Persphone: First Contact

By William Rolston

Alien encounter story written from a Christian world view and influenced by the classic science fiction of the 20th Century.

A survey ship exploring Intersections between regions of space discovers that alien ships are searching the same set of Intersections. The crew, and all of humanity behind them, must find a way to make a place for the human race in a galaxy already occupied by a number of more technologically-advanced races.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781483592978

William Rolston

William Rolston studied physics and history, and afterwards has worked in aerospace, primarily satellite orbit determination and satellite communications. He currently lives on Florida's space coast with his wife and mother-in-law. He is usually waiting to see a rocket launch, or consuming an unhealthy amount of 50's sci-fi and hamburgers.

Book preview

X

I

Stories should start at the beginning.  But opinions differ as to what the beginning of any story really is.  Some would claim that the nature of the God who created all things is really the beginning of any story.  Others would say The Beginning was the creation of the Universe.  A third set would claim that our stories begin with the Fall of the First Person, and the subsequent introduction of evil across the galaxy.  A narrower view would say that any story about space travel should begin with L’Terr’s first discovery of the Intersections that allowed for movement between solar systems.  Since Terrans are involved, many would move The Beginning all the way out to the first Terran travel from the system of the Alpha world of Terra to a new planetary system.  The most restrictive beginning, the one specific to only this story, would be the third day Stephen Hunter had failed to fix the recurring software bug in the detection computer aboard the starship Persephone.

For the last three days, Hunter had been unable to track down the software failure that was causing false warnings to be displayed on the search computer.  The long range scans were being ruined by occasional bursts of light that would appear and disappear on the screen.  There was no pattern to the behavior, and all the diagnostic software kept reporting that the software was running fine.  Hunter would have written the whole thing off as a one-time glitch, but it had occurred four times in the last four days.  He verified that the problems couldn’t be reproduced in the test program, and wrote up his report that the whole thing should be ignored until the ship went back for its 6-month refit on-planet.  His captain, a bitter woman who found Stephen to be a useless waste of space, refused the report, and told him to fix the bug before his next sleep shift. 

Stephen had had the usual physics and astrodynamics classes, and like everyone else, had forgotten almost everything within a year or so.  His job dealt with software development, and software repair.  If asked, he could probably recite the usual description of how it had been postulated that incomplete dimensional expansion could form joint regions of space.  He could describe in rough terms how a chunk of space therefore existed in multiple places simultaneously, and how a ship small enough to fit completely inside the Intersection could fly into the joint space from one place and exit in another.  Although he could recite the words, he didn’t really remember the details or their importance.  He didn’t need to worry about dimensions for his job; he needed to be able to write and run software, and find out why on-board systems like the detection computer had problems.

His three days of work had not gone unnoticed by his friends.  Stephen had been part of the group request for a retro movie week, but had now missed both It Came to Mars and Space Serves Death Cold.  His failed attempts to find the problem were interrupted by a call from a fellow retro fanatic from the Search team.  The wall screen was filled with Darron Mason.  After a long description of how he was working on something that couldn’t be solved, because there was no problem, and the captain wouldn’t listen, Stephen started talking about all the things he had been trying in the past three days.  Darron listened to all the software jargon he didn’t understand, and threw in a comment about the one thing he recognized in the displays behind Stephen. 

So you think the software glitches are connected with the Intersections? he asked.

No, the flashes look random.  We aren’t going through any holes or anything.  As soon as he had said the sentence, Stephen recognized his dreadful mistake.  Experienced crewmen knew to never say Hole to one of the Physicists. If the entire Intersections not Holes speech was triggered, the real experts could listen to the entire ten minute talk, nod at all the right times, look very serious and interested, and spend the entire time deciding whether Waffles or Pancakes were the better breakfast food.  If he had to get another lecture about Intersections, or rather the same lecture yet again, he would have preferred to have the lecture from It Came to Mars when the station captain told the new recruit how the alien had reached Mars – ‘The holes are different spots that are in two places at the same time. The Hole is here, and it is also in a different solar system, or galaxy.  It is sort of like how an elevator shaft is on every floor of the building at the same time. If you can fit in the elevator and the doors will shut, you can walk in on one level and walk out on a completely different floor.’

They aren’t Holes, they are Intersections. Darron said automatically.  There is no such thing as a hole in space.  An Intersection is the set of points which simultaneously exists in multiple sets of points in disassociated regions of space.  It is called an Intersection, of course, because of the terminology of basic set definitions.  These joint regions are the opposite of holes – they are where two sections of space, often light-years apart, are actually the same location … Stephen set his face to ‘serious and listening’, and nodded.  It was once believed that the dimensional expansion after the Big Bang was uniform and linear. But it is now known that the expansion was irregular, nonlinear, and incomplete. Points, even small regions of space, are connected to the locations around them as the locations expand apart, and are at the same time, still unseparated from other Points that are connected to locations expanding in a completely different direction… A long time later, Stephen tried to come back to the present when the last sentence was off-script.  He asked Darron to repeat the question.

