Upstart Mystique

By Don Braden

On its way to a distant colony world, the space vessel Marco P loses all power and an unknown force convinces the navigator that a distant, dead world is the vessel's true destination. Commander Malcolm Carpenter orders the crew to abandon ship to protect them and to learn how to defeat whatever force has intercepted his ship. The crew discovers a small group of inhabitants, the only people on the planet who were not uploaded into a vast computer network—a computer network captivated by upstart humans and their imaginations. To free his crew and his navigator from the planetary network's grip, Commander Carpenter must face a moral dilemma. Can he save his crew without condemning a planet's inhabitants and their digital ancestors to death?

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Lee Summers
• Release date: Apr 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463682982

Don Braden

Don Braden retired in 2009 from a 45-year career teaching high school English surrounding thirteen years of teaching Latin and 30 years of coaching track and cross country. He frequently used Science Fiction, current and classic, to demonstrate elements of literature and human ideals. Through his own voracious reading of all subjects, he encouraged students to read, to recognize the essence of humanity, and to strive for an improbable dream: utopia. Braden is working toward a “late in life” second career of writing stories that bolster what he taught.

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I wish to thank Elizabeth Bruce who provided essential instruction through her editing; well-known mystery author David Corbett who gave critical writing direction and encouragement; Mendocino Coast Writers Conference that offered summer writing seminars to polish writing; TusCon Conventions that let writers cast pearls of wisdom overlooked in more formal classes; David Lee Summers and Hadrosaur Productions who are willing to take a chance on an unfledged author.

UPSTART MYSTIQUE

MARCO P

Awash in cold sweat, Commander Malcolm Carpenter recalled nothing from the nightmare that forced him awake. His narrowed eyes stared at the blue numbers of the mission clock/calendar/travel duration displayed on the wall at the foot of his sleep pod: 08:49 - 10 23 2457 - 295.

Two days? he thought in disgust and drew in a long breath. A smell of electrical ozone filled his nose, and he tensed.

The commander pulled his head up, half sat, propped up on his left elbow, and glanced left at his command module screen that was programmed, while he rested or slept, to shuffle pleasant, successful past mission images. Only an eye-blink passed before he realized that his favorite pictures from the Zantil 3 colony weren't streaming on the painted thin-screen on the wall to his left. Instead, brief clips from his personal diary and ship logs that faded in and out menaced him with cycling images of near catastrophes of past missions.

He cringed at ballooning settler bodies threatening to burst in allergic reaction to the immediate presence of a deadly poisonous plant on Cebron 7. That grotesque obesity faded to Malrick's brittle landscape crumbling like quicksand under the steps of colonists on another mission, where quick work saved ten suffocating colonists trapped in powdery graves without adding the rescuers to the sudden and unexpected probable burial of those who took the first steps on the planet.

Carpenter instinctively ducked as several images of laser shots from unidentified alien ships were directed at him from the screen. Warning beams were normal occurrences when sensors hadn't read the presence of an alien ship or the Marco P's translator had sent a non-aggression message in an improper alien tongue.

Then Carpenter was terrorized by images of his ship caught in a Quil Vortex. He watched the frightened crew, terrified passengers, and the ship itself shimmer in a ghostly aura, threatening to vanish from three dimensional galactic space and deconstruct the Marco and passengers before the ship managed to punch its way out of the vortex's serpentine extensions.

The obesity of Cebron 7 returned.

The thin-screen refused to offer the serenity of Zantil 3 when ordered by Carpenter's conscious thought.

At his gruff, authoritative voice command, the screen blanked and assumed the ecru color of his ready room wall.

Carpenter blinked his eyes and shook his head. I am awake, he said aloud to himself, making sure a life-conscious dream hadn't sneaked into his light-sleep respite between work weeks.

With a wrinkled brow and still breathing ozone, he pored over unanswered questions. Beset by the sudden and unexpected puzzles in a nominal colony mission, the commander argued with himself about foregoing short-sleep and returning to command duty. He lay back and stretched, tensing and relaxing leg and back muscles. The acrid ozone had dissipated; he smelled only his small ready room's stuffiness.

He knew that planning for what he couldn't predict was a fool's errand. His tired body, stressed by one hundred sixty-eight hours of continuous duty, had managed only forty-eight hours of rest. The threat of return to active and alert duty goaded his mind to reconsider physical necessity over the command decision to solve the mystery of his awakening.

