CHAPTER FOUR
Tammas was a little unnerved by McCoy’s visit. He knew that McCoy, and the one they called Spock, would soon be taking him away, even though McCoy was quite adamant about not doing so. Tammas told Star he was too busy to chat and so the dolphin eventually swam away, leaving Tammas at his desk keying one particular Morse code phrase over and over, SOS, but without transmitting it. He had to figure out a way to prove to Spock and McCoy that he was normal, and that they didn’t have to do anything special for him. He also knew that he had a time limit to accomplish this feat. After the upcoming festival, a decision would be made about what to do with him.
“The festival,” he thought. “I have to win the rocket contest! That will show them I’m normal.”
Tammas considered his entry for the rocket contest. It was a simple one-stage booster, simulating the earliest design that might have put a satellite in a temporary orbit. It was so simple it wasn’t likely to get anyone’s attention. He downloaded the specs of the other classes available to him, chose a more sophisticated entry, and sent the specs to the house replicator. He had to leave his room to go fetch the new stuff, the closest replicator being in the hall. He could hear the Garcia’s conversation in the kitchen as they cleaned up, discussing their day, how good Spock looked, health wise. He paused long enough to hear Mr. Garcia comment, “Hey, do you hear that?”
“Hear what?” Natalia asked.
“No music… Umm, I wonder what he’s up to?” Juan said.
“Ah, let him be,” Natalia said. “He’s been quiet ever since McCoy came. He’s probably worried McCoy came to take him somewhere new.”
Indeed, he was worried about that. Sitting in the replicator was a finished model of the rocket he had requested, along with the pieces he would need to construct one of his own. He retrieved the kit and returned to his room to examine it more closely. This was a small re-entry vehicle, a capsule, which connected to the top of a two-stage rocket. The first stage was re-usable, but the second stage would actually burn up in re-entry. Of course, the model itself wouldn’t go into orbit…
“Isn’t it a bit late to be changing your entry?” Jovet asked, staring icily at him from his open doorway.
Tammas glanced up. The window made a nice mirror with the dark oceans beyond it. His sister’s reflection was warped to fit the bubble. He turned his attention back to the rocket in hand.
“You realize if you go with that design, it has to be capable of supporting life for the duration of the flight,” Jovet said. “You’ll have to put your rat in it.”
Without turning around, Tammas tapped out a response that was translated by his computer: “It’s a hamster.”
“It’s a rat, but either way, it’ll be dead before it even reaches space. The g-forces will crush it like a mouse in a trap,” Jovet said, slapping her hands together for emphasis. “Hope you give that rat of yours a nice farewell dinner.”
Jovet skipped off to her room, pleased to have tormented him so easily. Animals were his weak spot. She was certain this time she had managed to get the better of him. She suspected he would either return to his first rocket entry, or give up, and consequently wouldn’t be able to up stage her performance at the contest, no pun intended. She had every intentions of winning so that Uncle Bones would be proud of her and maybe her parents would start showing her a little more attention.
Tammas listened to the rules for this class of entry, the Morse translation filling his ear piece he wore when at his desk. In his mind he saw the requirements for the life support equipment. Indeed, Jovet was right that any capsule capable of supporting life would have to hold up during flight and return an occupant back to the world in good health. He was so alarmed by the thought of turning his hamster into a guinea pig that it didn’t register on him that the “hamster” in this case was simply a sensor in the capsule that provided telemetry of the condition inside the capsule. He even re-read the rule a second time and still missed the portion about the simulated passenger because his mind was so clouded on how to make his capsule safe for his hamster. The more he study the rocket design, he was confident he could make it safe, but the bigger dilemma became the moral issue of whether it was right to experiment on animals. Nothing in his mind warranted this experiment and he began to wonder about the morality of the adults who would create a contest of this nature. How could adults sanction this kind of game simply to teach children the basics of physics? How could he participate in the game and still remain true to his feelings?
As Tammas reread the rules to the contest, a slight smile fell across his face when he discovered a loophole that should work in his favor. He called up the blue prints for his class of entry and began making the necessary modifications.
