The Santa Maria Incident

The Santa Maria Incident

"Santa Maria, this is Pluto control. You are cleared for departure at your discretion."

Normally this would have been followed by informaton on routing and traffic, and possibly by a warning about solar activity. We didn't need any of that. We were headed the other way.

After a few seconds, the speakers crackled to life again. "May the Great Power go with you." I smiled inwardly at that. When the original Santa Maria set out, it would have been, "Vaya con Dios.", go with God. Now, since the Ecumenical Act, one could not publicly mention one belief system without acknowledging the rest. That took too long, and was sure to offend some tiny sect that worshipped the ghost of Elvis or had it's own private messiah. So now people just referred to the Great Power and left it to the hearer to decide who or what that was.

Well, whatever the Great Power was, we surely needed all the help we could get. The first manned interstellar mission! There would certainly be no human help available! While I was having my religious flashback, the comm officer acknowledged Pluto control's message. Now I turned to the chief engineer. "Are we ready to go?"

He made a great show of checking the instruments he had been staring at for the last half hour. "We have a green board.", he assured me.

"Then let's get going.' I faced forward and spoke to the helmsman. "Mr. Sering, full standard thrust. You know the course."

"Full standard ,aye.", Ensign Sering replied. It took little more than the push of a button to get us under weigh. He had known what my order would be.

Full standard is the fastest we are allowed to accelerate under peacetime conditions. In wartime the drive governors would be disabled and we would accelerate as fast as possible. I had officially logged an order that, for this mission, the drive governors would be disabled, blandly ignoring the fact that, as is usually the case, the governors had actually been disabled within the first hour of our shakedown cruise. Now we were pushed into our seats by a force of about 1.5G. Full standard was considerably more than that, but the grav compensators took care of the rest.

"Let me know when we achieve one hundred thousand kilometers separation.", I ordered, leaning back in my seat. The military is known for 'hurry up and wait', but is not often you can do both at once. We were accelerating at about 35m/s and still waiting to really get started.

"Captain, we're coming up on 100k klicks."

I jerked to alertness. I must have fallen asleep. Yeah, that would explain it. "Still a green board?", I asked the chief engineer.

"We're good to go.", he responded, not bothering to put on a show this time.

"Mr. Sering, engage Chernikoff generator." Don't ask me to explain the Chernikoff field. Exotic physics is not my area of expertese. All I know is that, while it won't let us travel faster than light, it does somehow nullify the time dilation effect. Thus, while it would still take us more than two years to travel to Alpha Centauri and back, at leat we would not return to Earth to find that ten thousand years had passed. That was good enough for me.

The downside to the C. field was that no information could pass into or out of it. That meant that if something went wrong, it would be two years before space command would even start to worry about us. We were well and truly on our own.

I settled back in my seat to wait. Something was bound to go wrong. It always did. Sure enough, after a few moments the helmsman spoke up. "Here it comes.", he said, sounding rather like a spectator at a sporting event, interested, but not concerned.

"You don't sound very worried Mr. Sering", I said. "If you like I can give you something to worry about. After all, for this mission the captian has been given plenary powers, up to and including corporal punishment, and even expulsion of the offending party from the ship!"

"But sir, this...", he stopped, apparently realizing he was about half a syllable short of insubordination. "Aye aye, sir.", he concluded, returning to his displays.

"Now, Mr. Sering, what is this emergency we're facing?"

His reply came slowly. "It must be an equipment malfunction, sir. The gravimeter is detecting some sort of mass."

I shook my head. "That's impossible! Instruments don't work in C. space!"

Ensign Sering glanced back at me. "That's why I think it must be a malfunction."

"Engineer?", I snapped, glancing in his direction.

"Running diagnostics now.", he replied, his hands flying over his board.

I drew a deep breath. "In the meantime, tell me about this supposed mass, Mr. Sering."

"Well, if the sensor is working, and if the readings can be trusted, we have a mass of about ten thousand tons about twenty degrees off our port beam at a range of about sixty thousand kilometers."

I looked up at the ceiling. "This can't be happening!", I said. "Any result on that diagnostic?"

The engineer shrugged. "No sign of malfunction." I thought about reprimanding him for his casual attitude, but the whole thing was so absurd!

"Sir,", Ensign Sering spoke up, "If it's really out there, it should be in visual range."

"Visual range? In C. space? Well, why not? If the gravimeter works, why not the cameras? Mr. Sering, activate port forward camera." The viewscreen, which had been turned off since we entered Chernikoff space, now flickered to life. It showed a field of blue, slightly lighter than 'sky' blue, but somehow glowing, sort of irridescent. Those who don't have to face it call it Blue Screen. Those of us who travel in C. space regularly try to pretend it isn't there.

As we watched, a black blob appeared at the edge of the screen and seemed to swim to the center. This was actually caused by the camera panning to the input coordinates. The unknown artifact was too small to be clearly seen. It looked like a cylinder with some sort of projections coming from the front end.

"Magnification!", I whispered rather hoarsely. I dont know why I whispered. It just seemed appropriate. Ensign Sering flipped a switch and the object seemed to leap toward us. There was a concerted gasp, and then a few giggles. Although the object did not nearly fill the screen, details were clearer now. The front projections were clearly some sort of tentacles, which could now clearly seen to be moving. Furthermore, we could now see what seemed to be wings on the object's back. Whatever they were, they did not appear to be connected to it's propulsion system. They looked like they were folded back and showed no sign of movement.