His fatigued body overrode his waking mind and demanded recovery. Besides, he told himself, the smell was probably a residual of the dreaming he couldn't remember. From his weariness and without serious mental discussion, Carpenter consciously ordered the ship's computer to cycle his chosen Zantil 3 collage on the left wall thin-screen.

That collage, his backdrop to restful recovery, flashed pictures of laughing colonists he had ferried to a new world that resembled Earth more than any other planet he had helped colonize. Each pic from that album morphed smiling colonists into images of wooden cabins or shops that comprised the buildings of the original township and then reformatted those structures into individual portraits.

To the left a two-yard square thin-screen painted on the bulkhead, prepared to cycle images pulled from his pix-album.

Carpenter exhaled, settled onto his back in his sleep pod, and glanced left. He saw only the top quarter of the flashing pix-screen. It had regenerated at his thought but not with his desired scenario. He saw tops of terrified shimmering ghosts.

Carpenter sat up and scowled as if the scenes were disobedient and rebellious brats. He thought that a neutrino had mutated a pathway or modified a line of code. Then he wondered if his subconscious was overriding his conscious thoughts, a paranormal ability he had learned to trust.

I'll have Varlez look at your circuits and programming, he growled at the recalcitrant screen.

He climbed out of his pod. In nothing but skivvies covering his muscular six-foot frame, he padded barefoot into the empty command center on the leading floor of the twenty-tier skyscraper-shaped colony ship. Three empty command modules with duplicate keyboards, knobs, control periphernalia, and intra-ship computer consoles were placed before a twenty by six foot screen offering a view of the ship's course. The lower third displayed graphics of the Marco P's course that threaded through star systems of the Milky Way Galaxy's Cygnus arm. Smaller ports lined the prow behind the screen.

LeRoi, the commander barked to the navigation cubicle that was opposite his ready room. He quickened his steps when the navigator turned to face him and stopped five feet from the only other alert human on the ship. His question was husky from hours of sleep. Is there anything out there I should know about?

Commander? was the navigator's startled return. Nothing different from when you asked me two hours ago. LeRoi scrunched his face under the permanently attached headgear tying him to the Marco P's computer. He studied the commander's questioning glare.

I did? … Two hours? … The com? Carpenter furrowed his brow. I don't remember. Trying to recall earlier waking almost caused him to miss the navigator's next words.

I thought it odd when you asked the first time, sir. Again? You want me to wake Strumpf or Crown and have them see you?

No, Navigator; that's all right. Carpenter was not about to give LeRoi the satisfaction of a successful practical joke. There's nothing outside to warrant close observation? It's still …Weeks? … and clear to γ-Cygnus A2?

Little more than five, and no problems projected, sir. Space is unencumbered. Our path slips past a couple of systems, none suggest problems. You asked me that before, too, Commander. You sure you're all right?

The commander didn't detect a gotcha tone in the navigator's question. I'm fine, Navigator.

Commander Malcolm Carpenter knew he wasn't fine. Ozone smell upon waking, the glitched thin-screen, duplicating questions to the navigator: more sleep wasn't going to happen. Maybe this space has properties we haven't encountered before, he thought as he watched the navigator study him.

The commander, a title the crew unofficially addressed him by, turned back to his ready room and realized he wasn't rested enough to have missed the familiar throb of deep vibration from the twin power assemblies that doubled the length of the Marco P FSS-14, a non-military vessel that was extending human presence further from Earth than any other colony ship managed.

He stepped into his ready room and scanned his sparse quarters while he considered the navigator's information and realized he had to wake and bounce his thoughts of the impossible situation off George Strumpf and Jerry Varlez whom he thought of as his alter egos and who helped keep intact his reputation of never making a mistake.

A modest platform serving as a desk stuck out from the wall under the clock at the foot of his sleep pod. A padded, high back chair was left of the desk. Above the blue timeline numbers hung a small multi-colored tapestry, a two-foot square mosaic of geometric forms. The translucent lid to his sleep pod, little more than a large cushioned coffin, closed off the view right and hid his cabin door to the bridge.

He shook his head at the needed rest he wasn't going to get and reviewed the prior week.