The next day, he quickly dressed and hurried outside without eating breakfast. Juan had left for work early, as usual, and Tammas now had a good morning’s hike in order to meet Juan before his lunch break. Star chatted at him, but he signed for “later.” Star didn’t take the brush off so easy this time and so Tammas stopped and removed his head set from his backpack. One cushioned speaker rested over his right ear, giving him Star’s response in Morse
“What?” Tammas spelled out with Morse. No one would have heard the impatience in the rhythm of his code.
“We should play,” Star said. “Come swimming.”
“I’m busy.”
“Are you going to the cave? Can I come?” Star asked. “You have rigged the headset so I can see what you see, right? You promised to show me the cave.”
“I’m not going to the cave, but I guess we can test the headset out now,” Tammas keyed the Morse into his hand held computer, turning on the ultrasound on his headset. It would now map out the world directly in front of him, and relay the information back to the underwater computer terminal that Star used. “Alright, go to your computer and tell me if you can see. If not, you will just have to settle for talking to me as I walk. I have to go now.”
Tammas started his hike at a run, hoping to make up as much time as he could for over sleeping. It took Star a moment to get to her terminal, but she got there and found the system working as they had anticipated. To her it was if she were swimming over the land, seeing the world as the land animals and humans saw it. Her only regret was that she could not control the direction Tammas was moving. Several times she asked Tammas to slow down to observe some odd flower, or examine a bug or an animal, or an air car passing over head, but he was too intent on getting to the Industrial Replicator ware house.
“I promise we’ll do this again someday, but first, let me take care of this matter. Now, try not to distract me while I’m in here,” Tammas coded to Star.
The guard at the front gate knew Tammas and passed him through and from there Tammas quickly made his way up to Juan’s office. The secretary winked at him as he came around, announcing him over the intercom. Her desk was just a table top, seemingly floating in thin air which gave him a nice view of her legs, even without looking through the transparent table top. He observed that she had kicked off her shoes and that the measure of her skirt was much shorter than anything Doctor Garcia ever wore.
“Who is this? Let me see her face? Are you going to introduce me?” was the voice in Tammas’s ear.
“Tammas? What are you doing here?” Juan said from the door to his office.
“Umm, Star wanted to see where you worked,” Tammas coded quickly, hoping Juan hadn’t noticed he had been fixated on his secretary’s legs. Why he had been thinking about it was beyond him, but he had been stuck for what seemed an uncomfortable time, and he was glad for Juan’s voice giving him new focus. He felt like his mind had just suddenly froze, like the computer occasionally does when he has it performing too many tasks at one time.
“Bye, Tammas,” the secretary said, winking at him.
Tammas didn’t meet her eyes. He just hurried into the office, “thinking out of sight out of mind.” Besides, he had enough to worry about with McCoy and Spock than a new source of Obsessive Compulsive behavior.
“Oh, so your little invention is working?” Juan asked about the headset.
“Yes,” Tammas said. “Star can hear you and see you. It’s limited to three dimensional objects, so she can’t see the pictures hanging from your walls, or read the titles on the books on the shelves, but she can count the objects.”
“Hello, Star,” Juan said, waving. “This is my office and where I do most of the electronic paper pushing. I prefer to be on the floor, supervising the dispersal of materials, but I have really good foremen and I’m rarely needed. Tell you what, Tammas, if you’ll wait here while I go check on this last order, then you and I can go get lunch and then I’ll take you home.”
“Okay,” Tammas coded. “Meanwhile, may I access your computer? I have decided to enter a different class for the rocket contest.”
“I’m so glad you have committed to participating this year. It’s nice to see you spreading some of your attention to other activities. Go ahead and sit at my desk, and I’ll be right back,” Juan said, stepping out of the office.