So, why do you have the chart with the Intersections if it isn’t connected to the bug? repeated Darron.

Stephen looked back to the chart on a screen behind him.  Those aren’t Intersections, those are the four failures – I plotted the time and location of the bright spots to see if they were connected to specific times, like operator shift changes, or specific directions, maybe from a faulty sensor.  But they aren’t.  There isn’t any pattern at all. Darron’s face on the display looked a bit confused, then suspicious, then confused again.  He asked again what the original problem had been.

The detection computer keeps showing a big e-m spike that flashes up and then disappears.  Messages show up all over about changes in light intensity, and it drives the operators nuts.  They have to clear everything out and reset the registers for the light pulse detectors.  But there isn’t anything there, and the bright spot appears and is gone.  Like I was saying, none of the diagnostics shows anything wrong with the computer, or the detectors.  And I can’t…   Stephen trailed off as he saw Darron’s face had gone completely blank; he was staring at the chart behind Stephen.  Stephen waited a few minutes, then slowly waved his hand back and forth in front of the chart until he saw Darron refocus.  Darron looked at Stephen, and turned off the monitor. 

Stephen decided that it was once again time to disobey the Captain’s orders and go to bed.  Maybe he could understand the problem, and his friends, better after some sleep.  He was just shutting things down when Darron walked into the lab.  Darron didn’t even say hello.  He just asked Stephen to repeat everything about the failure.  Stephen was a little worried at how focused Darron seemed on the entire description.  Darron then demanded Stephen bring up every piece of information about the flashes – recorded frequencies, intensities, durations, variability, times – everything.  Stephen started to call up all the data and looked back at his bizarre friend.  Darron was flying through the data, checking off information.  He looked up at Stephen, and his face had gone white. 

That is your chart of the failures, not a chart of the Intersections? Darron demanded.  Stephen assured him that the chart, and the failures, had nothing to do with Intersections. 

Darron turned to the monitor with the failure chart displayed.  Computer, access current local Intersection map, authority Darron Mason.  Display identified Intersections on current graph, same axis definition. The monitor flashed and a second display overlaid Stephen’s chart.  It showed 17 identified Intersections – the local Intersection field Persephone was currently mapping.  Four of the discovered Intersections fell exactly on the four locations from which the light pulses had been displayed. 

Darron turned back to Stephen.  You know that the Intersections have different gravity profiles than normal space.  They are close to the mass in both regions, not just the mass on one side.  That’s how we find them – we send out swathes of light, and have detectors all the way out beyond the Intersection field.  The detectors send back the received light to the ship.  The detection computer looks for any slight variation in the path of the signal, indicating a gravity disturbance, or a slight variation in the strength of the signal, indicating that some of the light has gone through the Intersection to the other side.  If you were on the other side, looking at the same Intersection, you would see a brief flash of light as part of our pulse came through, then nothing. 

Stephen looked at Darron for a moment, then said slowly, So these aren’t software bugs.  We are seeing the same thing someone would see if they were on the other side watching us search for Intersections.

Darron pointed at the records of the light pulses. "Someone is on the other side, looking for the field just like we are.  But the frequencies used are different from ours, and different from any survey ship I have ever heard of.  And that pulse is much larger than anything we could use for scanning.  And either there are more than one of them, or they had to accelerate at 6-g for a day to send out the third pulse you recorded, and the fourth just nine hours later.  The best Persephone can manage is 3.2-g, and we can only do that for a few hours.  We are here looking for ways to get further out into space.  Someone, or some-thing, is out there, looking for ways to get further in."

Persephone ran on the usual 24-hour, 3-shift schedule maintained by almost all starships. It was easiest to set schedules similar to the familiar 24-hour schedules and shift changes from Earth.  Night was determined by when the crew decided to power down and sleep, and Day was determined by when the crew powered things back up again, and showed up for the first shift.  The equipment ran continuously; most analysis was performed on the first shift, when the majority of the crew was awake and able to coordinate as needed.  Third shift had the fewest alert crewmen – mainly operators watching the equipment as it ran along on its own – so the captain and almost the entire crew were asleep when Stephen and Darron requested entrance to the captain’s quarters at two in the morning, local Persephone time.  After a minute, they heard the captain’s voice telling them to come inside. 

Stephen couldn’t help looking around a bit as they entered.  He hadn’t been inside the captain’s quarters since he was assigned to the ship two years previously.  When Stephen had first joined, Acting Captain Adams had invited all of the new crewmembers to dinner in her quarters to welcome them aboard.  He hadn’t been invited back since.  The room looked normal before, and looked almost empty now.  The viewscreen used to display two people he had assumed were her husband and son; now the viewscreen was blank.  There had been the usual scattering of pictures and trinkets; now the room had printouts, several mobile displays, and nothing else but some clothes on the floor. The captain looked much older and grayer than the not-yet-promoted woman from two years ago.  Captain Adams was fully dressed – she had learned long ago that the fastest way to cause a problem on board was to go to bed relaxed and comfortable.  Captain Adams had the pained and disgusted look of someone who has just been woken from a deep sleep.  She squinted at the two annoyances, and said simply, Well?

