by Ken Pence
"Rett tells me that they could eat the utensils if they wanted to with no harmful effects and to watch out because they are very shrewd in trade."
"Okay then; you handle it when one of them goes toes up. See you at mess." Ling headed for the mess hall since it was really just breakfast time and she wanted some good tea in spite of her reservations about this setup. She let out a huge, exhausted sigh and shuddered with fatigue and stress before she ran into to her friends that were waiting just out of sight. They hugged her and patted her on the back as she rounded the corner.
***
Captain UmBllatt was in a quandary. These beings had shown them every courtesy but something was wrong. Something squirmed in the salad about this deal. Look at these rooms; spacious with gravity, and temperature, and atmosphere to our liking but this is an airless moon above a primitive planet. Someone must have run across these humans decades before to produce this complex. It's too perfect. Even the Central Worlds are not this nice. This is right out of the manuals. Every race tries to live up to the manuals but no one comes very close...yet, these beings have it all...just like in the manuals -- but more...and this 'entertainment center'...who produces this marvelous pictures and sound...it is impossible...yet it is here...and the elimination facilities were exquisite, with sand the same color as home. He had felt like he was almost home with the wind and sun hitting him. The walls! ...even the walls showed moving pictures of home and how had they made the plants move in the breeze? It was impossible… impossible that this out of the trade route planet had better facilities than a Central World establishment. They spoke Ullumff …impossible.
"Captain, try these vegetable protein orbs with spices. They are called 'peanuts' and Urrumm found a heat-exchanging device that keeps things cold. You will never guess what was in it?" the navigator looked over to Urrumm who was pouring liquid from a brown bottle down his throat.
"Fermented grain beverage Captain. 'Beer' it is called here. It is freezing cold and almost hurt my throat but it tastes good. I almost never figured how to open it 'til Nav used his url to punch a couple of holes in the top. It's worth the trouble."
The captain grunted good-naturedly to his men but felt ill at ease. There was too much luxury here. This was too nice for a space crew. I will not give in to all this, he thought, and he was determined not succumb to this... whatever it was... this luxury. Meanwhile, he decided to find out while the men settled in to watch the display...while they ate the 'peanuts' and drank chilled beer.
UmBllatt walked over to the comm console and said, "Computer...(Pause) Do you understand me?” as Ling had demonstrated.
"Yes," the computer answered in Trade.
"What is your duty?"
"To monitor the environment of this room and serve the beings within it."
"So you listen to anything in this room...at all times?"
"Yes."
Just as I thought... We are being spied on all the time. "Do you ever sleep or stop working?"
"No."
"Does someone replace you at intervals?" UmBllatt said hoping that he could use a shift change to slip out undetected.
"No."
"How can you monitor and never rest?" UmBllatt said thinking these beings were trying to trick them somehow.
"I am a computer."
"What is a computer?" UmBllatt asked wondering what being would lie in such a flat voice.
"I am a non-sentient electronic device programmed to answer and respond to simple verbal queries."
UmBllatt didn't know what electronic was but these beings had a very sophisticated intercom system and he wanted to trade for that knowledge. Keeping someone to watch us at all times meant that these beings, indeed, thought we were important after all. Good, he thought and glanced over at the display while easing toward the last of a large bowl of salted peanuts.
He eased over to the door and turned an ear toward it but heard nothing. He palmed the panel as he had been shown and the door slid open with a hydraulic hiss. He leaned his head out the door and twisted oculars to see in all directions before he started to ease down the hallway. It never occurred to him to ask the computer to display a diagram of the station and yet he had no innate sense of direction. One direction seemed as good as any and it seemed that he had not been seen this area before. A door slid open before him and a young technician stepped out of a small workroom right in front of UmBllatt.
Their surprise was almost identical for each, but as the tech stumbled to use his ill practiced Trade, UmBllatt cuffed him on the side of his head and knocked him against the wall. UmBllatt was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery. He slipped the tech's ID tab off his wrist, and tried to put it on his own arm. The small bracelet wouldn't fit so he tucked the ID tab into his waistband. He palmed open the green door and noted the lighter gravity as he tossed the unconscious body into the workroom. Moments later he emerged and proceeded down the corridor. He noticed the green striped line down the center of this corridor of lower gravity. I must be in the areas where the primitives from the planet below live.
UmBllatt's navigator had watched him leave and was puzzled where he could have been going. It wasn't as if you could just stroll around on another planet...moon. He had observed the interplay with the Earth guide and the captain and he was a little bit awed by these beings use of electrical devices. He thought he'd get up and see if this 'comm' console was as interesting as the projection system that he had been watching. He walked over to the console.
"Where is the captain?" he asked...silence from the wall. "Where are we?" he asked...silence from the wall. Ummffh, he grunted as he remembered that the captain had had to use that odd honorific prior to the wall talking. "Computer. Where is the captain?"
"Captain UmBllatt is on level three, near the oxygen/water distillation plant."
"Where is that?"