Tammas worked fast. The only hard part was covering his tracks. Even knowing Juan’s access codes didn’t assure that what he planned to do would work. A one tenth scale model appeared on the desk, along with the required number of pieces he would have to have to assemble on his own. At the same time, pieces to construct a full-scale rocket were replicated and transported directly to his off site location, the Cave Fortress. The amount of energy it took to create the materials and the tools necessary to manipulate the materials, plus the transport, would certainly have raised a few eyebrows, except for the fact that Tammas was able to quickly delete the records from the day’s cue. He now only had to explain the loss of energy and why the day’s schedule was interrupted for this project that was no longer on anyone’s manifest. The time was easy. He simply told the computer to record the missing time as an unscheduled self-diagnostic procedure. The missing energy he decided was best handled by dividing that number and distributing to all the other manufacture items already on cue. He figured his production request was so miniscule that no one would actually notice the missing energy ambiguously added to all the other energy usage for this mornings work. He did all this while coding to Star, explaining some of what he was doing.
He felt fortunate that Star was unable to “see” the happenings on the computer screen, because a part of him felt bad for the subterfuge, otherwise he wouldn’t have worried that she might have alerted the Garcia’s to his intentions. He was finished in no time. Juan returned to find Tammas spinning around in his office chair, probably trying to make Star dizzy.
“Sorry that took so long,” Juan said, examining the model on his desk. “Wow. You really don’t do anything small, do you? Every one will be quite impressed when you get this little thing to fly.”
“I hope so,” he coded. “I hope so.”
The next four or five days he spent most of his time at the Cave Fortress. McCoy was concerned by Tam’s continued absence because this seemed abnormal behavior from everything the Garcia’s had told him about Tam. Juan explained about the fort and that Tammas sometimes went there to escape and play music in private, which also gave them a break when they were “musicked” out. In the conversation the missing rations came up and how Juan had discovered that Tammas had known about the Cave Fortress.
“Perhaps he’s afraid I have come to take him away again,” McCoy said. “After all, the first time he met me, I took him away from Guinan to bring to you.”
“I’m sure you’re over reacting,” Juan said. “As brilliant as he is, he is still just a kid. I think it’s healthy that he goes and explores nature.”
Tammas had been aware of the conversation. There was always a strong attraction for him to return to the Garcia home when they were discussing him, but it was not the urgent calling that came when they were calling him for dinner or wanting him to come clean up for bed time. He focused on his work. It was difficult sometimes to focus, especially when Juan and Natalia were together, for their amorous affection towards each other was always overwhelming. Often the only escape he had from that was his music and the privacy of the Cave Fortress. He started a full orchestra in his head as he began connecting pieces of his rocket.
The hardest thing Tammas had to do was learn how to operate the anti-gravity forklift. Once he had all the pieces in place, and bolted together, hooking up the wires, cables, and mechanical links were easy, though time consuming. He began to become concern as the deadline approached for fear he might not complete all the required tasks. He had to forgo painting the ship, for one. He forgave himself this, for there simply wasn’t the time. The contest was more about functionality than aesthetics. The night before the contest he was still tightening bolts down with the torque wrench. Afterwards, he sat back in his launch chair, exhausted, looking at his tiny view of sky at the end of the tunnel. He could tell Natalia and Juan were getting anxious for his return and so he would have to hurry home before they came up to get him and possibly spoiled his surprise. He would have to forgo the pre-flight computer tests. He convinced himself, on his walk back home, that computers were so state of the art that the likelihood of a failure was miniscule. But even if he was wrong, it was at least a risk that his poor hamster wouldn’t have to face.
Back at home, Juan had him wash his hands and report to the dinner table. Natalia remarked on the grease on his forehead and hands, asking him what he had gotten into, but she didn’t pursue any definitive answers as she continued to prepare a meal for the family. Tammas had found that many questions were like this. “How are you?” was a great example. It was simply a way of greeting people, as opposed to truly identifying the feelings and condition of the person. He had noticed people saying, “How are you today?” without even slowing their pace so as to receive an answer.
Juan asked how his rocket was coming along, so Tammas produced the miniature model rocket for inspection. He really didn’t feel like Morse code.
“Wow, is that what you’ve been working on all this time?” Juan asked. “Natalia, come look at this.”
“Mine looks better,” Jovet said.
“Yours looks great, honey,” Natalia said, kissing her daughter on the forehead as she placed food in front of her. “I’m sure you will both do very well.”