Stephen and Darron looked at each other for a second, then Stephen answered, It isn’t a software bug.

The Captain looked at Stephen with resignation and disgust.  At least that is a straight answer – something I rarely get from you.  Two-thirds of all the problems you are assigned you never fix – you claim they aren’t really problems, or they can’t be solved.  So you now you have to wake me up in the middle of the night to tell me so?

Darron said, The recorded light bursts are real.  Coming out of the Intersections.

Captain Adams was coming awake enough to look carefully at the faces of her two crewmen.  Come in and tell me what’s up. She motioned to the table, and sank into a chair on the other side.  Darron summarized the original problem, the locations of the lights, and the probable cause.  Captain Adams listened to the entire story in silence.  When he finished the report, Captain Adams yawned, lowered her head, and was silent for several minutes.  Stephen and Darron looked awkwardly at each other and waited, each wondering if the Captain had fallen asleep.  After what seemed to them like an eternity, Captain Adams looked up, wide-awake.  Is it possible that we have found a sort of circle of Intersections?  That the other side of the Intersection field is actually back at our home system itself?  If there were established stations on the other side, they might use different frequencies, and be able to utilize much greater light intensity than we do.

I don’t believe so, sir.  If there was a system on the other side, we would have detected the gravity much faster.  The other side is almost certainly a region of empty space, just like this side.  And the Earth system is pretty well mapped.  It is possible that someone is still looking for Intersections, but it is doubtful.  The light also wouldn’t be coming and going.  This looks like someone, or many someones, moving across the field.

Captain Adams nodded in agreement.  The three colony systems have some capability to produce their own vessels, and they aren’t as fully cooperative with the Earth Space Command as many of us would like.  Could one of the independent fleets be searching the same place we are?

I don’t believe so, sir. The light intensity would require a bigger ship than I have ever heard of an independent being able to build.  And every ship we have uses the same frequency to search with.  To use something different, they would have to build all new equipment, instead of just using something off-the-shelf.

Captain Adams nodded in agreement.  So if these readings are correct, there is something, probably alien, probably far more advanced than us, right on the other side of those holes.

Darron’s mouth automatically opened at the word holes.  Darron’s brain, uncharacteristically connected to reality and common sense at the moment, realized he was about to lecture his commanding officer and snapped his mouth back shut.

Captain Adams looked seriously at Stephen.  If we start reporting about aliens, we have to be right.  If we send out a false alarm, the end of all our careers will be the least of the Fleet’s worries.  Are you Absolutely Sure the readings are real?  That there really is no failure of any type with the software?

Stephen met her gaze for a moment, then answered, The software is working properly.  The data can be trusted.

Captain Adams kept focused on Stephen.  We are betting everything on this data, and once we start taking action, there is no going back.  I ask again, are you Absolutely Sure?

Yes.

The ghost of a smile, and a brief look of respect crossed the captain’s face.  She was silent again for several minutes, then continued. Well done, the both of you.  If they have been there for a long time already, I don’t think they will attack in the next few hours.  Get some sleep.  This stays between us.  Tomorrow, I want you both to go back over every piece of data we have captured from the field, and see if there is any indication of similar readings in the past.  Dismissed.  Stephen and Darron saluted, and stepped out of the cabin.  They looked at each other, muttered some random observations about the cabin, about the interview, about movies Stephen had missed, and about how late it was, and then separated to their cabins. 

Darron’s scream woke him; he found himself sitting half-up on his bunk, with the visions of the alien attack still in his mind.  He shook his head, and rubbed his eyes, partly because he was still exhausted, and partly because that assured him that his eyes were still there – they really hadn’t been ripped out by the alien’s tentacles.  Sitting up in bed, Darron solemnly promised himself that he would never, ever again watch Space Serves Death Cold the night before probably discovering the first alien species ever detected by Mankind.  He started touched the wall as he laid back down, and sat back up again with a jerk. The wall had been vibrating. Built into the wall of the ship were the angular-to-linear converters, angulins, that pushed the ship through space, and that powered all of the onboard ship systems. The angulin was a converter attached to a huge, spinning slab of material so dense it weighed about as much as a 10-story building. When the ship had left Loren Station, all of the angulins had been charged up so that they were spinning as fast as possible.  Anchors held the angulins in place inside the hull of the vehicle. When the converter was activated, the spinning angulin slowed down slightly, and started moving straight forward. Because it was anchored into the hull of the ship, the entire ship was pulled forward with it. This caused the ship hull to be stressed; the Persephone had to spend a full 6 months having the hull repaired after her 6-month survey. If the anchors came loose, an unbalanced angulin could start tearing the ship apart. Darron had a brief moment of panic before realizing that the wall had not been rocking back and forth, his hand had been. Darron hadn’t been able to sleep until about four o’clock, and it was only seven o’clock when he had woken.  He decided it was hopeless to try and get back to sleep, and got ready for the day.  After a few minutes, he headed out to the mess hall for breakfast.

