Star Trek: Outwardly Mobile

Episode 07: The Other

(Stardate 45115)

By

Jay P. Hailey

And

Dennnis Washburn

 

The buoy's last message was "Do not approach Gerard's World." That was all.

I looked at Harksain Varupuchu, my Andorian Chief of Operations. He looked back calmly.

"Could the rest of the message have been lost?" I asked him.

"I doubt it, Captain. The buoy shows no sign of tampering, or damage. The message has an internal integrity check, which would show if the message had been altered."

The buoy belonged to the Gallowayans, a race of space traders who frequented the area. They used the buoys as bulletin boards, posting messages about hazards or technical details of travel in the region. Sometimes there were personal messages for the crew members of other Gallowayan starships. There was never any information of a commercially valuable nature.

Generally storm warnings were clear cut, and included scans. Legal warnings usually contained the text of the questionable laws that might affect commerce in the area. This buoy had no specifics, just the warning.

"Tillean, please direct long range scans at Gerard's World." I said. We had pulled up along side the buoy when we first received the message, and were attempting to clarify it.

"Captain, I can't get a clear reading from here. There is some sort of radiation interference with our subspace scanners."

"Hmm. Could that be the reason for the warning?" I wondered.

"Possibly" Tillean ventured.

"Does the radiation field pose any danger to the ship?" Li'ira asked.

"Not at the strength I'm reading, Commander." Tillean said.

"Perhaps we could help them out?" I wondered again.

Varupuchu looked at me with a wintry look.

"Do you think it's worth the risk?" Li'ira said.

"Yes. I do." I decided "Helm take us on towards Gerard's World."

I turned to Tillean. "Keep a sharp eye on that scanner and let me know if anything changes."

-*-

It took us four more days to reach the Gerardian System, and by that time the story had become clearer and much less pleasant.

The planet of Gerard's World had not been enveloped by radiation; it was the source of the radiation. The natives had nuked themselves to death.

I continued the approach, anyway. Now, it was painful, grotesque archaeology. Some worlds made it through their atomic period and some didn't. The reasons why were a mystery to the Federation, and a source of some debate.

I didn't tell myself that we might find survivors. I didn't think of what I might do if we found any underground enclaves or small groups of survivors.

I had already decided to try save them if we could.

-*-

We made orbit around Gerard's world and it was worse than it looked. We couldn't get as close to the planet as a standard orbit, because of fallout. They had detonated a doomsday bomb on the southern pole of Gerard's World. It had blown a significant portion of the atmosphere off the planet and into the surrounding space. All of the gaseous wreckage was radioactive.

Nothing survived southern side of the planet.

Isolated shelters had survived, in the northern hemisphere and were now calling for help on their radios, because there wasn't anything else for them to do.

I thought we might have found our survivors, except that the shelters averaged forty thousand inhabitants. They had spent a mind-boggling amount of effort to insure the survival of their people past the end of their world.

Each of the huge shelters was the size of Earth's Spacedock, armored and self contained. They appeared to be atomic powered arcologies, able to recycle air, water and food for hundreds of years.

Their war was worse that they had expected. The shelters that survived were being inundated by much more radiation than their designers could have planned for. The population of Gerard's World was doomed and there was simply nothing to be done.

-*-

After a day of scanning, I called it off. "This is too depressing. There's nothing we can accomplish here. Mr. Spaat, set course for Starbase Twenty-Four and engage, impulse only until we're out of range."

Solemnly the crew began the functions to resume our voyage.

"Is there nothing we can do?" Li'ira whispered to me, not wanted to bring the question up in front of the crew.

I shook my head and keyed up a schematic of one of the shelters on my chair mounted screen. "Can you imagine how much that thing must have cost? A fraction of that effort into peacemaking or diplomacy might have saved them."

Li'ira just looked depressed and said nothing. I didn't blame her. It was a depressing situation.

The Harrier broke orbit and moved away from Gerard's World.

-*-

"Contact, Captain, coming out of warp now!" Varupuchu said, excitedly.

"On screen. Identify."

"Dear God! Level twelve power generation!" Stephanie said

Li'ira barked "Double check your scanners!"

A level twelve energy field was the same as a small star. Nothing that moved at warp speed could generate that much energy, except for one object.