Jovet looked at Tammas and thought really hard, “Hardly big enough for a hamster. I got you beat.”
Tam’s smile unnerved her, with a little twinkle in his eyes as if he had something grand coming, and she sulked through the rest of the meal. After dinner, Juan read to them from classic literature. When Tam closed his eyes, he could almost hear the voice of his mother, long since past, as she read books and listened to music. Juan finished “The Raven” and suggested they get to bed as the morning’s festivities would soon be upon them.
The next morning Tammas told Natalia he had left his headset at the cave fortress, and he needed to go get it so that Star could witness the rocket contest from his perspective. Natalia told him to hurry so they could leave together, but he suggested they go on with out him and he would meet them at the beach.
“Are you sure? We don’t mind waiting,” Natalia asked.
“Oh, mom, let the freakazoid catch up on his own. You’re volunteering at the clam bake and I want to get my rocket entered first thing,” Jovet said.
“Stop calling him names,” Natalia told her. “Okay, Tammas. Just be sure to get there in time to enter the contest.”
“No problem,” he coded to her, and took off at a run.
The festival was spread out along Loral Beach with small tents erected for various entertainment activities and various foods to sample. Small sailboats were racing for the buoy, accompanied by dolphins. As soon as the Garcia air car settled on the dune over looking the beach, Jovet was out and racing towards the rocket tent to register for this morning competition. The grass was sparse at the top of the hill, but still one blade of rough weed managed to catch her sandal and she had to stop to remove it, and scratch her foot. Natalia gathered her items for the clambake and headed down for her campsite, watching her daughter run and following the footprints her daughter had left. Juan came up the hill and greeted her with a kiss.
“Need some help?” Juan asked.
“No, thanks. I got it,” she said.
“Jovet seems pretty excited,” Juan said, walking back with her.
“Yes,” Natalia agreed. “She should do well.”
“Where’s Tammas?” Juan asked. “He didn’t cancel, did he?”
“No,” Natalia said. “He should be along directly.”
“Alright, well, I should get back to the tent. I’m coordinating launches,” Juan said. “First one will go up in about ten minutes.”
“I’ll be watching from our campsite,” she said. “I see you got the fire going. Thank you.”
“It’s what I’m here for,” he said, kissing her once more and heading back to his task.
Juan made it back to the rocket tent, where a number of judges were already sitting. They had portable computers so as to better monitor the flight of the rockets and to record the event. The launch site was an area of the beach roped off and there was a young man inside the ropes finishing up his preparations for the first launch. Jovet was at the registration table. Juan touched her on the head as he passed her. She looked up at him and smiled. Juan walked down to the boy and examined the rocket, visually confirming everything was legal, even though the judges would have already done such a confirmation electronically.
“Mr. Garcia,” the boy said, greeting Juan.
“Alex,” Juan said. “Looks like you might have a blue ribbon coming to you.”
“We’ll see. I changed the formula for the solid fuel and modified the satellite release mechanism. Hopefully everything will deploy appropriately. I’d just be happy if I could recover all my stuff this year.”
“I hear you,” Juan said. “Shall we get the games started?”
“Starting the one minute count down,” Alex said, following Juan back to the ropes. Using his PADD he began initializing computer systems as if this were a real honest to god launch.
“We have forty two seconds to launch,” Juan relayed into his headset.
“All systems green,” Alex said, watching the information on his PADD.
The audience had begun to build, prior to the first launch, with people setting up campsites. Campsite sometimes meant folding chairs, but was most often blankets, and always coolers, towels, and sunscreen. Now with the first launch imminent, a crowd was gathering at the ropes, mostly kids, for they liked the thrill of a rocket up close and personal. Alex’s father was there, holding his recorder up to catch everything. For Alex, one minute was beginning to feel like a lifetime, as he felt the excitement in his stomach and throat. Juan counted down the last ten seconds, with him and at “one” Alex pushed a button on his PADD. The rocket left the ground with a hiss, leaving a trail of smoke as it disappeared to a point in the sky. People applauded, thinking that was the best part of the show. Only those with hand held computers would notice that the stages hadn’t separated, and the satellite had failed to deploy.