That consisted of traipsing through the twenty-tier Marco P checking equipment and colonists' dorms and reviewing settlement plans in final preparation for touchdown on an uninhabited terrestrial-type planet. Seven days of recapitulating the mission and repeated perfunctory paper work had tired his body and addled his brain. Except for the navigator and maybe Engineer Varlez whose paranormal intuition prevented even minor glitches, he had been the sole human awake. Imposed artificial loneliness always wearied his psyche.

He had checked the ship's condition before he dropped into light-sleep two days earlier. Marco P wasn't that close to its destination. Navigator LeRoi had confirmed a straight shot, or a slight arc to reaching it: nothing to warrant a commander's attention. Ah, he snickered and thought the flavor of famous last words. Still, can't be that bad, he mumbled.

Rejecting needed sleep, he flopped into his chair and wondered why he couldn't sleep without dreaming or remember waking two hours earlier. He knew that the navigator had suggested to some of the crew that he was slipping from his pristine command reputation. With that motivation, he'd be ecstatic to have played him for a fool. However, despite all LeRoi's growing idiosyncratic narcissism the navigator had never tried anything that insubordinate. Carpenter called up the mission computer screen painted on his shelf-desk.

Status of power.

Operational. Engineer identifying minor glitch.

Carpenter knew Varlez always fiddled with the power. Dealing with malfunctions, minor or major—real or imagined—was how the engineer stayed connected to the mission and crew.

Nothing serious enough to wake me … Or did he? The lack of throbbing engine rumble wasn't normal. Carpenter imagined its absence might have awakened him—twice. Perhaps Varlez is on it.

The commander wondered if his own subconscious radar was massing subliminal details and anticipating a problem. The pictured disasters that projected from his pix-album had all followed situations foreshadowed by unsettling premonitions. He overcame those dangers because he had listened to his feelings. Then, like now, there was no hint of peril, just the specter of ominous potential.

Detail problems from beginning of mission, he commanded.

The mission computer listed nothing on his desktop, and Carpenter thought, Why now?

A request for potential problematic encounters en route to γ-Cygnus A2 also yielded nothing.

Show all star charts between here and γ-Cygnus A2. Carpenter wasn't sure he'd find anything important.

Collate, overlap systems in single image, and overlay our course to γ-Cygnus A2.

As the navigator had said, nothing impacted their course, though Carpenter noticed they were skirting a single planet star system.

The commander stood and looked out a starboard port, one of few real ports, where he saw moving stars.

* * *

Roger LeRoi, navigator for the Marco P had been delirious with ecstasy, lost in the conjured images of the surrounding Orion-Cygnus arm of the Milky Way that the first-contact Earth colony ship was dashing through. Stars, large and small, shone in brilliant white, soft yellow, azure blue, and pulsing red. To the right of the astral panorama, the dark shadowy North American Nebula, hardly looking like the continent it did from Earth's perspective, encroached on the pristine blackness of space and softened some colors, while through contrast, it enhanced others.

With the whole ship in long sleep, except for the commander with his odd questions and maybe engineering, the navigator submerged himself in the surrounding limitless black sprinkled with more points of light than any planet-bound human could imagine. LeRoi relished his importance when he was the only one awake. Only then could he bask unaccompanied in the immense universe. For immeasurable hours on this current exploratory and settlement mission, he had been beyond contentment.

The navigator's satisfaction didn't come from usurping authority. He knew that he was in charge of nothing except to watch where the ship was. He was a human adjunct connected to the Marco's computer. The commander, in short sleep and ready to be aroused at LeRoi's waking word, held the power. And LeRoi also knew, while others were in hibernation, the computer alone possessed the ultimate authority to order him to rouse the commander.

Still, LeRoi exulted in being the only one awake and aware of where he was. Naturally the computer knew—not with human intelligence—that conglomeration of printed circuitry and contained quanta was not human. It could not achieve an emotional high from the immensity of the galaxy that any human, even the most obtuse, might experience. The computer, known as MP, had been programmed to react with a handful of social characteristics, making it more acceptable for human interaction. Yet, perpetually tied to MP—even wirelessly in his sleep—now awake while all others were hibernating, LeRoi deluded himself that he was king of the realm, as his name, reminiscent of an ancient political caste, identified him.

