Fool's Errand, Part One (The Nine Galaxies)

Note: The Zephyrian species is Arthur Borglestein's concept. I have adapted them somewhat, but they are still mostly his.  

Another note : Sorry about the text size. I'm working on it. Try zooming in if your eyes are breaking trying to read this.

The light would not reach an inhabited world for millenia.

               A spaceship, accompanied by a smattering of photons emitted by the collapse of its hyperspatial bubble, had appeared in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole in the center of the Muttering Dwarf Galaxy¹. It was a large luxury ship, designed for interplanetary tours and sightseeing. It certainly wasn't designed to navigate the often unpredictable environment around a black hole. Nevertheless, its owner, a respectable and wealthy Zocronnan named Sanar, had at great personal expense arranged for a trip to this one. He claimed it was for 'the honor, advancement, and prestige of our Colony²', but even those on the trip who didn't think it was a waste of credits could see through that. A few were beginning to wonder if Sanar was entirely sane.

               It was for a similar reason that the ship's Zephyrian pilot was gliding through a corridor to the common room. Upon reaching the door (which was, for the seventeenth time, locked by one of the Zocronnans), it, for the seventeenth time, bypassed the lock through a backdoor in the door's integrated computer system. A strong, acrid smell, something like fresh carrion, wafted out into the corridor. The Zephyrian took no notice, and slowly pushed itself into the cavernous room. It floated at the entrance for a few moments, glancing around the room; above it was a storage alcove, containing fewer bottles of Aquanymphan ale than when it last looked, in front of it were twenty-four openings, leading to burrow-like private rooms, and below it were the twenty-four Zocronnans gawking at the view of the black hole on a viewscreen. Quietly, it cleared its throat.

               The Zocronnans, startled, turned around to face whoever it was who had made such a characteristically humanoid sound. Some were so startled that they forgot to keep a grip on the handholds and ended up drifting away. Sanar was the most startled and managed to propel himself at an alarming speed towards a spot next to the doorway.

               The ship's now very disgruntled owner turned to the pilot.

               "I don't want any more trouble from you! Get out!", Sanar spluttered in his native language of clicks and hisses, forgetting to turn on his translator.

               "A good day to you too, Sanar," said the Zephyrian in the same language.

               The two beings stared at each other, the Zocronnan a large, twelve-legged, brownish insectoid creature, seething with rage, and the Zephyrian a two-and-a-half meter tall pale humanoid with flowing blue hair and a black cloak, staring as calmly as ever at Sanar through its yellow, almost catlike eyes. The smell slowly changed from fresh carrion to rotting, inedible, probably poisoned carrion, the Zocronnan chemical signal for anger.

Absentmindedly, Sanar switched on his translator³.

               "Atmosphere of tension! Atmosphere of rage! Atmos-", it began murmuring in Standard⁴.

Sanar switched it back off and resumed his stare, ignoring the faint smell of amusement wafting from the others.

               Finally, he turned to the others and spoke.

               "This Zephyrian here has invaded our privacy again, and, what is more, mocks our language!"

               "It's fluent...", said one of the others quietly, and indeed the pilot spoke Zocronnan near perfectly, the only error being that Zocronnans hardly ever say 'good day'.

               "Quiet!", hissed the ship's owner, "And you! Get out!", he said to the pilot.

               "I have every right to remain here, and under the Spaceflight Code and my conscience I am obligated," the pilot responded, still in Zocronnan.

               "You have NO right to remain here, and stop speaking our language!", yelled Sanar.

               "If you insist, I will speak Standard," said the Zephyrian in Standard, after setting its translator to Zocronnan, "but this is not a private room, and under Section Six of the Spaceflight Code, every registered being on this ship has every right to be here."

               "Fine, Zephyrian. What do you have to say? Make it quick."

               "We cannot stay at this distance much longer. There is a large cloud of gas nearby which will soon fall into the black hole and will certainly disrupt our orbit," announced the pilot.

               "This is a good ship! We can restore our orbit," scoffed the owner.

               "Unfortunately we cannot; this ship is designed for hyperspatial travel, not navigation around large masses. I hardly think we could escape with a maximum acceleration of a fifth of a daltol⁵ per delt⁶ per delt."

               "We should leave, you say. No!"

               "No, that is not what I mean," assured the pilot, "what I mean is that we must move to a more distant orbit if we are to avoid the risk of being pushed into a closer, decaying, inescapable one."

               "We will stay!", yelled the pilot.

               "Under Section Eight of the Spaceflight Code, I am required to prevent our deaths, even if it means disobeying your orders. I shall move us to a different orbit. If the cloud of gas is dense enough, then I shall move us out of orbit entirely. Good day," concluded the pilot.

               The pilot turned itself around with a few tugs on the handles surrounding the door and pushed itself into the corridor. Tapping the walls deftly with its slender fingers to maintain speed and avoid crashing when it came to bends, it quickly vanished from sight.

               "Come back here! We will remain in this orbit!", screeched the owner. "This is an affront to the Colony, Zephyrian!"

               "You are quite mistaken! This is an affront only to you, and even then a justified one!", the Zephyrian yelled back from the corridor. Then the soft click of the control room's door closing bounced down the hall and the pilot began to set the controls.

               Sanar stared through the open doorway, now angry and somewhat flummoxed. Besides Section One, he hadn't realized the Spaceflight Code contained anything but starship safety specifications and seldom-used protocols. This would certainly make things a lot harder.

               The view of the black hole in the viewscreen shrank as a faint, distorted ring of plasma appeared around it, adding even more strangeness to the gravitationally contorted image. As the others continued gawking at it and the pilot kept the ship from being dragged towards the event horizon, Sanar slowly drifted to one wall of his private room due to the ship's slight acceleration. He folded his twelve arms in thought, trying to figure out what to do next.

 . . .

FOOTNOTES

1 So named because of the extremely strong, mysterious, and as of yet unexplained radio signals found to have been emitted from the galaxy's core about forty million standard years before. Even more mysteriously, the galaxy at that time was observed to be a small spiral galaxy- soon after the radio emissions ended, a light far brighter than a supernova's issued from the same location. Soon after that, the central black hole increased in mass by a large factor, causing most of the galaxy to fall into the center.

2 A colony of between one hundred and one hundred thousand is the basic social unit in Zocronnan culture. At one point in its evolutionary history, the colony-based social structure resembled that of ants or bees, though the sole fertile "hive queen" vanished millions of years before the modern Zocronnan species evolved.

3 Small, portable translator devices are ubiquitous in the Nine Galaxies.

4 In this case, Standard refers to the vocal (pronounceable by most humanoids) form of the language, though there are many syntactically identical versions of the language, not all of them sound-based.

5 Daltol: Standard unit of length. Approximately 0.3913 m.

6 Delt: Standard unit of time. Approximately 0.5623 s.