Alex sighed, figuring it was all over but the crying. “Well, at least I’ll get it back in one piece,” he said.
Then came the sound of an explosion, as if a bottle rocket had just gone off, and people looked up to see a small globular cloud, the remains of the rocket. The audience let out a collective sigh. Alex just hung his head and turned to walk away.
Juan put a hand on Alex’s head. “It was a good show.”
“And a predictor for how the rest of the events will go,” Alex said. “The first shot is supposed to be flawless.”
“Ah, don’t buy into that superstition,” Juan said. “These things happen, and I assure you, if any others blow up, it won’t be because you jinxed everyone.”
“Yeah,” Alex said, walking away. He walked by the next kid taking his rocket out to the launch pad, who said “tough luck,” and then by a whole group of contestants. Jovet said as he passed, “Thanks for the jinx.”
Five more launches went up, none of which got a perfect score. Three went astray of their intended flight path, one of which went wild before blowing up in a brilliant display of flames and sparks. This caused a time out in the launching as the judges re-examined the fuel chosen for that rocket. A blow up was not necessarily an automatic elimination, especially if the child learned from the event. Points for learning could be carried over to next year’s event, provided the contestant entered the same event and could demonstrate how he overcame the flaw. In this case, it turned out the kid had used an illegal formula for fuel and would be disqualified.
Juan turned to listen in on an argument between Jovet and one of the judges.
“I’m next,” she insisted.
“I’m sorry, we accepted this entry before yours,” the judge said.
“But he’s not here and setting up, so he’s forfeit,” Jovet said.
“He still has time,” the judge said.
“I can’t believe this,” Jovet pouted.
“What’s going on, Lonny?” Juan asked.
“Tammas registered his entry via code,” the judge said. “I accepted it.”
“He has to register in person,” Jovet argued. “It’s not fair.”
“There are no rules that the registry has to be in person,” the judge corrected. “It only states that all his files and telemetry broadcast frequencies be registered before nine a.m.”
While they were discussing this, McCoy walked up to the tent to harass one of the judges. “So, Spock, it looks like they got you to volunteer after all.”
“I am most qualified to judge a science contest,” Spock said.
“Well, rocket science is certainly not like it use to be,” McCoy said.
“On the contrary,” Spock said. “Physics and the technical aspects of rocketry has not changed.”
“I’m not talking about rocket science, Spock, I’m talking about life in general,” McCoy said. “When I was young, we simply launched rockets. We didn’t have all these computer tech toys to grade and record the events. We just went out and shot rockets. Spock, are you listening to me?”
“Just a moment,” Spock said. Spock activated a comm. signal to Juan. “Juan, I’m receiving telemetry readings from the next contestant. He has started his one minute count down.”
Juan looked over to the area roped off for launching and saw the area was clear. He activated his comm. badge. “Um, Spock, how can that be?” Juan asked. “The launch area is clear.”
Lonny confirmed what all the judges were seeing. “I’m getting the same thing. He must be launching from a remote location.”
“This is odd,” Juan said, heading towards the primary judges tent. “Is this telemetry two ways? Someone patch me through to Tammas.”
“What is this?” McCoy asked, pointing to Spock’s screen.
“Telemetry…”
“I know that, but this looks like blood pressure and heart rate information,” McCoy pointed out. “I thought this was supposed to be a simulated hamster. That looks like human biometrics and it doesn’t appear to be simulated.”
“Indeed,” Spock said, noticing Juan coming up behind him, followed by Jovet. “I recommend we abort this launch.”
“Tammas, if you can hear me, abort! Do you hear me? Abort the launch,” Juan said.
“What’s going on?” Jovet asked, but no one heard her.