The trip to the mess hall was only about 40 feet – since a starship had to fit completely inside an Intersection to be able to emerge in a different location than the one from which it entered, space was always the greatest restriction on any ship design.  When crossing through an Intersection, Persephone was folded into a ball only 200 foot across.  Once through, wings extended out which held communications equipment and detection devices. The front of the ship would pull out from the ball, and the rear launching bay would extend back.  The center of the ship would unfold into the living quarters and extra storage for the crew.  During jumps, most ship systems were disabled; whenever possible, equipment would be broken down and carefully arranged in close-packed storage.  The human crew could not be broken down, but they could be stored in rows of bunks 15 inches tall, 4 foot wide, and 7 foot long.  Properly stacked, rows of bunks could contain the entire 120 person crew in two storage compartments.  The crew was the last thing to be stored away before the jump, but stacking everyone up took time, and crossing the Intersection itself took time.  The ship had to be entirely contained within the Intersection to have a chance of exiting into a different region of space.  Once inside and moving back out, it was random whether the ship would exit back into the region from which it came or into the new region of space it was trying to reach.  If the Intersection was exited back into the region of space you started from, there was no choice but to come back around and try the whole process over again.  Each time, the exact alignment of the ship with the Intersection had to be performed, and if the ship and the Intersection were very close to the same size, this itself could be a long process.  Depending on how many times the ship had to enter and exit the Intersection to happen to come out on the other side, the crew might spend several hours in storage.  The lowest-ranking personnel were the unfortunate ones packed first and unpacked last.  Emergency personnel packed themselves in last in case they had to respond during a crossing; the lucky few actually involved in the crossing itself got to sit in real chairs at their workstations on the uncompressed bridge. 

Claustrophobia could take hold rapidly with everyone packed in tight.  Many crewmen attached earphones and tried to pretend to sleep the entire time.  Some responded by going completely quiet and trying to wish the whole situation over, and many responded to the compression by talking to everyone in the compartment.  Being packed in for crossing had other dangers as well. Before the first crossing of the trip out to their current survey, Susan Underwood – a normally-rational crewman - had been so thoughtless as to make the double mistakes of drinking coffee and then forgetting to use the restroom before Crossing.  It had been a very tight fit for the ship, so aligning the ship in the Intersection took significant time.  The first try failed – the ship exited back where it started in the solar system containing Loren Station.  As the bridge crew were lining things up for a second try, Susan’s muttered curses on the slow bridge crew and pleas that this crossing would succeed were audible to the crewmen packed around her.  As successive crossings failed, her louder and louder comments about the bridge crew were drowned out by the louder and louder snickering.  By the fourth attempt, the entire compartment was laughing, with the loud prayers of the crewman beneath her leading the rest on.  It was believed to be the only time that people had actually wanted to have a crossing fail, just so they could listen to Susan’s complaints go even higher.  Most of the time nothing much happened on a starship, so Susan’s distress was told and retold to the crewmen who had been packed in the other compartment, and Susan received endless ribbing for months.

Darron walked the 40 feet, and everything around him seemed like a dream.  The people passing by looked like aliens themselves – it was as if he had never really focused on his shipmates before, and was seeing them now for the first time, through an alien’s eyes.  The characteristics of the ship stood out as if floodlights were shining on every piece of equipment.  He was still exhausted, and all the sounds seemed unfamiliar and filled with meaning he didn’t understand.  He took out a prepared tray of breakfast, heated it up, and found a seat.  Instead of eating, he just sat and looked at the food.  Everything seemed so improbable, almost ridiculous.  Corn was a plant you stuck in the ground.  It grew up like magic, then you tore parts off, ground them down, stuck the pieces back together, stuck it in a heat source, and then ate it.  He had never really thought about food – it was just there.  He imagined trying to describe the process to something that had never eaten a plant before.  He wondered if the aliens even had plants.  He wondered if the aliens were plants.  He wondered if plant really had any meaning, or made any difference.  Yesterday, corn and humans seemed very different – parts of completely different kingdoms of biology.  Tomorrow corn and humans might seem more closely related than nearly anything in the universe – both were from Earth, and whatever they might meet probably was not.  The crewman sitting across from him was named Jones.  Maybe.  He had never taken much time to really get to know most of the people on board.  They were just sort of there.  Jones was pretty amazing.  He had hands and feet that worked.  Fingers, and fingernails that were stuck in them somehow, and didn’t fall out.  Would the aliens have fingernails?  If they didn’t and asked what kept the fingernails in the fingers, Darron couldn’t tell them.  Eyes were amazing.  They took an entire outside world of e-m radiation and processed it into sight.  Then Jones’ brain took all those inputs from hands, and eyes, and ears, and other stuff, and built it into a coherent world – the same coherent world everyone else individually built.  If Darron thought about it, Jones was so amazing and improbable, he wouldn’t have believed such a device could exist – but Darron never really had thought about it, he had just sat down and ate each day and took the miracle that was Jones for granted.  The crewman who might be Jones thought for a second that he had something on his face as he saw Darron stop staring at his food and start staring at him, but then decided that Darron was just weird.  He asked if something was wrong, and Darron snapped back to breakfast and said everything was fine, sorry, said something else he didn’t remember, even as he said it.  Darron started to eat as the crewman who might be Jones watched him cautiously.

