His tone sent a shiver through me. Aguella and I exchanged significant looks.
We were keeping station outside the hard-edged, darkened perch. Floating far above our home crystal, well within home air. But all of a sudden I knew we had crossed over a boundary.
“What’s out there?” I asked Lackofa.
He shook his head slowly. “We don’t know for sure. But two years ago a vessel of unknown origin popped out of Z-space just a million miles from us and lit up our orbital sensors. The drop-pods are released only once every six months as you know, to prolong the life of the sensors. But by good luck we discovered the ship just two months after it emerged. We sent a drone out to intercept and survey. The drone never returned. Two months later we got the answer from another sensor’s drop-pod. The alien vessel had fired on our drone and destroyed it using some sort of high-energy beam weapon. There were no life signs aboard the ship. It had been programmed to defend itself, I suppose. We modified a drone with a defensive force field and faster engine and sent it back to intercept the alien vessel again.
“This time we got lucky. The alien craft fired at the drone but before it could adjust to the defensive system, the drone had glue-docked to the alien vessel and was draining its computer of data.
“Just one problem: As the drone detached for reentry, the vessel fired again and damaged the drone. We recovered it but were only able to save a part of the data.”
“How much do we know?” Aguella demanded.
Lackofa hesitated. Then, “You two understand this clearly, I hope: None of this ever becomes known to the people at large. I mean that on penalty of closure.” He repeated it slowly, deliberately. “On penalty of closure.”
That rocked me. Closure? For revealing a secret? They would undock me? Cut me off to free fly till I died of starvation and loneliness and finally augered into the lava fields below?
“Every alien race we’ve encountered has been benign,” Lackofa said. “But this race, the race that built this ghost ship, was not. The evidence is that they respond with extreme violence to even the slightest provocation. Extreme violence. They call themselves Capasins. Since the ship emerged from the direction of Quadrant Three, we assume the Capasin planet is there. The mission of the MCQ3 is to contact this race and attempt to reach terms of peace.”
“What if these Capasins are not interested in peace?” Aguella asked.
Lackofa smirked. “Then we’ll hope to get home with enough information to allow us to meet the challenge. One thing we know: The Capasins don’t know we exist. If we meet them we will keep our location strictly secret. Sometimes,” he added thoughtfully, “the things that seem to be problems are actually blessings in disguise.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Generation 9561’s home planet has such low background radiation that they communicate regularly through transmission and reception of radio waves. Those waves propagate, you know.” He waved his hand vaguely skyward. “Generational waves spreading endlessly through space. Who knows who will receive and perhaps comprehend those transmissions? Who knows what attention the Generationals may already have attracted. We, on the other hand, remain invisible to the galaxy. Maybe not such a bad thing.”
Within three weeks I knew the actual MCQ3 as well as I knew the sim. I knew every mast, every spar, every perch, every backup system. I even knew the engines, as well as anyone can know a Z-space engine.
I had met many more crew members, essential and non. I’d even been introduced to one of the three Wise Ones who would be commanding. He was a grim oldster who managed to grunt indifferently at me before going back to his work.
I spent every free flight on the vessel. And my free-flight time had been tripled. (We were days away from launch and I’d already been discounted as a lift factor.)
I had very little time for gaming and I’m afraid that Inidar resented that. Our old relationship was strained now. Not just because I couldn’t play, but because of why I couldn’t play.
We kept exchanging memms, talking about scheduling games, but they never happened.
Instead, I saw a lot of Aguella. I kept waiting for her to mone me again, but to my great relief it never happened. Very relieved.
Although I kind of wondered why she didn’t. Had I done something wrong? Was it the way I’d reacted? Basically like a panicky juvie?
Didn’t matter. There was no place for that kind of thing on a vital and dangerous deep-space mission.
Just would have liked to know why, that’s all. And I got a hint as the two of us were assisting in the installation of the last few docks.
It was the two of us, and a female with the chosen name of Jicklet. Jicklet was essential crew — fifth technician. She knew what she was doing but unlike lots of people who are experts, she wasn’t impatient with our relative stupidity.
“It’s the whole point of nonessential crew,” she explained, tightening a collar down till the adhesive oozed. “You’re here to learn a little of everything. That way we’ll always have backup. Okay, now you, Toomik, use the scrape-saw to slice off the excess glue.”
“It’s Toomin.”
“Yeah, whatever you say, Toomid. Careful. Leave a bead.”
I sliced the already half-dry adhesive, carefully leaving an eighth-inch bead. I was less successful at cupping the curling excess into the slop pit.
“You have to be careful not to drop any,” Jicklet said. “We’re right above the engines. You don’t want to be down there in an en-suit burning it off the pods. There you go. Good work. Now polish it down and