His stuffy cubicle, built into the portside of the bridge opposite the commander's small ready room, lacked any actual view to space and was where LeRoi reveled in images only on the screens surrounding him. They projected computer simulations of the multiple external views of space, most in spectra the human eye couldn't detect: X-ray, infra-red, and ultra-violet. What the navigator took such delight in were galactic panoramas that he never really saw. Even though the false color images were transferred to his brain through the thousands of inputs within his computer interface cap, at his station he was dependent on screen representations for what was outside the ship.

Soon after the commander returned to his ready room, LeRoi's exultation of being immersed in galactic spectacles was snatched away by the inevitable call of duty from MP.

The navigator didn't disagree with the computer's conclusion drawn from its immense database burgeoning from readings of short and long-range acquisitions that peered into space outside the ship, readings that LeRoi hated to share, as if someone else might divine what he did not. Despite that Carpenter and maybe Varlez being conscious, he didn't want to end his singular personal relationship with MP.

He hated waking the crew, though it was a normal function of his navigation duty.

In the gelid void of space and racing toward the North American Nebula and γ-Cygnus, the computer of the Marco P FSS-14 urged—in its highest degree—that the crew be roused from three months of hibernation. Through constant long-range viewing, spectroscopy, computer interpolation from repeated exposures and eclipses of a sol-type star hardly a billion years older than Earth's sun, MP had acquired their destination. The system identified as γ-Cygnus A possessed an earthlike planet. The second of five bodies orbiting a star that was little more than half the size of Sol would be the next outpost of Earthlings who were aggressively extending their presence in the galaxy.

… Or the computer sensed a problem that required tiers of authority above navigator LeRoi.

* * *

By protocol, the first to receive wakeup for mission problems or touchdown was Commander Malcolm Carpenter. LeRoi reluctantly contacted the commander and yielded command. Carpenter had just risen from his high-backed chair as he completed his own research that revealed no answer to his questions about the sudden oddities of this normal voyage.

At the unexpected vocal alert from LeRoi, Carpenter lifted his head and scanned over the blue mission countdown and out a wide starboard porthole. We can't be that near A2, he thought. However, LeRoi's tone had been urgent.

He stood from his seat before the painted computer screen and stared out the port in his quarters. Stars were slipping past, faster than he remembered. They're too fast. This part of the galaxy isn't so dense, he mused in silence. He wondered if Marco had captured a more energetic dark matter tunnel.

He answered the navigator's call just before LeRoi was ready to repeat his alert.

Awake. See you soon, was the commander's official response to a formal wake up. He stepped to his outer garb hanging at the head end of his pod.

The navigator knew the commander was awake; but following MP's orders and official protocol, he contacted Carpenter and again remembered his first mission as commander.

Then Carpenter looked half a century younger than his one hundred years. With perverse satisfaction, LeRoi remembered a couple of older and grizzled spacers on Carpenter's first mission. They mistook his youthful looks as announcing an inexperienced novice commander and had had the temerity to explain publicly to him and several of the crew in the galley why his orders were all wrong. After the commander quietly explained his authority and perfect reasons for his order, they abased themselves in repenting, to no avail. Commander Carpenter sequestered them to hydroponic farm work in the middle of the ship and without view of space until he could replace them at the next scheduled station. LeRoi grinned as he wondered again how they managed to find work or passage back to their home port.

LeRoi's space career, like George Strumpf's, was longer than the commander's. Carpenter had recruited both when he outfitted his first exploratory vessel fifty years earlier. Despite the commander's lauded reputation of not making mistakes and given the navigator's own tenure in space, LeRoi had vainly convinced himself that he should be the real expert for space travel on the Marco P. He frequently strutted as such when the commander was not around and when he had been twice substituted briefly at navigation on this mission. Those arrogances, increasing of late, were sometimes reported to Carpenter, who kept them in mind. Strangely, for all his age and experience, LeRoi never understood his own presumptions kept him from advancing to positions he coveted and believed he should possess.

Strumpf, both doctor and cook, who had first signed on for exploration with LeRoi nearly three-quarters of a century earlier, was the second most important to wake. He had to prepare for a hungry crew and make sure the hydroponics were working as they should—though he had received no warning to the contrary nor been wakened earlier. He needed, also, to prepare for the inevitable waking malaise that beset a few after hibernation. With this latter duty, though, he would soon have help.