After breakfast Darron headed back out to go over the recorded data Stephen was retrieving.  He found Stephen up and already in the lab.  Darron started reviewing the records as Stephen continued the retrieval.  From the nose down Stephen looked as tired as Darron.  His eyes were alert, almost wide. He was working fast, writing small retrieval routines on the spot to pull out any combination of data Darron wanted.  As he looked through more than four months of data, Darron started talking to the only person he could confide in.  Things looked different to me today – like I was seeing everything for the first time.

Stephen kept fiddling with the retrieval software.  Different?  Everything looked the same to me.  Of course I have only been in my quarters and in here.  What changed?

I just sort of noticed things.  Things I see every day, and sort of take for granted.  People are amazing, if you think about it. Seeing no response at all from Stephen, Darron felt a little self-conscious and backed off with the statement, Maybe I‘m a little tired.  It was hard to get to sleep last night. 

Stephen laughed.  "I was so wired I couldn’t sleep at all.  Finally I just watched a movie.  I had missed Space Serves Death Cold, so I called it up.  What a movie.  I laughed through the whole thing.  Did you see the scene where the alien had a gun in each of his 8 tentacles?  It only had 6 in the other scenes.  And all those eyeballs.  Why would an alien attack a whole ship just to eat eyeballs? And why do evil aliens always have tentacles?  Stephen started laughing again as Darron resisted the urge to clutch at his eyes.  After the movie I came back in here and started looking through stuff.  I didn’t see any other report of anomalies. "

So far, I don’t see anything that looks like what we saw these last four days.  I think this really is a new phenomena.  And I don’t see anything suggesting there is a natural source on the other side.

Stephen stopped and turned to face Darron.  So you think it’s real?  That there really is some alien ship on the other side?

I don’t see any other explanation.  After Darron spoke, he saw something in Stephen relax.  Stephen turned back to his workstation, but he wasn’t coding anymore, he was just looking at the records they were reviewing. 

I guess that’s it then.  I guess we know all we need to know.  After speaking, Stephen sat looking at the piles of data and then fell sound asleep.

Darron looked at the unconscious programmer and wished he could do the same – just lie down and sleep.  He started another review of the data, again failing to find anything to challenge his hypothesis.

Two hours later, the messenger sent by Captain Adams found them still in the room – Stephen passed out leaning back, mouth open, and Darron sound asleep leaning face-forward on the table.

Stephen and Darron stood at attention with 16 others in front of Captain Adams.  The Captain was handing out summaries of the observed light pulses.  The captain had arranged six teams of three, and set five teams to examine the recorded bursts without any consultation with each other, or with anyone else on the ship.  For Team Six, Stephen and Darron were joined by, of all people, the crewman who might be Jones except for the fact that he was actually named Jonathon Sykes.  Jon worked with the sensor equipment that measured the light emitted from the Persephone’s search antennae across the potential Intersections.  When opened, their sealed orders were to estimate what information anyone on the other side of the holes would have received from the Persephone’s search signals.

The three moved back into the room Stephen had been working in at first.  It was a bit awkward at first, with Jon wondering what was up, and trying to stay a little ways away from Darron, just in case. As Darron and Stephen filled in the details for Jon they could see him tense up as he realized the implications of the light pulses.  Jon started calling up records of the survey pulses sent out over the last few weeks, and started listing out each successful transmission through an Intersection.  Sixteen bursts were found which could have possibly been detected by someone on the other side.  They couldn’t say if any burst would have been seen, because the observer would have to be close to the Intersection and caught within or near the widening light pulse.  A list was started of what information could be guessed if one pulse was recorded, if two or few were recorded, or if many were recorded. 

The team decided that if one had been received, the listener could guess that the signal had a non-natural source, and could know what frequency was used by the emitting ship.  The strength of the signal would be hard to settle on, because the receiver would not know if they were just seeing the very edge of the sweep, or if the ship had been unusually far away from the Intersection.  Several records would allow the observer to guess the intensity of the pulse used, and from that, guess at the power capabilities of the emitter.  Some guess at direction and speed might be made.  If most had been detected, the observer could estimate the speed of the Persephone’s search, the available strength of the signals, and probably, how good her sensors were.  If most had been detected, the aliens would have a good guess at the Persephone’s abilities and limitations. 