The Engineering Officer was clearly unnerved. "Is that a ship or a creature?",he asked in a quivering voice.

"Let's not find out.", I said, "Helmsman, come starboard twenty degrees."

"Starboard twenty, aye." Ensign Sering replied, making the necessary adjustment. After a moment he spoke again. "No good, the bogey has seen us. He is now on a collision course, velocity approaching 0.1C."

I looked at the ceiling again. "This can't be right." One tenth the spped of light! We could accelerate to that speed, but not quickly. "Full emergency power Mr. Sering!" This was why I had disabled the governors. I thumbed a switch on the panel in front of me. "All hands, prepare for radical maneuvers!" In other words, 'Hang on, we're going for a ride!'

The ship was too well insulated for the sound of the engines to actually reach the bridge, but it seemed like a barely inaudible whine began to build. At the same time there was a feeling like being slowly and irregularly squeezed. The Grav compensators were not designed for this , and their preformance was imperfect.

I pushed another intercom button. "Ready the lasers!". After a pause I added "Ready the missles too!" Officially, these were not weapons.
they were intended to deal with debris that might collide with the ship and cause damage. Everyone knew, however, that they could also be used offensively.

"Ready the lasers?", Ensign Sering yelped. "But sir..." His distress was understandable. No one knew what would happen if you fired a laser or a missle in C. space, but everyone agreed it wouldn't be pretty.

"We may need them later.", I explained. "If so, there may not be time to run them up. Now, what's the status of the bogey?"

"Still accelerating, sir. There's no way we can outrun it."

I glanced again at the ceiling but voiced no further complaints. "Blast! Crash stop! Drop us out of C. space, Max deceleration!" This maneuver was definately not recommended; but then the manuals did not envision this sort of scenario. Ensign Sering's hands flew as he executed an emergency shutdown of the Chernikoff generator and caused the ship to flip end for end. This allowed the drive which had been on max acceleration to begin max deceleration. As he did this, the entire world went grey for a few seconds. For an instant,before the compensators could adjust, we were subjected to the full force of the drive. If this had lasted more than a few milliseconds we all would have died.

Even before my vision had fully cleared I saw that the bogey had followed us into realspace. I snapped out an order "Fire a shot accross his....bow! No, belay that!" A laser fired in a vacuum is virtually invisible. A warning shot would probably not even be noticed.

As I opened my mouth to order a full salvo, I realized it was already too ate. The bogey now filled the screen, overlapping it on all sides. "Brace for impact!", I yelled.

Even as I spoke I realized I had not activated the intercom. It didn't matter though; as I watched a giant tentacle slid through the forward bulkhead as if it wasn't there. I don't know how long it was; the creature could have been ten meters from the hull or ten kilometers. suffice it to say that it was at least long enough to reach the back of the bridge. It seemed to move delicately and slowly as is flailed across the deck. I know that sounds contradictory, but that's the way it was.

As it writhed it came within a meter of where I sat, and I seemed to have all the time in the world to examine it. For most of it's length that I could see, it was slightly thicker than a man. At some indefinable point it began to narrow, so that it's tip looked sharp enough to draw blood. It seemed to be made of concentric rings stacked tightly togather. I don't know if it was made of metal, plastic, flesh, or something incomprehensible.

The sight of this monstrous appendage passing through the hull as if through a mist produced feelings of shock, dispair, horror. I merely sat and stared at it as one might at a train wreck in progress; revulsed by it, but unable to look away. As the tentacle swept across the bridge, it came in contact with Ensign Sering at a point about two meters from the tip. Faster than the eye could see it wrapped itself around his arms and chest.

If the tentacle had seemed to move slowly before, it now seemed to move with blinding speed. Mr. Sering was pulled out of his seat and his screams, more like those of a young girl than a grown man, were cut off as he and the tentacle disappeared through the hull.

I turned my eyes to the view screen and saw that the creature had somehow reversed course, and was now receding as rapidly as it had come toward us, which seemed to defy the laws of physics. Already it was too far away for me to see the human body which must be clutched in one of the tentacles.

As I watched, the screen seemed to flicker and go black. No, it must be a complete power failure, because the entire bridge was blacked out. [Worse than that, my subconscious said. This is what the world looks like between photons.]

As I struggled with this fresh assault on my senses, a bolt of lightning seemed to streak across the fabric of reality. It did not fade away; instead it widened, and the hand of God [the Great Power] reached down from it and grabbed my shoulder. Then it withdrew, only to return with a hypodermic needle which it emptied into my arm. After a few somewhat blurry moments, unconsciousness descended on me like a warm, comforting blanket.

A few days later, I sat in the hospital cafeteria drinking almost tasteless coffee and reading the official communique about 'The Santa Maria Incident'. It explained that the A.I. which operated and oversaw the V.R. simulator had developed a massive fault. Things had gotten badly out of hand before the simulation could be shut down. Experts were now going over every line of source code to make sure such a thing could never happen again.

I laid down the communique, and as I continued to drink my bland hospital coffee, I thought about what it didn't say, what it didn't explain. You see, I have the constitution of a horse, and exceptional powers of observation. If it were not so, I would not have been given command of this mission.

Thus it was that I was still conscious and somewhat alert when they pulled me from my V.R. couch. Alert enough to see the couch two down from my own. Alert enough to see the name Sering on the side of it. Alert enough to watch them open it. Alert enough to see that it was empty.