Family Law 3: Secrets in the Stars (3 page)

"Might this not be a
different
Caterpillar ship than the one who blew through ahead of us?" Thor asked.

"It could be," Brownie agreed, "but besides doing a radar sweep they transmitted audio. Not that we have any idea
what
they are saying yet, but it was the exact same transmission sequence they sent when they accelerated ahead of us leaving the Badger world. And it wasn't a general broadcast. Signal strength from our other ships indicates they guessed where we would be and their transmission was in a cone directed right at us."

Ha-bob-bob-brie broke the silence. Lee had never heard him speak so dead flat with no inflection at all. "Hmm... Is there still a piece of the action on the table if one wants it?" he asked, carefully not looking at Thor.

"I believe I'll just stand pat on that, thank you," Thor said.

Lee thought of a whole salvo of snarky things to say, but she
was
maturing and just treasured thinking them.

* * *

"Commander Gordon," Robert Frost, captain of the
Sharp Claws
appeared not just on the command audio feed but came up on the video feed to Gordon too. That indicated he had something more than routine to discuss.

"Captain Frost," Gordon acknowledged and nodded, a human gesture many of them had assimilated.

"We have the first case of an infection from an alien life form. I just finished speaking with my medical officer about it. The crewwoman who reported to sick-call tried to treat it herself but it didn't improve."

"Well, I guess all those protocols we've followed were not entirely without merit as our recent hosts implied." Gordon said.

"Oh, we've known there
are
things one can catch already," Frost said. "Thorn has a whole list of them, mostly various amoebas and parasites. The people who keep an embassy open on the Elves’ world, just in case they ever want to have anything to do with us, get something called Blue Dot. They feel tired and get little blue bumps that go away in about three days. Nobody has ever isolated an organism causing it or documented a human to human transmission. I don't think they've ever had a Derf on world to see if they catch it. The thing Earth worries about isn't that sort of thing. They are fearful of something deadly like the flu or smallpox."

"I take it this isn't such a devastating disease or you'd be more upset?" Gordon prompted Frost.

"Yes, it another irritating thing that I'm pretty sure we can deal with, but it still seemed worth a word of warning."

"Good, I'm putting our medial guy on the circuit," Gordon said. "He's our environmental officer too. Would you describe how you became aware of this and we'll send the recording to our other vessels too."

"The young Human woman is a previous Fargone missile tech who left their service before we recruited her. She's twenty-seven Fargone years old, a bit more than twenty eight T-years. She got a patch of white and itching to the inside of her little toe on her right foot. Thinking it common Athlete's Foot she asked our medic for a tube of anti-fungal cream and she prophylactically applied it to the other gaps between her toes with clean hands , and then applied it to the afflicted area last. It didn't improve; in fact it got worse, appeared on the other foot, and changed color to a yellowish hue. That's when she returned to medical and sought help." Frost said.

"Frost, what is this Athlete's Foot?" Gordon asked, puzzled. It seemed like an athletic foot should be a
good
thing.

"It's a common fungal infection in humans. It is often spread in damp communal areas like showers, where people go barefoot. But it is incubated in the dark and moisture between their toes. The more so because shoes and socks keep the foot in the dark and limit drying air circulation. This is a Badger analog of a fungus, but the medical tech was smart enough to scan a swab and see there is alien genetic material present. Indeed it returned an error message because there are sequences not common to any Earth organisms."

"How did you confirm it is a Badger organism?" Gordon asked.

"We have some preliminary sequencing of Badger and Badger planet organisms from trading items," Captain Frost said. There were short sequence matches once the medical scanner was supplied a wider database. But also when we showed photographs of her foot to Badgers on the Dart they immediately said: 'Oh yeah, boot rot'. It seems it is an occupational hazard to those who have to wear boots for their work such as caring for herd animals and working in industrial settings. Most Badgers avoid wearing an enclosing shoe unless absolutely necessary."

"Then I assume they know how to treat it?" Thor asked on the audio feed.