The team reported back just after the start of Third Shift.  The captain took their report in her office.  In addition to the captain, the ship’s chaplain was present.  Captain Adams did not ask him to leave; he had apparently been brought in on the secret.  Captain Adams listened to the report in silence.  After the three had given their report, the Captain informed them that two other teams had already reported in.  They also had guessed that the bursts were coming from a ship on the other side of the Intersections.  The independent estimates seemed to have decided the issue.  The Captain thanked them again for their efforts and dismissed them.  The Chaplain asked if he could accompany them when they left.  The Chaplain was the oldest person on the ship by decades.  He was generally popular, and a few dozen of the crew were regular attenders at service. 

Our Captain believes that a little counseling may be needed in the near future, he said with a smile.  Also, this is about the only opportunity we will ever have to examine the response of humans to discovering a new race for the first time.

There was some nervous laughter, and each of the three looked warily at the Chaplain, wondering if counseling was about to break out.  None of the team were close friends of the Chaplain.  Like most people on the ship, they attended the weekly services from time to time.  For one thing, the services were a break from the mind-numbing routine that could easily take hold after months locked in a little ball with the same people all the time.  The Chaplain smiled at the nervous response, and continued.  Since I heard about this, I don’t think I have slept more than about an hour. There have been a lot of questions about the existence of other life in the galaxy.  It is really strange to think we may be the first to find out.  When do you think one side or the other will go ahead and make contact?

All three stopped and looked at each other to see if the others were going to answer.  Jon waited for the others; Darron’s mind had always been jumping to the encounter itself, without thinking about the time in between; Steve waited for someone else to respond, then said, They will probably be here pretty soon, and started walking on.  The others looked at him, caught up, and asked why he thought so.  Their first flashes were spaced out, like they were moving at a normal speed through the Intersection field.  The last two were close in time – they had to really move to get to the last Intersection for the fourth pulse.  And that was just after about 5 of our flashes might have been seen by them.  So they probably have been intentionally looking for Intersections in the direction we are going.  Why would they do that if they didn’t intend to come across?

Everyone stopped and thought about Steve’s statement.  The Chaplain finally said, You didn’t point that out in your report.

Why?  It’s obvious.  I assumed everybody would think so. And you didn’t ask when they would get here, just what they knew.  Steve yawned, said goodnight and headed off to his quarters.  Jon excused himself as well and headed back to his quarters and a sleepless night. Darron and the Chaplain headed back to the Captain. The two reported the additional comment from Steve and headed back out.  The Chaplain turned to Darron, and asked him if he had any other comments that he had assumed everybody else probably knew.  Darron laughed, and said he hadn’t discovered anything else.  Then he paused and seemed to be trying to decide whether to add any other comment.  The Chaplain cocked an eyebrow and waited.  Darron thought about the Chaplain and the odd thoughts at breakfast, and finally said, Breakfast was a little strange. 

The Chaplain led him to his room, and opened the door.  Darron stood at the entrance for a second, and then looked around the room and stared.  The walls had pictures, a large cross hung across from the door, and there were multiple sets of clothes.  The desk was littered with pictures in frames that must have taken a big chunk of the tiny personal space allotment given to each crewman.  A blanket lay across the bed.  As Darron stepped in and stared, the Chaplain motioned for him to close the door.  When the door was shut, he indicated a seat for Darron, and took out from the bottom of the closet an actual coffee machine.  Darron leaned away from the illegal device in shock.  All water used on board was recycled.  The humidity in the air was carefully monitored and excess amounts were recycled.  Water could not be effectively compressed, and took up a painfully large amount of the ship’s space, even with constant recycling. There was always some waste, and lack of water could force the early cancellation of an entire mission. For a crewman to use water in something so likely to cause loss as a stand-alone personal coffee machine could mean dismissal from the Fleet. 

The Chaplain started to rummage through the bottom of the clothes pile, pulling out a hardened block of coffee grounds.  As Darron watched in horrified silence, he scraped some of the grounds off into the top of the coffee maker, and poured in a full pot of water from an inflatable container that was filled with the precious fluid.  Darron finally asked Is that authorized?

The Chaplain motioned to the coffee maker. This?  Of course not. He looked at Darron’s shocked face and added, With the new recyclers, there hasn’t been a mission cut short due to water loss in 35 years.  Unless there’s a major failure of the recyclers or a tank collapse, we could lose water at a much higher rate than we do and still stay out for 15 months or so.  The mechanical stress from the Angulins forces a refit long before that. 

Darron turned away from the coffee maker and looked at all the decorations on the walls, the pictures, and the clothes and asked, How did you get all this stuff on board?

I get the usual 2 cubic feet, plus one more for being an officer, and the formal clothes count as ship gear.  It all packs in if you are careful.  Plus, all the clothes you can wear and still fit in your bunk when packed are effectively free.

