The
Zephyrian sat impassive in the control room, watching on a viewscreen
as the arguments began and the passengers quickly turned against it.
It was safe where it was behind the control room's locked door, and
had no concerns. It would bring the ship back into hyperspace about a
day later, as was planned, and then it would rejoin the others at the
Muttering Dwarf Hub Station. There it would stay until some other
curious group of travelers came, and though they probably wouldn't be
as much trouble as these ones, things would go much the same way. Its
life would go on in the usual Zephyrian way for another century or
three, and then it would be forgotten in the onrush of years and
deluge of new lives.
What
it still couldn't figure out was why Sanar had wanted the ship to
fall into the black hole. It seemed like an incredibly stupid goal.
It had gone through the ship's owner's bio in the computer files
many times, and found no explanation.
The
pilot was passing the time calculating the motion of objects in a
three-body system and composing fugues in various keys in its head
when it noticed something in its peripheral vision. It was a blinking
red dot on one of the viewscreens. The pilot moved over to the screen
and read the overlaid text.
DEACTIVATED
AIR FILTER, ID C-8
The
Zephyrian tapped the dot and a 3D projection of the ship's schematics
appeared. The ventilation shafts near the dot were quickly turning
red. Somebody had dumped a liquid into a vent in the common room, and
deactivated the filter to make sure it could cause trouble. As it
watched, more red dots appeared around the common room and more vents
were filled. One dot briefly disappeared, but blinked on again
quickly after.
The
pilot accessed the security feed on another screen, and was presented
with the blurry underside of a piece of tape.
The
Zocronnans were trying as hard as they could to get its attention,
and they certainly were succeeding- if they kept the air filters off,
the oxygenators would be smothered in the liquid, and they would all
slowly suffocate. If the Zephyrian didn't try to fix the filters, it
would be violating the Spaceflight Code. Sighing softly, it set the
controls one last time, left the control room, and locked the door
behind it.
Entering
the common room, the pilot noticed the door wasn't locked for once.
It also noticed that the air was filled with half-empty, drifting
bottles of Aquanymphan ale. Finally, it noticed that the Zocronnans
were clustering around the affected vents.
“Must
you do this? It doesn't benefit any of us,” it said. Its translator
produced the strongest smell of despair it could, along with the
necessary Zocronnan clicks and hisses.
The
Zocronnans did nothing but increase the anger and derision of their
scents. Sighing again, the pilot went to each of the vents and
switched the filters back on. Then, after it had finished, all of its
limbs were grabbed at once and the Zocronnans tied it to the
handholds on the wall. Nobody came to stop them. Apparently the
elders and the few others who had stayed sane had been forced out of
the room.
“You
really can't break the Spaceflight Code, can you?”, derided Sanar.
“No,
that would be unlawful. I have no reason to, and you would have
blocked the oxygenators and suffocated anyway if I had,” answered
the pilot in Zocronnan, unable to reach its translator.
“Now,
we have control of the ship! You couldn't have broken the Code for
that?”
“You
will have control of the ship once you guess the password. I think
you'll find it quite difficult to do that within the span of a single
day,” corrected the pilot.
“A
single day? We have forever! We can force the password out of you if
we need to,” threatened the owner.
“You
have a single day. I have programmed the ship to enter hyperspace and
return to the Hub at the agreed time. I have done everything I can to
make this trip go exactly as planned. My imprisonment here is not a
setback, it is merely an inconvenience.”
Sanar
did not answer. He only deepened his scent before turning, pushing
himself off the wall and leaving.
“I
have kept my side of the agreement and done nothing wrong, why are
you so determined to put yourself in danger and defy yours?”, the
pilot muttered as its mouth was covered in tape. It began humming one
of its fugues but was silenced by a collective hiss from the
Zocronnans.
The
quiet of the library was suddenly interrupted by a whooshing as Sanar
flew through the air towards Zarannan. The latter was reading Tales
from the Singularity, his wonderment just as strong as it had been
when he was a larva.
