Enigma Ship by J. York (small books to read .TXT) 📕

“I like my solution better.”

“If your ‘solution’ is correct, then roughly one-hundred and fifty people are being digested by an amoeba as we speak. If my theory is correct, then they may be safe and waiting for rescue. I like mine better. A lot better.”

Lense reacted as though she’d been slapped. She slammed the ball against the floor so hard that the crack hurt Abramowitz’s ears. “You think I don’t? But we have to face the possibility. Get back to me when you’re willing to.” She got up and stormed out of the rec room.

Abramowitz just sat, trying to figure out what had just happened.

*     *     *

Duffy pushed a solitary black bean around his plate with a fork. He had been doing so for somewhere between two minutes and an eternity now, and it was driving Gomez, who sat across the mess-hall table from him, crazy.

“Kieran, would you please eat that, or put it out of its misery.”

He put down his fork and looked up at her. “Sorry, thinking.”

“Thinking is good. Sharing is better. I could use some ideas here.”

“What we need is a can opener.”

“A what?”

“Can opener. A device to open cans. Didn’t they teach Waldport’s Principles of Parallel Technologies when you were in the Academy?”

“They taught his theories. The book wasn’t required reading.”

“Then you know most technological civilizations develop parallel technologies, and Waldport’s first example is the can opener. Almost every civilization known develops a system of preserving food in metal cans. The surprising thing is that the device to open these cans, a can opener, often isn’t developed until later, sometimes hundreds of years later. You should read the book. It’s one of the foundations of the Prime Directive, the idea that every civilization develops warp drive.”

“And every civilization develops can openers.”

“Almost.”

“Almost?”

“That’s Waldport’s argument against his own principle. Vulcans never invented the can opener.”

“Vulcans?” Sometimes following Kieran’s conversational leaps was enough to make her dizzy. As though this assignment didn’t already have her going in circles.

“Never developed cans. They preserved food by drying, salting, or a kind of bacterially induced homeostasis. No cans. No can openers.”

A pattern was beginning to emerge. “So, you’re saying that the Enigma may be a ship of some kind, representing an advanced civilization that somehow managed not to develop the warp drive, like the Vulcans and their nonexistent can openers.”

“I’m saying that the Enigma is a big can, and we need a can opener to get inside.”

Gomez looked down at her half eaten curry rice, and after a moment’s consideration, pushed it away before she started playing with her food, too. “I’d say we know two, maybe three, different ways to crack Enigma already.”

Duffy leaned forward on his elbows and raised an eyebrow slightly. “How so?”

“Well, first there’s the brute force method. Crash into it at a significant fraction of the speed of light. It worked for the Lincoln.”

“Okay, I’m scratching that one off my list right now.”

“Don’t. We won’t want to get in that way ourselves, but maybe there’s some way we can use it, to send in a ruggedized penetrator probe, or spear some kind of pipe into the surface for access, like a giant hypodermic needle.”

“There’s a joke there somewhere. Maybe two or three. But go on, what’s the next method?”

She frowned. “Well, that’s the problem. We know, but we don’t know. This freighter pilot managed to get himself in somehow. So did the two from the Chinook, and they managed to carry a dozen marker buoys with them.”

“Well, this Omthon guy was apparently actively trying to get in. It’s hard to tell really; the sensor logs from the freighter were of such poor resolution. But we have recordings of the Chinook incident in crystal resolution in every wavelength known to the Federation, and we know they were only fixing a buoy near Enigma, not trying to get in, and were just swallowed up.”

“Ah, but that swallowing, that’s the only proactive thing that Enigma has done since we’ve encountered it. I think they, or the buoys, did something to trigger it. If we can figure out what that is, it’s like having the key to the door.”

“The trouble with that is, assuming that any of them are still alive in there—and I am—none of them have come back out. Me, I want to go in, but the coming out part, this is also part of the plan.”

Gomez considered this for a moment. “We need a can opener,” she finally said.

“I think I heard somebody suggest that idea.”

She gave him a look that had stopped strong men in their tracks, but he just shrugged and grinned at her.

“But we need one that also works from the inside,” she continued. “That means we can’t just duplicate one of the methods for entering Enigma, we have to understand how it works before we find ourselves trapped.” She stood up abruptly. “Come on, time to look at those sensor logs again.”

Duffy groaned, loudly. “We’ve been through them a dozen times,” he protested, but he was already climbing out of his chair to follow her.

“Then that obviously wasn’t enough,” she shot back over her shoulder, as she led the way out of the mess hall.

*     *     *

Soloman stared intently out the viewplate, watching floating debris drift by only inches from his face. “This is entirely illogical, P8.”

“Concentrate on flying the pod,” P8 Blue’s voice came from a hidden speaker. “Besides, you’re a Bynar, not a Vulcan. Stop sounding like one.”

“Computers are inherently logical, and Bynars are a computer-based society.”

“Yes, but you’re a passionate people too, even though you don’t often express it so other humanoids can understand. You delight, you fear, you love. I’ve seen it. Look out!”

A proximity klaxon sounded, and Soloman was alarmed to see an ejected warp core tumbling towards him like a giant baton. He fumbled with the unfamiliar joystick, feeling the pod twist end over end, but the warp core grew ever larger in his view. In a panic, he hit the main