Darron looked at the ancient Chaplain with suspicion and watched carefully as he pulled out two real coffee mugs and started pouring out the coffee.  Darron wasn’t sure if just drinking the coffee would be grounds for dismissal.  The cups didn’t even have a lid – the steam was rising in swirls above the dark fluid.  All of the cups on the ship and even on Loren Station were closed, expandable cylinders.  He hadn’t had coffee from a regular cup since leaving the Earth system nearly two years before.  He took the offered cup and asked, Couldn’t you get fired for this?

The Chaplain laughed.  They would have to be quick about it. I passed retirement age about the time you were born, and mandatory retirement age 12 years ago.  I am only here by special authorization.  If someone starts to say ‘You’re fired’, I just have to say ‘I quit’ before they finish the sentence to retire with full pension.

The Chaplain sat down facing Darron and both took a drink of coffee.  Darron looked at the Chaplain, shook his head and glanced down at the photos.  So, said the Chaplain.  Aliens.

Darron tensed up, muttered, Hopefully without tentacles, and seemed lost in thought. 

"Don’t tell me you watched Space Serves Death Cold a few nights ago."

Yes. I am starting to regret it now. Darron laughed nervously.  You were there for the show too.  You like old movies?

The Chaplain smiled and leaned back. I have a dark confession to make. The Chaplain lowered his head in mock shame.  I not only saw the movie, I am in it.

Darron almost spilled the steaming coffee he was now carefully savoring.  What?  But that movie is so old!

And I am even older.  The Chaplain saw Darron’s questioning glance and added, I am 127.  They got permission to film on a Fleet ship.  All of us in the crew were in the background at one time or another.  I was the guy in the back praying over his food in the first dining room scene.

How long have you been in space?

"About 90 years. My first tour was on StarFinder. "

Wasn’t that one of the first?

We were the third ship to cross over.  Things were a lot different.  The Angulins were a lot more primitive back then.  The first ones had been invented not long before the discovery of the Intersections.  They still took up over half the volume of the ship, and hardly stored enough momentum to provide artificial gravity, or compensate for ship thrusting.  We still called them Dean Machines after the physicist back in the 1900’s who first claimed angular momentum could be translated into linear momentum.  We had to use entirely propellant-based thrust.  The personal space for the crew was anything you could fit with you in your storage bunk.

Were you the Chaplain then too?

"The crews were a lot smaller then.  On the Persephone, I am the Chaplain and one of the Assistant Medical Officers.  On StarFinder, I was the Chaplain, the Medical Officer (the only medical officer we had), on the engineering crew for the Angulins, a reserve navigator, and a reserve communications crewman."

I never knew that – you never talk about your past assignments.

You really want to encourage an old geezer to go on and on about the old days?  Careful what you ask for.  ‘Back in my day, we had to squeeze in! Back in my day we didn’t need a full g for gravity.  We felt the full ship acceleration, and We Liked It!’

Darron laughed.  You must have seen a lot.

I have.  But I am not sure what I will see next.  Soon, if your friend is right.  The Chaplain leaned forward and refilled Darron’s cup. 

The strange thing about breakfast was that everything on the ship seemed new – like I had never seen it before.   Darron continued on, and described his morning.

So after hearing about the possible presence of other people and worlds you recognized the wonder of the people and world you come from yourself. The Chaplain thought for a second.  Maybe we should meet aliens more often. Both laughed, and Darron reached out for another cup of coffee.

So are you going to report me to the Captain as insane? Darron queried.

Only if I report myself as well.  I think you are more sane today than yesterday.  If you aren’t careful you will end up as my replacement.  Sometimes the first step in recognizing the value of the Creator is recognizing the value of the creation.

Darron smiled and considered his coffee. Then he looked at the coffee maker, and back up to the Chaplain.  I thought you ship counselors were supposed to give people harder drinks to get them relaxed and talking.

The Chaplain laughed for a brief second, then his smile disappeared.  "Not since the Icarus.  Most of us who responded didn’t drink at all after that.  Not exactly a rational response, since we aren’t always on starships, but there it is.  It was an illegal still that caused the whole thing."

"The Icarus lost confinement on an Angulin, didn’t she?"

"Yes.  I was on the Daedalus.  We had to operate in pairs back then.  One ship would be on each side of the projected Intersection field.  Angulins put an enormous stress on the frame of a ship – all that stored velocity.  Back then things wore out even faster, and the confinement anchors took constant maintenance and review.  Everything was triple-checked, to make sure no one missed the first signs of breakdown.  The problem with the procedure was that all three checks were performed by personnel from the same maintenance group.  They had worked together to smuggle on the parts for a still, and started making their own drinks on the sly.  Nobody ever got drunk, just a little buzzed, to make sure no one noticed.  But one bad day they had a birthday celebration for the team lead, and managed to have too much.  The first man to check 231, the main Angulin over the drive compartment, missed the signs of stress.  The second man to check never did.  He slept through his shift.  The control programs were going crazy, putting up all sorts of warnings that containment of the Angulin was failing, but the warnings were being displayed to man number three, the team lead, who wasn’t paying any attention – he hadn’t had any alcohol in so long before his birthday celebration he had spent half the off-shift throwing up, and was just sitting blankly in front of the screen in misery.  He had turned all the audible warnings off.