"Yes, but their cure is to crush a sort of common weed that looks like a succulent and stuff the sticky mass in the toe of the boot. The other folk remedy is to find a source of mud near a natural body of water and coat the foot liberally with it, getting it between the toes thoroughly, and allow it to remain and dry out for a few days before washing it away. Apparently there are naturally antagonistic organisms in such mud. Since neither cure is available here my medic cut the upper section away from the toes on a pair of cloth shoes. We are coating one foot with a disinfectant wash we use for surgical prep and the other foot with a dilute solution of iodine. We'll see which works better and switch to that on both feet."

"Thank you. Keep me appraised if this becomes a bigger problem or doesn't respond to treatment," Gordon requested. He appeared ready to end the discussion but Lee spoke up.

"Gordon? Captain Frost? Just a thought here. Most Human laundry is vacuum tumbled. A freeze dried fungus may be dormant but not dead. You might make sure her socks get wet washed in chlorine bleach or something similar or they may just re-infect her."

"That's interesting," Frost said, looking surprised. "I'll mention it to my medic right now."

"How did you know that?" Gordon asked Lee after Frost was gone.

"When I lived with my relatives in Michigan for awhile their kids got Athlete's Foot at the community pool and quickly spread it to everybody else at home. I remember my cousin's wife putting bleach in the wash to get rid of it."

"So you
did
learn some practical things on Earth," Gordon said, amused.

"Just all
kinds
of skills," Lee assured him, scowling. "I know how to form a jail gang to keep safe. I know how to get back in line quickly to get a second serving in the jail mess, and I know how to slowly eat a candy bar in tiny little nips and make it fill you up if they have you on lock-down and aren't feeding you. I learned how to sit in the sun where there is a breeze to keep the mosquitoes from leaving you a mess of welts. I even know how to suck-up to a bureaucratic negative tax official so you get your case moved forward while the angry combative folks don't get what they need. Doesn't mean I
want
to live on a planet where I need those sort of skills," she said firmly.

There was a lot Lee still hadn't told him about her time on Earth, Gordon reflected.

* * *

"Everybody synchronized and running sweet?" Gordon asked Brownie toward the middle of their shift.

"Yes, there are no serious problems anywhere. You have a choice. We can up acceleration by about fifteen percent and jump within our normal shift, or we can stay at our present acceleration and extend the shift a half hour."

"And what do we do on the other side?" Gordon asked.

"Well, it only takes ten minutes or so to nose count and we could shift change a bit late," Brownie suggested.

"No, Thor has convinced me that running the A team on jump is the safest way to go," Gordon reminded him. "That to my mind includes keeping us on the bridge on the other side of jump until we have a deep enough radar sweep to know there are no close up problems. Take us all up to one point fifteen G and figure we're going to hold the shift over forty-five minutes after breakout. That gives us fifteen minutes to do a passive scan and then we ping the system hard and wait a half hour for returns. If nothing nasty or weird is within fifteen light minutes then I'll feel comfortable going to my cabin. If something approaches after that it'll be far enough out to let us be awakened and called back to the bridge."

"Aye, sir. Sending that out to the fleet with a five minute warning we are upping boost. I'll change the jump time and attach the data on the notice as soon as the box has a solution."

"Thank you, Brownie."

* * *

Jeremiah Ellis from Engineering called Gordon on a private circuit rather than intrude on the command circuit with an extended conversation.

"Sir, I've been doing some calculations about the Caterpillar's ship. It's interesting. May I tell you about it?"

"Certainly, it's boring up here right now until we jump. I'd
love
to hear something interesting."

"As near as I can figure the timing from when we saw the Caterpillars jump ahead of us until they reentered the system and crossed our nose, they must be able to accelerate somewhere in excess of thirty G if they altered course and a made two system loop to jump back to this system. If they decelerated hard enough to make a right angle turn, jumped out, and did a dead stop and reversed direction in the other system it's worse. They'd have to do at least a thirty-eight G acceleration to jump to the same safety standards we do."

"They have only been directly observed pulling about ten to fourteen G," Gordon said.