Zarannan
looked up at the visitor and read a few lines out loud.
“
Now the Great Minds proceeded to show the travelers more of
their powers.
The
twenty-four watched as the in skies above them worlds innumerable
wheeled and changed,
their
every motion a thought of the Minds, by whom this display could be
triggered on a whim.
“Why
do you not leave here, and rule the galaxy?”, asked one.
“This
realm surpasses all your galaxies.” ”
Sanar
shivered briefly. The power they would be dealing with was
astonishing.
Then,
the realization that he was in awe of a passage from an old,
exaggerated larva's book hit him and his scent became one of
annoyance.
“There
is a problem.”
Zarannan
looked up from the book again. “What is it? Did the Zephyrian not
come?”
“No,
it was captured. The problem is that it has locked the control room
and programmed the ship to leave in a day,” Sanar explained with a
scent of regret.
Zarannan
snapped the book shut and flew to the door, even flapping his twelve
spindly limbs in an attempt to get there faster.
“We
must figure out the password!”
The
ship's owner hesitated for a few delts before deciding not to follow.
“That
might not be the best idea,” he said.
Zarannan
turned slowly.
“What!”,
he yelled.
“We
have tried. We probably won't be able to guess the password, so let's
not waste time on that. We should return, and maybe try again a few
years from now. The Singularity will still be there,” Sanar argued.
“But
we cannot return! The pilot would report us, and we would be put on
trial! That would be bad, very bad. Our only choice is to go on with
it,” the other argued back.
“We
could plead insanity,” suggested Sanar.
For
a moment, it seemed that either of them could suddenly burst out in
olfactory laughter. The moment didn't last long.
A
sharp, stern smell from Zarannan made the owner give in. They might
as well try.
They
tried for what seemed like years. They tried various words in
Standard, random jumbles of characters, smashing the door open with a
crowbar, names of well-known planets, historical figures from various
galaxies and eras, smashing the door open with a bigger crowbar,
curse words, puns from an advanced Standard textbook they found in
the library, text from signs they had seen in the Hub, mythological
concepts, 'OPEN', 'OPEN OR WE WILL HIT THIS DOOR WITH SOMETHING WORSE
THAN A CROWBAR', smashing the door open with a laser drill they
couldn't figure out how to operate, more curse words, and finally,
more random jumbles of characters.
All
the while, passengers had been visiting them to cheerfully share
ideas for passwords, none of which worked. The elders and their
supporters occasionally left their rooms to try to convince the
others to let the pilot go, but always failed. The pilot itself did
nothing to escape. Finally, after the laser drill gambit failed,
Zarannan decided to give up.
On
the way back to the common room, where the two attempted hijackers
were heading to regretfully inform the Zephyrian that it had won, an
idea came to Sanar.
“Don't
Zephyrians love physics? We could try equations.”
Zarannan
spun around and faced the owner. “You couldn't have thought of that
half a day ago?”, he hissed angrily.
“That's
not how thinking works!”
“Whatever,”
dismissed Zarannan, “I'm going to try equations.”
“What
makes you think they will work?”, hissed Sanar.
The
other Zocronnan didn't answer. He was heading to the library.
Sanar
joined him and they began searching for a book on physics. It wasn't
long before they found one; a textbook for accelerated science courses
entitled 'The Well-to-do Larva's Big Book of Physical Equations'.
After a few failed attempts to open the control room's door using the
equations for classical gravitation, relativistic gravitation,
hyperspatial mechanics, and a few quantum equations, they, quite
surprisingly, managed to get it open with the four equations of
classical electromagnetism.
Sanar
was mildly disturbed by Zarannan's scent of triumph as the door swung
open, as it was laced with strong hints of lust for power, and
perhaps slight malice. Essentially, the smell was the equivalent of a
humanoid's evil grin.
“Now
our Colony, our species, will have honor above all others'!”
.
. .
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