"The first warning the rest of the ship had was when the Angulin came free, converted half its angular momentum to linear all at once, and tore the Icarus in half.  Our first warning was that all communication from the Icarus suddenly stopped.  The Captain immediately made for her last known location at every g we could pull.  Some parts of the ship were still intact, and there were a few people who had managed to survive – if the compartment they had happened to be in was sealed, and had functioning life support.  There were 86 on board, and 67 died during the initial explosion or afterward, in cold, dark, airless tombs.  One more died after we got there.  The team lead had happened to survive the catastrophe, and wrote out a long letter describing everything that had happened, and his own role in the failure.  Then he walked into an airlock without an exo-suit and blew himself out into space. 

"Most everyone on the Daedalus never touched alcohol again – as much out of superstition as reasoning. And it took us a long time to re-learn to forget that every second on a starship we are surrounded by huge pools of energy and momentum that could kill us in an instant if we are not careful, or maybe just really unlucky. "

Darron glanced at the walls for a second, then back to the Chaplain.  Are all your stories of the old days this disturbing? he asked.

No, most are boring.  You got one of the exciting ones.

So why are you still here?  You could have gotten away from all this energy and momentum, and be retired somewhere safe, with a lot more room, and a real window.

Well, I think this is my vocation – what I am called to do.  And I have to admit, I like it.  We live in a little shell, with a job that nearly kills with repetition and boredom.  We are out here with no chance of assistance when things go wrong.  We are about to meet aliens for the first time, and so we have a pretty good chance of ending up dead.  Is there anywhere in the galaxy you would rather be?

Darron thought for a moment, smiled, laughed, and admitted, No – I guess if I could pick anywhere to be, I would be right here.

Darron won his bet with Chaplain Eisen.  Eisen insisted that he would have won except for the flashes that occurred about 20 hours after their conversation.  Until then, it still looked like the secret might hold for another 16 hours, and Eisen would win the right to trade his concentrated pea soup Day 6 dinner for Darron’s prized constructed chopped steak Day 7 dinner.  But after the multiple light bursts, too many people were passing in the hall visibly trying not to talk in public.  Captain Adams had to make a formal statement 4 hours later.  As this was almost exactly Darron’s 1-day prediction, Eisen accessed his food log and transferred his Day 7 chocolate cake dessert to Darron, receiving the despised Day 4 dehydrated fruit compote in return. 

Darron spent a lot of time watching how people took the news.  It was a lot like the responses to being packed for crossing.  The talkers talked, the withdrawers withdrew, and some just used the restroom a lot.  Over time, the realization began to sink in that this crossing would never end – that the fact of the existence of aliens was not going to be a phase that ended, but the way the world would be from now on.  The Captain had lots of new tasks for the crew, thinking that that a busy crew wouldn’t be a worried crew.  But as the light bursts continued over the next days, the Captain’s prediction was right that the Chaplain would be busy. 

Six days after the announcement, the Captain herself paid a visit to the Chaplain.  She walked in, shut the door, sat down, and demanded coffee.  She said nothing while the coffee was made and served, and drank down an entire cup in silence.  Eisen waited, watching Adams, and noticing the ways in which the Captain had aged in the last few days. 

I think Stephen Hunter is right, Captain Adams finally said.  I don’t think it will be long now.

I agree.  They must be finishing up this Intersection field, and everything is concentrated around us.

What do you give for our chances?

If they are anything like us – not much.  Both laughed, but the Captain’s face quickly returned to the tired and sad expression she had worn on coming in the room. After a few more moments of silence, she came to the point.

So what is your view on suicide.  Is it a moral action?  Or always wrong?

The Chaplain was silent for a few minutes, watching the Captain carefully.  Then he looked down at the pictures he kept on his desk.  Opinions vary.  According to the Catholics, suicide is never morally acceptable.  A number of the Protestant denominations are not so explicit.

I asked you, not a bunch of Catholics or Protestants.

I think it might depend on why you are committing suicide.  Is this an act of despair?  If so, it is wrong, because it implies that God can’t save you.  Is it an act of self-loathing? If so, it is wrong, because you are a creation of God, and worthy of respect, just like His other creations. Is this an act to punish others? If so, it is wrong, because it is an attempt to hurt your neighbors, not love them.  Is this an act to save others? Maybe then it is the right thing to do – if you are acting in the only way you can to give others a chance to survive.

The Captain was silent for a long time, and reached out for a third cup of coffee.  Then she looked up at the walls of the room, and said, She’s been a good ship.

Pretty good crew, too.

"I have been pleased with most of them.  Funny thing – one of the few I wanted to get rid of was Stephen Hunter.  But since this all started, he’s been one of the best men on board.  Not only has he learned to stick to his guns, but he has been working fast – I have