V'Ger had come to Earth nearly one hundred years ago, and had rattled Earth's self confidence badly. A being of godlike power, nothing could even slow it down. The starship Enterprise had stopped it minutes before exterminating all life on Earth. I'm told that the reaction on Earth hadn't been nearly as bad as when the Borg came to earth a while ago. Nobody had any time to understand what was happening until it was a done deal. Nearly all life on Earth would have died wondering what the light show was.

This object didn't look anything like V'Ger. No huge energy cloud, no miles and miles of super-technology starship.

"Confirmed, level twelve energy field." Tillean said.

"Here it comes." Varupuchu said.

From the side effects it must have been doing a pretty good clip. Well in excess of warp nine. It wasn't anything much to look at, physically. It looked like a pile of junk, compressed together tightly. Nevertheless, the power readings were still the same, and a lot of what our sensors were telling us didn't make much sense.

"Open hailing frequencies." I said

Stephanie opened the channel and I stared to speak "This is the Federation Starship USS Harrier. We are on a mission of peaceful exploration and contact. Please talk with us."

The pile of junk stopped dead, and smoothly matched courses with the Harrier. There was no hint of how it accomplished this. There was no thrust or energy fields or anything. Just motion.

"You aren't from the planet ahead." The figure on the bridge said.

We all whirled and turned to face the stranger.

"Intruder alert on the bridge!" Stephanie said, as her phaser appeared in her hand.

The figure's features were indistinct and kind of blurry.

"Ahm, hello." I said to it.

The figure walked over to me. It appeared mostly human. Things kept changing on it.

"You aren't from that planet, are you?" It asked, nodding towards Gerard's

World on the monitor screen.

"No," I said, sadly. "We aren't."

Tillean scanned the figure with her tricorder. "It's not a life form as we understand it, Captain."

"The Harrier's computer has been tampered with." Varupuchu said.

"You are not responsible for the death of that world, are you?" The figure said.

"What?!" I said shocked "No, we're not."

The figure thought about it for a moment. How I could read the expression on its face was a mystery, but I definitely had the impression of expressions.

"I can see by your records that you are not the kind of people who usually destroy worlds." It said.

"You can?" I said.

"The computers have been accessed." Varupuchu said "Every file has been read."

I got a flash. "You're from the other." I pointed at the screen which showed the alien craft.

"I am the other."

The security squad arrived on the bridge at that moment. They saw the stranger and tried to leap to the side, so that they weren't all bunched up near the turbolifts.

A panel on the deck opened up opposite of the onrushing security and I saw a hand stick a phaser out of the access tunnel.

Anyone else would have been seeking cover from the mad rush of security and the hand would have been pointed right as his back.

The figure stood stock still, unconcerned.

I bellowed "Hold your fire!" , but it would have been too late.

Except that they weren't moving anymore. The security stood, mid rush, and mid ambush, stock still.

The figure looked calmly at them "Very nice." It said.

"What is your purpose here?" It said to me.

As I turned to answer, Tillean turned her tricorder on the frozen security officers. "We're here to explore. To see new things and learn from them." I wasn't sure of just how much of our language this figure understood.

"The figure seems to be some sort of solid hologram." Varupuchu informed me. "I have no idea of how it is being projected."

"Very good!" The figure encouraged "That's right."

"What are you doing here?" I asked the figure, amazed at my own temerity.

The figure looked sad. "I am here to eliminate them." It gestured to the screen that displayed Gerard's World."

"What!?" I said. All around the bridge there were similar cries. "You can't!" Stephanie said.

The figure seemed confused. "I must."

"Why?" I said

The figure explained "They have destroyed themselves and the world placed in their stewardship. A whole world full of life forms and natural beauty has been destroyed. The inhabitants are clearly insane."

"Many developing worlds go through a stage of nuclear stand-off." I said "Are we all insane?"

With mild amusement the figure said "Hmmm. Yes. But you grew out of it. You learned better. They did not."

"You can't eliminate a whole race! It would make you no better than they. Besides, they already seem to have done the job by themselves." It was demoralizing arguing on behalf of a dead race that had committed suicide. Or had they?