Strumpf was more adept at space faring than LeRoi and could probably navigate without the computer interface, a trendy operation LeRoi had thought would give him an advantage on any ship. However, for all his experience and broad expertise, Strumpf was content with a supporting role. His job, except for medical supervision, lacked the serious responsibility and pressure that accompanied constant monitoring. Still, when he thought something was amiss, Strumpf had the commander's ear, a personal relationship LeRoi had never developed, and occasionally suggested things he thought the commander might not have considered. Those casual observations mentioned privately, almost in passing, allowed Carpenter the chance to amend orders and maintain his storied reputation. It was that very characteristic of Strumpf's intuitive awareness and propriety that had prompted Carpenter to select him for his first crew. Carpenter never regretted the choice and kept Strumpf on all of his missions afterward.

To LeRoi's wake-up, Strumpf merely returned a meaningless guttural GNNNNN that followed his habitual glance outside the ship upon waking. He refused any civility to LeRoi, even though a simple, one-word message would hardly exhibit a change in his dislike. However, the navigator's narcissistic attitude was a major obstacle to any friendship that ought to have developed between the two of them after decades of exploration with Carpenter.

After Strumpf, LeRoi prompted the hibernation units of Engineer Jerry Varlez and Nurse Amanda Crown. Fred Sharp, Kellan Forbes, and Manuel Gonzalez, the leads of the three settlement teams were next, in case the commander had instructions for them before the rest of their teams were wakened.

Priscilla Maelstrom, LeRoi's occasional replacement, he left in hibernation. LeRoi hated having a backup. He judged Maelstrom was much too young for navigation; she was only thirty-five and on her first mission. He had been navigating explorers for nearly twice her age and more times longer than her schooling. In spite of her touted academic achievement in navigation and planetary evolution, he hated the idea of being replaced, even for short spans, by anyone so new to space. Grudgingly and without verbal comment, though his body language protested otherwise, he had already yielded to the commander's twice ordering Maelstrom to take her turn at the consoles so LeRoi might rest.

Before navigator LeRoi received further crew acknowledgements beyond Strumpf's inarticulate grunt, the computer flashed DANGER. Spiky red letters masked images of surrounding space and splashed on all fourteen screens—a word simultaneously downloaded to the navigator's computer-linked brain. Terrorized beyond any past catastrophe, LeRoi saw and felt the words melt and cascade into a brilliant bubbling red pooling at the bottom of the screens surrounding him.

The pools vanished.

Roger LeRoi watched the forward images evolve into a shadowy, starless gray that seeped from the center outward to the edges of each screen. The target stars that Marco P had been racing toward and from and taking readings from in both directions vanished as if the explorers were suddenly engulfed by an unknown and previously undetected thick nebula.

The navigator didn't look at the rear projections at the outer edges of his screen bank, for the computer transfer to his brain had already communicated that the ship was surrounded by impenetrable gray.

Navigator LeRoi requested the computer's reaction to the Marco P FSS 14's sudden and total shrouding. The computer's response to the navigator about its blindness was instant and absolute. Navigator LeRoi agreed and the computer initiated a power reversal that would bring the ship to a dead stop.

Heartbeats after answering LeRoi's alert and stepping toward his uniform, Carpenter was hurled into the forward wall of his ready room.

What …? The question was suppressed by pain as his nose and forehead smashed into the bulkhead before he could fully turn his body to take the shock with a flexed upper arm and shoulder. Carpenter bounced back, rubbed his brow, and sniffed while twitching his nose which he gingerly touched between his left thumb and index finger. That it wasn't bleeding salved some of the hurt. He looked back to his uniform and hurried to pull on khaki trousers and a green tunic. Cinching his pants and straightening his insignia-less tunic, he stepped into flightshoes, that molded to his feet. As he returned to the bridge, he wondered if LeRoi had outlived his usefulness or if the computer had malfunctioned.

George Strumpf, whose sleep pod was positioned abeam, was thrown forward against the tube he had just crawled from. What's the navigator done this time, he wondered.

MARCO P

Rubbing his forehead and twitching his nose, Commander Carpenter tromped his muscular frame across command and into the navigator's cramped domain. He stared at LeRoi silhouetted against his many screens all of which showed solid gray, not the star-dotted images he saw earlier, nor the stellar images he saw out the port in his ready room.

Malfunction? the commander growled as he stepped up behind LeRoi and peered over his shoulders at the grayed out screens immediately in front of the navigator.

