way. We will begin searching the cold trail using the signatures and footprints they’ve given us plus any other evidence we can find. Hopefully, we might figure out what happened to that ship and pilot.”
Shelly interrupted. “Even after two thousand years? And isn’t that a little weird? This deep a mission and they only had one pilot on board? I don’t get that.”
“It’s the way they like it. They prefer solitude, even from each other. Depending on what we find or don’t find, phase two is to locate what they are calling the Udjat. They can’t seem to explain what it is, or even what it looks like, but we have hand scanner setups that supposedly are guaranteed to identify it. They are more concerned about the Udjat than they are about the missing ship and pilot. So the next time we drop out of light we’ll begin looking for clues. We’ll do a quick mapping of space, scans, and decide where to begin.”
Wilson asked, “Again, why don’t they come here and look for themselves?”
“We only know they won’t enter this area of space for reasons they cannot or will not discuss. They consider us the best suited for it.”
Wilson wrinkled his brow and gestured with one hand. “Another thing I don’t get. If these Nasebians are so incredibly advanced, can’t they just use their technology to solve everything?”
 
; “Uh-oh.”
RJ’s head snapped up to attention. He raised one finger. “Let me tell you about your so-called omnipotent technology, my good friend.”
Someone let out a groan. Shelly rose to her feet. “I need to take a quick look at those tank pressures.”
Danica jumped up. “I’ll go with you.”
Erin stood and brushed herself off. “It’s about time for my journal entry.”
Paris just stood and left.
Wilson, RJ and I looked at each other. Wilson said, “If you two will excuse me, I need to visit the you-know-where.”
RJ made humph sound and threw a stick on the fire. He glanced at me and then poked at the flames. “Lucky for them I’m not still captain.”
Despite the gracious welcome given us by the planet, we kept one person on watch all night in three-hour shifts. No one minded. RJ slept in a makeshift sleeping bag by the fire. The rest of us ignored his sissy, city-slicker remarks and took to our temperature-controlled sleeper cells with video, refrigerator, and cushioned bedding.
At breakfast, there was a unanimous vote to stay another day. After extensive monitoring and scanning Erin, Shelly, and Danica ended up swimming in the river in makeshift suits that did not provide the usual detail coverage of normal swimwear. Those of us representing the male half of the species did not take to the water, though some of us seemed to keep finding reasons to pass by there.
Another quiet night around the campfire brought a morning of stowing for departure. RJ had a faraway look in his eye as if he was considering staying. The others went about their duties in quiet reflection.
I downloaded my unusually long flight log to RJ for transmittal. In it, I had designated our adopted planet as CRJS-a. I chose -a because it was number one in a tri-planet orbit. CRJS was for Captain RJ Smith. To my surprise, he didn’t pick up on it.
With our water tanks full and fresh oxygen replenishing our environmental systems, we set up a marker beacon and relay station, said a silent thank-you to CRJS-a, and lifted off.
Chapter 33