"Not necessarily." The figure said "There is a three percent chance of some members of that race surviving. If they do, they will have to be filtered through a sequence of hardships. They will have to become ruthless to survive them. When they next emerge into space, they will be ruthless destroyers. This must not come to pass."

"But you might be able to do something else." I said.

"I might?" The figure seemed curious.

"In our culture, when an individual goes insane, they are treated. Look it up in our records. It's all in there."

The figure seemed to think about it for a moment. "Ah! Treatment. Thank you for the suggestion."

With that the Figure disappeared from the bridge and the security officers came to life, speedily securing the bridge. They were mortified when later recordings of the bridge showed that they had been frozen. They experienced no passage of time.

As soon as they were satisfied of the security of the bridge, they ruefully left.

-*-

On Gerard's World, things were changing drastically. In an instant, the fallout disappeared and a great deal of the atmosphere reappeared.

All hints of technological civilization were erased as the planetary ecology reappeared as if by magic.

It took most of an afternoon as we watched.

Satisfied that the situation was well in hand, we turned to leave.

-*-

"Captain, please stop the ship!" Varupuchu said. Without a second thought I said "All stop!" and the Harrier came to a halt.

There were no stars ahead of us.

"Captain, we're in another pocket universe." Tillean reported. "It's approximately 500 a.u. wide. It holds the system of Gerard's world and nothing else."

"Hail The Other." I said "This is the starship Harrier, please let us out." I held my breath. Were we even important enough for The Other to notice?

The stars came back, I took a deep breath. "Helm plot our current location."

"Our current location is unchanged from last reading. We are 1,274 light years away from Starbase Twenty-Four." Spaat reported.

"Captain" Varupuchu reported. "There is no sign of the system. We should be

near Gerard's World, but we are not."

I thought about it for a few moments, but I didn't know what to say.

"Resume our heading for Starbase Twenty-Four."

-*-

We sent a message to the Gallowayan buoy specifying that Gerard's World is no longer there.

After analyzing our sensor readings, we discovered that, besides rehabilitating the ecology of Gerard's World, and eliminating all artifacts of their civilization, The Other eliminated all heavy metals from their world. The Gerardian's next civilization would not be a technological one.

The security officers had been frozen in time. Tillean got good readings of that phenomenon, but couldn't explain it at all.

Looking at the pile of junk that seemed to form The Other was also interesting and mysterious. We could take a spectrum from the light reflecting off its hull. Some bits were billions of years old. Others were more recent.

We saw part of a Federation starship compacted into The Other. It was the Daedalus Class USS Yorktown, NCC 107, missing since 2212.

The oddest bit was the figure that had appeared on the bridge. The reason that it seemed fuzzy and indistinct was that it was actually one hundred and forty seven thousand different images.

Slowed down to maximum possible rate by our computer, we could see the figures flipping past. Each a different person, showing exactly the same expression and pose as the last. This was why we could get impressions of emotions without seeing the actual faces.

Several images repeated in the figure. About thirty percent of the time it was Abraham Lincoln, Zefram Cochrane, or my father. The Other probably got the images from our computer and that of the Yorktown. The images were probably slanted to give us a subconscious feeling of security.

Tillean speculated that it was a probe of some sort from billions of years ago that somehow gained the knowledge and sentient to keep learning and keep going,

by taking whatever material was handy.

I wondered why the concept of treatment was so new to The Other, when it had the Yorktown and her crew to work with.

Tillean speculated that if the amount of data overwhelmed the ability of the probe to correlate and keep track of, then the only way to remember anything might be through association. It could only remember data and concepts that we reminded it of.

Soon the train of "What ifs" became too long to be useful. We simply didn't know enough about The Other.

-*-

A few hours later I was down in the Harrier's lounge sipping a cup of coffee, and winding down. Patricia Flynn came to join me. We had been drinking coffee

together in the afternoons, and talking. I liked talking to Dr. Flynn.

"Quite a day, today, huh?" She said to me. She knew what had happened, since Sickbay has an open channel to the Bridge during emergencies. Her eyes sparkled with humor.

I thought of the incredible feats we had witnessed. I nodded my head, kind of lost in awe. "Yeah."

"So," She said "Why didn't you ask it to send us home?"

Why didn't I...

"D'oh!"

-End-

Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Trek. I claim original characters and situations in this story for me.