Don't think so, LeRoi responded without taking his eyes from the gray that showed in every screen view of space outside the ship. I had stars and our general destination direction at the center. Then from that point everything just grayed outward.

Not from my ready room, Carpenter objected. Didn't you look out a port?

No. I'd have to leave here. MP and screens are accurate. The computer isn't harassed by emotion. MP stopped us because we were blind; I concurred.

You and the computer, maybe. Carpenter was more than irked. LeRoi had by-passed his command and authorized reversing power to bring the ship to a stop. He could handle Roger's not so subtle but arrogant aspirations that many of the crew were finding increasingly ill-tempered and inappropriate. Carpenter had thought about sending LeRoi to hibernation and waking Maelstrom who offered no pretense. He rejected the idea. LeRoi was a good navigator, in spite of his presumptions—maybe because of them.

Commander Carpenter headed out of the navigator's cubicle to recheck what he had seen from his ready room but stopped, when he heard a graveled complaint over the com and looked up at the front port screen. It was gray, not the star-studded black he had witnessed from his ready room port and before his face was smashed against the bulkhead. The sequence of ports also showed only gray.

Navigator! What'd you do? Strumpf demanded. He spoke to the position, not to the person.

We're blind. I shut us down—and fast.

You got that right. But I'm not blind. What's the matter with you?

MP doesn't see anything but gray. Without sight …

I've got stars …, Strumpf interrupted his growl and didn't finish his rebuttal. Then he acknowledged without an apologetic tone. "My port's gone gray. There's nothing to see."

Hearing a corroborating opinion from a confidante, Carpenter set his steps for the backup navigator, Priscilla Maelstrom, who had an interface with MP, but was able to disconnect from it when she was not navigating. Not far from the cramped quarters LeRoi claimed as his private domain, her cabin door slid open at his official combination on the outer pad and closed as he entered the second navigator's quarters. A smaller duplicate of the commander's, her cabin contained no electronics except a com and opposite her pod, a port. It did possess a small bookshelf above the desk that supported half a dozen books with titles too small to be read from the commander's distance. To insulate his back-up navigator from the space oddities he'd never before experienced, Carpenter walked to her intercom/screen and disabled it. Then he stepped to Maelstrom's closed sleep pod and fingered a wakeup code on the emergency access.

The lid hissed up and, before Maelstrom's eyes blinked open, Carpenter was surprised to realize that his second navigator slept in the nude. The commander noted that her uniform did nothing but enhance her natural proportions: wide hips, narrow waist, large breasts.

Startled awake, Maelstrom twisted her lips into a coy smile and licked them before starting to offer a word at the unusual rousing.

Carpenter shook his head and held his right index finger to his lips. Then gesturing her to wait, he reached both palms toward the ship's consensus pin-up beauty. He held his gaze at her blue eyes. With index and middle finger of his right hand held slightly apart he pointed to his eyes and then out the gray port on the other side of Maelstrom's sleeping pod.

She nodded, as much as her supine position allowed, rolled left toward the commander, and sat up. Carpenter could not but admire the hourglass figure seated before him. However, he looked around and saw a green dressing robe which he picked up and reached out to his second navigator. Unconcerned at her commander's propriety, Maelstrom shook her head rejecting the proffered robe and stood to look out the port.

She turned back with a quizzical look and raised her hands, palms almost upward and shrugged.

The commander draped the robe across his left arm and reached into a pocket. He pulled out a pad and a pen. With his right hand, he gave them to the naked navigator and with his right index finger motioned like he was drawing or writing on his left palm. Maelstrom took pen and paper and turned back to the port out of which Carpenter saw only grey. The commander saw her marking across the pad.

When Maelstrom returned the pad and pen, the commander mouthed Now and again held the robe out to her. This time she took it. While he looked at her drawing, she slipped her arms into the sleeves and drew the short bodice around her. The hem hit mid-thigh of the five-foot four-inch crew member.

Carpenter studied Maelstrom's scrawled drawing and looked out the port, still gray … to him. She had drawn lots of large and small x's indicating sizes of stars and even shaded in what was an outer part of the North American Nebula. He raised his eyes to Priscilla who was again pursing her lips for a question and shook his head.

Maelstrom's wider eyes, lips, and arms described a more precise question.

He pointed to her and then repeatedly pointed down.