The computer displayed a map of the lunar complex on this level and a red circle indicated the captain and showed that he was moving. "You are here," the computer said and indicated the area where the navigator and his crewmates were staying.
"How do I get there from here?' he asked and the computer displayed arrows showing the shortest path to the captain. "I wish I could copy that," the navigator said to himself and looked around for some means to trace the map. A glossy, plastic coated map scrolled out of the lower section of the console and the amazed navigator. "What is he doing?" the navigator said in a loud, excited voice that attracted the oculars of his crewmates.
"He is attempting to enter a minimal pressure area of the complex."
"Is he in danger there?" the navigator asked as the other members of the crew stood and moved toward him.
"Yes. He is not heeding my warnings and is forcing open the controls on the airlock to an unpressurized area," the computer said.
Just then, the low pressure warning horns blared in the hallways and the displays flashed messages of instructions.
The crewmembers swiveled their eyes toward each other and the navigator held up the map. They rapidly exited the door following the lead of the navigator... some were armed but had no wish to use their personal weapons...yet.
***
"What the hell!" Kyger said as he jumped out of bed when the horns blared. The intercom chimed seconds after the horns blared as he pulled on his pants. "Go ahead."
"Colonel, seems like the alien captain, breached the airlock in the oxygen generation area. The containment field snapped on but he screwed up a lot of equipment. Didn't hurt pressure too much; about like 3,500 meters in altitude currently. That volume will take a lot of atmosphere to fill. Sheared the link to the alien ship -- don't know what they think yet...the alien appears to be alive but the deck gravity generators are off-line and it's normal lunar gravity in that area," said the tech.
"Team suited and in route - armed. Where is the crew? Notify Earth. Get some ships up to take care of that ship if it does anything."
The tech paused and turned away from the display a seco
nd as he looked for the information. "They have all left their quarters and are moving toward the damaged area."
"Issue orders for them to stop where they are and have Ling me suited up at Junction four of green wing."
"Orders to stop - Ling suited at Junction four of green wing...yes sir."
Shit, Brad thought, Why can't anything go smoothly for once?
***
The wall console computers ordered the aliens to stop as they marched toward their captain's last known area. They ignored the warnings and drew the few hidden hand weapons they had carried. At last, they came to a corridor with green arrows on the floor with a polycarbonate barrier closing off the hallway. Swiveling oculars at each other, they stood back as one aimed his handgun at the center of the shield. The handgun had limited range but it rapidly cut an Ullumff sized hole in the polycarbonate. The atmosphere started whistling to the area of lower pressure but they stepped quickly through and immediately noticed the actual lunar gravity. It was very hard to hurry since they were used to almost one and a half times Earth gravity and the lunar gravity was only one sixth that of Earth -- so as they tried to sprint forward they would hit the ceiling...hard. One crewmember almost knocked himself out.
***
Ling was at Junction Four well before the appointed time because she had already been suited, when she got the call to meet Brad. She had anticipated trouble and started suiting up when she heard the alarms. It just so happened that she was running through her check lists on her suit when the aliens cut through the pressure barrier to the damaged section and she had her shield unit maxed for those seconds when the pressure change swept her down the hall at the speed of the atmosphere because she had no inertia. She swept through the hole in the barrier and headed straight at the alien crew.
The aliens saw her coming and before conscious thought - the navigator had raised his weapon and fired at her. Only because her shield was at maximum did it spend itself harmlessly at her. She had actually been facing away and had not noticed she had been traveling or that she had been in mortal danger for she was facing back up the corridor and, at that, had been looking at the sensors inside her helmet. She cycled through the rest of her test cycle, cut the field back and felt the light gravity. At first, thinking her suit had malfunctioned; she noticed the lights in the corridor were on the emergency lighting. She realized she wasn't at Junction Four any longer. She turned around and was startled to be face to face with the alien crewmembers. "What are you doing here?" she asked them in Ullumff.
Well...she would relate later...you should have seen their faces. This being, apparently the one that had been guiding them around, comes flying to a stop through a hail of their shots and starts talking to them like they were out for a stroll. They couldn't talk for many seconds and they just stared...oculars riveted on the diminutive figure.
The navigator broke the silence. "We were in search of our captain. He was entering the area ahead and may need help." He was startled with this alien...it had a good command of his native language even though its voice was much higher in pitch than a proper Ullumff. How could it act so composed?
"Let me go first to make sure that the atmosphere is acceptable. Use short hops and don't touch anything."
The navigator felt shame at using his weapon on the guide and shoved it down into his clothing, as did the others around him as they noticed his movement.
***
"Ling, the computer says you are in the damaged section - with the crewmembers. What goes? Are you all right?" Brad queried over the comm trying to keep the mix of anger and concern out of his voice.
"Okay, Colonel. Not my fault. Get me some support if this turns ugly but they seem to have no hostile intent at the moment...just want to get to their captain. Don't know how I got here but we're moving to the damaged airlock area. I'll turn on vid for you...how's that...now the pan."