"Yes! And something else worth mentioning, they shot missiles at Captain Frost in the
Sharp Claws
in System 67 just before he jumped for System 82. Those only accelerated at a bit less than eighty G. Compared to our missiles, theirs are not as proportionately faster as their ships."

It amused Gordon how animated Jeremiah got when he was enthused. "Any ideas on
why
?" he asked.

"Nothing concrete, just wild speculation. We know they have some sort of gravity manipulation. Perhaps it doesn't really provide any advantage in a missile. You can harden things like electronics far easier than protecting living things. Perhaps what they use on the ships takes a great deal of power. It occurred to me they may only manage the perceived acceleration in limited areas of those big ships. We just don't
know
yet," Jeremiah concluded.

"Don't forget the missiles that they fail-safed had a weird spectrum too. They appeared to be pure fusion weapons instead of using a fission kernel," Gordon said.

Jeremiah opened his mouth and then shut it. Frowned and then looked serious, not animated. "Don't quote me, but there are rumors some humans have that tech too, but it is closely held," Jeremiah said.

"What do you mean,
closely held
?" Gordon demanded. "Pure fusion weapons would be a huge advantage if they were cheaper. Why would anybody hide them or refrain from marketing them?"

"Look, it's hard for me to tell this again. I told this to a friend once and he stopped doing things with me and labeled me a nutcase, but my grandfather told me this big story when I was a kid. Do you know the orbital hab Home used to be in LEO, not out at L2? It was alone then. They didn't have the two added companion habs they do now, doing a halo dance around the same center."

"Yeah, I've heard of Home. Very exclusive and expensive. Picky about who they let in. They have some kind of a weird government too. But what would they have to do with exotic weapons? Space stations are just about impossible to defend. The first thing they do in any conflict is evacuate the damn things," Gordon insisted.

"Yes, but you research it and you'll find nobody has screwed around with Home or its allies for the last hundred years. It used to be under USNA law before they rebelled and went independent. Look up the history," Jeremiah told Gordon. "The USNA actually
surrendered
to them back in the day. They obviously could not occupy them with only a couple thousand population but they demanded concessions and got them. The thing is my grandfather told me that after they got their independence they had some tech China tried to steal. This was back when China was as big as it ever got, one country from Korea clear west to India. They hijacked a Home ship and took it back to China. Probably to tear it apart and reverse engineer it."

"What kind of tech are you talking about?" Gordon pressed.

"My grandfather was USNA military," Jeremiah said. "He said Home ships accelerated faster than a human could survive. Just like the Caterpillars. That's what the Chinese wanted. The Chinese snatched this ship off dock at the ISSII. The old ISS they retired and was bought and rebuilt for a private hab. Well, when they took it back to Earth the Home people bombarded the main Chinese spaceport out in the Gobi Desert to destroy the ship.

"The thing is, grandpa said it was a pure fusion weapon. Something on the high side of two hundred megatons with no fallout. He said at the time it was a state secret and freaked all the brass out. If you doubt it go look at the public satellite maps. The crater is
still
there. I didn't believe it either when I was about eight years old. I was a skeptical little snot, but my granddad called it up on the web and showed me the crater and then
older
maps showing the spaceport there when I questioned him."

"The crater shows from orbit?" Gordon asked, skeptical. "They haven't filled it back in?"

"Gordon, it was about six kilometers across and a kilometer deep. How much would that cost to fill back up? And to what purpose when you have plenty of unused desert all around it?" Jeremiah asked.

"So you believe this, and that nobody has duplicated the tech since then?" Gordon asked, warily.

"I believed my grandfather, after seeing the evidence on the web. And I'm not quite as afraid to tell the story again, because when we get back I'll be so rich now I won't have to worry if you or anybody else will hire me again.
Everything
looks easy in hindsight," Jeremiah said. "Look at the races we just met who don't even have fission weapons, much less X-heads. I've heard a lot of the men cracking wise that they must not be too bright if they couldn't figure out something so simple. Maybe
they
think
we're
clueless for not having the gravity plates they sold us.