She nodded. Then she motioned like she was writing or drawing and wagged her thumb and index finger to the commander and herself.

He nodded and smiled and thought that if everyone else saw gray, she might be the only one not under some spell.

Then he stepped to her door and knocked three times, twice quickly and then once. He twisted his wrist to indicate keeping her compartment locked. Though he knew no one should be in the corridor, he listened for footsteps. He stepped out of Maelstrom's small cabin and turned to look back at her.

She nodded, but her brow was creased. She wondered what was going on and how long she might be sequestered. She held her palms together and then pulled them apart the width of her body, moved them closer, and then out to her full span.

Her robe broke open.

The commander's eyes sparkled at the unexpected review of cleavage. He knew it was an accidental flashing, not an enticement. He shrugged his shoulders and twitched his head. Then he slid the door closed. A moment later, he heard Maelstrom lock it.

* * *

The settlement leads, Fred Sharp and Kellan Forbes, grumbled an acknowledgement at LeRoi's wake up call and took their time exiting their pods, after they felt the ship jerk. The third lead, Manuel Gonzalez, merely looked out a port. However, when they looked around at the rows of unopened containments of the rest of the settlement contingent, they knew something wasn't right.

Sharp was the senior of the trio, though none might judge any age from looking at him. His barrel-chest tapered to a slender waist and was sided by arms that rivaled gnarled tree limbs. His hands were huge and could tighten into stony fists that carried the impact of sledgehammers. Both Forbes and Gonzalez looked to him, or rather the status of his shaved head, for direction or just approval, even when they were sure about a decision leading to developing their settlement. Always in control, Sharp was seldom excited. When something seemed amiss to him, his jaw tightened and his light blue eyes darkened. His whole carriage tensed for action as his gaze swept about him.

Sharp's concerned dark blue eyes searching is what Forbes and Gonzalez saw when they glanced around from their pods and realized that no one else of the settlement party was awake and Sharp was already out of his sleeper.

Forbes was up next. He neglected to add more covering to his hibernation skivvies. One look at Sharp, though, and he was alert and assessing every input his senses perceived. Forbes, three inches shorter than Sharp's six-foot two-inch frame, was easily fifty pounds lighter. His close-cropped brown hair topped a long face with a lazy inattentive look from brown eyes. Nothing about Forbes appeared to command the respect a settlement lead demanded. He looked like someone's lackey.

Sharp often proclaimed that he would take Forbes as a partner in any fight, if he had the chance to choose. None who had recently met both could see the advantage; most just accepted Sharp's words. Forbes appeared skinny and gangly, hardly able to fight his way out of a small band of young children. When Sharp was pressed about Forbes's apparent size and lack of physical ability, as he was by those who didn't know the smaller man, he always chuckled, shook his head, and exhaled disgustedly, refusing to answer. If the skeptic pressed on, Sharp said, Don't get conned to side against him.

When Gonzalez saw Forbes next to Sharp, he hurried out of his pod, also in nothing but skivvies. Together the three of them were a formidable group—even in underwear. It was clear to Gonzalez that something strange was happening.

An inch shorter than Sharp, Gonzalez's full head of thick black hair and intense burrowing brown eyes gave the impression he was taller. On his heavy-boned frame, he carried forty-five pounds more that Forbes did. Still he didn't have the mass Sharp bore nor did he garner authority by mere presence as Sharp easily commanded. Gonzalez spent considerable time out of hibernation in body-building, and not for show. His musculature was rock hard. Though he lacked the blinding speed that was Forbes's chief asset, he had nearly the brawn Sharp possessed.

The triad formed itself and two looked questioningly at Sharp. None of them seemed to recognize that they were standing stock still. Rubbery legs that afflicted everyone just out of hibernation and adjusted to acceleration or minor vector shifts that defined tunnels through dark matter, were not jiggling them.

We're not moving, Sharp thought and wrinkled his face as he looked over forty-two sealed sleep pods

Forbes was as unsure of what was happening as Sharp looked. He wondered why they had not been wakened earlier if they were at γ-Cygnus A2.

We're not moving, Gonzalez thought, after he looked out a port and saw no star movement.

This isn't right, Sharp analyzed.

How long do you think we've been down? Forbes asked. Maybe LeRoi found a Q-tunnel that shortened the time.