Kyger had been upset when Ling wasn't at the corridor to meet him. The additional pressure loss was not as great and did not set off the alerts but it wasn't until he queried her whereabouts that he got angry and concerned. She was in the damaged area with six aliens of questionable intent and they had just found a still unconscious tech without his keytab. Three armed station members came flying up and Ling hand signed them to stand down - it was okay.
"Let our personnel get your captain. It is low gravity and cooler than is comfortable for you and you have no protection if there any more loss of atmosphere," Ling said to the crewmembers.
The navigator grunted and the others begrudgingly started back to their quarters accompanied by two of the station crew. Brad arrived as they were leaving.
"Let's find out how bad it is," Kyger said and Ling and the other station crew headed toward the damaged airlock.
They found the captain unconscious-- clinging to the controls of the airlock exit. At least it had not been full vacuum but there was no telling how the low pressure and temperature had affected his hearing or sight or, for that matter, anything else. They strapped an oxygen generator around him, attached the field generator to the rear strap, and set it to an intensity that allowed them to push his weightless form down the hall. They set the temperature inside his 'private' field to thirty-one degrees Celsius. Brad was in constant contact with his team as they were in route.
"Set up a time dilation field around this area and get it repaired. Set them up in one too so their folks on the ship will be none the wiser."
"Don't you think that when the aliens here compare notes with the aliens back on the ship it will give them a big insight into how we use our fields?" Ling asked.
Brad grunted and Ling realized that these Ullumff had a lot in common with humans -- at least, in common with men. She just shook her head.
They pushed the captain's form into the quarters and the alien crew backed a bit away from the earthlings since they did not understand what was going on. Kyger touched his controls and the slaved unit on the captain shut off and was removed.
The navigator realized that these beings could claim the body for themselves but they had brought it back which showed good etiquette. He was next in seniority and it would be expected of him to continue the trade and make this a profitable trip. "We will start the trade negotiations after some sleep if that is acceptable."
It was Ling's turn to be flabbergasted. Here they nearly get their captain killed and they act like nothing happened. What a conscience. "Very well. Please indicate when you are prepared and we will come to a room across the hall. It is set up for a meeting. Don't you want to see if your captain is going to be fit before you start negotiations?"
Ling translated for Brad as the navigator turned to the body, at least, he thought it had been the body of his captain. He was alive. How could this be? The captain must have been killed if he was exposed to vacuum. Even Ullumff were not that tough. These beings must have lied about what the captain had been doing in order to get him out of the negotiations. He felt himself getting angry and the other crewmembers caught his anger scent and started grunting in protest.
Ling, who had removed her helmet long since, smelled the delicious cinnamon like scent and felt very aroused. "You smell wonderful," she blurted as the sexual rush flushed through her and she was instantly embarrassed by her outburst.
Her statement and the awakening of the captain came at the same instant and the ensuing confusion of the navigator cut any anger off short.
"Look...he is alive!" shouted another of the alien crew.
Sure enough...the captain was lumbering back and forth and then rolled onto his knees and stood up shakily.
"Captain, you're alive!" shouted the navigator who was so relieved that he eliminated on the floor, right then, and there. The other crewmembers looked at him in disgust.
"Of course I'm alive," the captain said and thought rapidly..."but these defective computer directions and defective airlocks almost killed me."
Brad looked at Ling and thought, so that is how you're going to play it...well it
is ‘gonna’ cost you at the bargaining table -- oh large gut...count on it. Brad pointed to the keytab for his station crewmember that had been attacked and said, "What about that?"
UmBllatt took the green keytab bracelet that had been taken from his tech and tossed it at Brad's feet. "A crewmember attacked me at one point but I was able to defend myself."
Ling started to protest but Brad held up his hand to stop her. "Negotiations start at ten 'dim' across the hall. Do not bring any weapons," said in Trade to the captain.
UmBllatt grunted and Brad motioned Ling and the other station members out.
"He was a bald faced liar. Why did you let him get away with that?" Ling asked.
"He didn't get away with anything other than some minor damage to our station and the bruised ego of our crew who should have been on guard. We still are going to have negotiations in the morning. Sarge," he said turning to the other station security, "You monitor these goons. They are tough as hell...you saw the captain...he would need hospitalization if he had been human...and he came back acting like he was the victim. They have things we want and we have things they want...I don't like it but we'll have to deal with that. Rett keeps saying they are shrewd at bargaining...I'm beginning to believe him. We'll need to be on our toes."
They were silent as they headed back to their quarters. He’d station guards on both corridors. Pity that he thought the computer monitoring system and one guard down the hall would be enough… stupid. Brad decided he'd try to get Andrew and Susan up here. He'd need their help with this and wondered what information he should release to the media...none, he decided...at least for the present.
Captain UmBllatt was frustrated and he had a headache that hurt from the base of his oculars to his...feet. I didn't learn who had supplied these beings with their technology but it would cost them in negotiations. He looked forward to the upcoming meetings while his crew stayed fixed to the 'entertainment center'. He couldn't understand what was so fascinating even though the picture quality and animals were excellent...but...he jerked his eyes away and went in to prop himself up for a rest.