Yeah, Gonzalez said and intending to draw their attention to what he had seen, added, look, pointing to the port where he had seen stars. Wait! It turned gray. It wasn't gray a moment ago.

Tunnels aren't gray, Sharp critiqued having already assumed a Q-tunnel. I saw stars, too. Now I don't.

That's not nebula gray, Forbes analyzed. He wondered if they had somehow been snagged by an outer tributary of the North American Nebula. I don't know anything that is smooth gray like that.

Just then all three felt the ship lurch under them. The movement was so unexpected that all three nearly fell to the deck. They grabbed onto each other for support and helped to steady each other as they took choppy steps and widened their stance to maintain their own balance.

No, this isn't right, Sharp repeated stressing each word. I think we should see the commander. It makes sense that only we three are awake. LeRoi'd wake us before the settlers, if anything important was happening.

Forbes pulled on a loose brown tunic to cover his slender torso and all three rejecting shoes stepped into dark blue denims. Bare-chested Sharp and Gonzalez led the way through long hallways to the bridge and Commander Carpenter.

* * *

Engineer Jerry Varlez, still in his gray jumpsuit, had not been sleeping when he was prodded by LeRoi's alert. For the last month, he had been wakened repeatedly by the engineering computer to adjust the energy mix, check its reaction to dark matter, and analyze the ship's reaction to the light and dark interstellar realms they were hurtling through. His hibernation pod was next to his work, but none of his previous month's use of it might be considered even short sleep.

That the navigator and not the computer had sent a wakeup indicated that any semblance of hibernation would not be an option for a long time. Once the Marco P finally settled into orbit above γ-Cygnus A2, he and two female assistants, each contortionists untouched by claustrophobia and half of his one hundred twenty years, would perform the necessary maintenance the engines needed after months of Qion speed. Their recalibration would return the smooth performance registered after the initial tuning following the first light year shakedown.

Varlez didn't crawl out of his pod at the navigator's wake up, nor did he respond to that alert. He lay still, arguing with himself about rest and sleep and hibernation; and he listened for the noises that had wakened him earlier. The engines didn't sound right. The deep-throated rumble had returned, but the pitch was just a little flat. The engines sounded maximum, as they needed to be to reach γ-Cygnus A2 on schedule, but not quite in the familiar tone he recognized. His memory raced through decades of memorable and discountable engine noises. Nothing matched what he was hearing. Finally, with tired effort he swung his legs over the edge of his pod and dropped to the deck. At that very moment, the Marco P jerked. Varlez grabbed the side of his pod to steady himself and keep from being thrown to the deck. His eyes were wide with concern and his heart doubled its pulse. He thought he heard grinding, low short growls from far aft, that indicated the support structure was being tweaked by parallel engines out of sync.

Instead of heading for the bridge or messaging Commander Carpenter, he woke his two engineering support seconds and the three brainstormed a solution to the imbalance created from a dead stop order from MP.

Three inches shorter than Priscilla Maelstrom, Varlez was the shortest on board the Marco P. Engineers weren't required to be any particular size, but for this ship, smaller was better and height had been one of the criteria he used to choose his two assistants. Someone like Sharp or even Forbes might have the expertise to maintain an exploratory vessel, but would be unable to squeeze into small spaces or crawl around, over, and through pipes, ducts, and closed areas forbidden to average-sized humans.

That Varlez's aides were both female and only a couple of inches taller than he had prompted their inaccurate sobriquet of harem. All three were privy to the not-so-private gossip about engineering that passed through the crew, and they enjoyed that it could be so wrong.

Of all the crew of the Marco P except for the commander, the engineers knew that personal relationships eroded a tight working atmosphere necessary to maintain the power plant. Varlez and his females worked well together, but during off hours they were seldom in the company of the other two.

Jerry Varlez was a compact muscular elf of a man who worked magic with the engines and the computer systems of the Marco P. On this sterile clean ship, his hands were always greasy dirty; his round face, perpetually smeared with something that contrasted with his light brown skin. His brown eyes flashed excitement and eagerness when he got the chance to talk about the ship's power plant.

Occasionally at the beginning of a voyage, Varlez would pick out a particularly obnoxious mate or settler and challenge him to arm wrestling. His target was always someone who made the mistake of demeaning others.

Varlez's target always scoffed at the challenge and the difference in size. However,