Of the last ten seconds, Juan would recall Spock trying to pin point where the telemetry was being sent from, listening to Lonny as he counted down the time remaining to launch, all the while he continued to repeat his message to abort. Juan felt imminent doom and he would later remember feeling suddenly disconnected, as if watching the event from outside himself. In all of his years of Star Fleet, he couldn’t remember ever feeling such strong anxiety. He saw Spock tapping his communicator and initiating contact with the Fearless, the Starship that had brought him and McCoy on official Star Fleet business. There was thunder from behind them and Juan turned in time to see a rocket accelerating into the sky trailing a great mass of smoke flames. The rocket broke the sound barrier directly overhead of the judge’s tent, breaking glass. At the same moment, a pressure wave from all the exhaust in the ravine swept over the hill and knocked over tents and stirred up a cloud of sand. The smell of exhaust and the chemical residue in the rocket propellant triggered allergic reactions in some of the people at the launch site, including two asthma attacks, but mostly just watery eyes.
“Holy crap,” Jovet said, falling back on her bum.
“Spock, his heart rate and blood pressure are abnormally high,” McCoy said, holding on to the table as the tent ripped away over top his head, a rope and pole just barely missing him.
“The Fearless is unable to get a transporter lock,” Spock stated, his voice raised to compensate for the sound of the wind.
“What do you mean they can’t get a lock?!” McCoy demanded. “My god, man. Can’t you do anything?”
“Not at this juncture,” Spock said, his voice loud by the sudden hard silence as the rocket’s thunder diminished. “Juan, can you come over here?”
Juan hurried over.
“The Fearless is sending a shuttle to intercept the rocket,” Spock said. “I’m afraid it will not reach it before the rocket attains orbit.”
“Beam him out of there,” Juan demanded.
“The Fearless was unable to achieve a transporter lock,” Spock explained. “They havve scanned his capsule and suggest this is the result of an incorrect installation of a hull integrity field.”
“Damn it, Spock, with all this computer gadgetry, can’t you turn the hull integrity field off from here?” McCoy said.
“Possibly, but in doing so, I could deactivate his life support system, or cause another critical system to fail,” Spock said. “He was quite thorough in following the instructions, but it appears he cut corners and made modifications in order to be ready for today’s launch.”
“What can we do?” Juan pleaded.
“We can hope he was as thorough in the construction of his ship has he has been with the planning and execution of this event,” Spock said. “I believe he is capable of hearing you. Continue in your attempt to communicate with him.”
“What should I say?” Juan asked.
“Keep him calm, for starters,” Spock said. “He’s coming up on a critical stage separation. He’s got twenty seconds to release it. If it doesn’t happen, he will not achieve orbit and he will begin tumble. In any event, if the second stage starts to burn before the first stage is released, he will not survive.”
Before the launch, as Tammas watched the numbers decrease on his count down clock, the thought never occurred to him that he might have forgotten something. Things were as good as they would ever be, and so, ready or not, he was going. The ship’s interior lights all came up and the hatch secured with a suction noise one might associate with opening a fresh jar of jam. His harness was a bit loose, for he was unable to tighten it any further. After going through his checklist, which showed green on life support, hull integrity, inertial dampeners, and avionics, he triggered his one-minute countdown and started broadcasting telemetry. He reclined in his seat and looked out the window. He could see out the mouth of the cave to the other side of the ravine. To his right was a series of switches. He raised the switch guard for the first in the series and clicked on the switch that would warm the element that would eventually light the solid fuel and start his acceleration. The rocket currently rested on a cradle with wheels. The wheels rested on rails that led out of the cave and then angled skywards. He had calculated that the cradle slash train assembly would simply fall free at the end of the track, but for the first time he started wondering what would happen if that failed.
He heard a voice in his head. It was Juan, telling him to abort. It was the same voice over the comm. panel, but it felt more passionate in his head.
Tammas thought about it. If he quit now, McCoy was sure to take him away and he would never see Star, Natalia, Juan, or Jovet again. Or his hamster. He remembered what Jovet had said. More than the threat of being taken by McCoy was his resolution not to bring harm or risk of harm to another animal that he was not also inclined to share. He saw the timer, and in his head he imagined a scene of what his life would be like if he aborted. In that scene Spock was telling him he would not have survived had he proceeded with the launch.
On the ten count he opened up the switch guard to the firing mechanism. His anxiousness fell away with his firm resolve to prove Spock wrong. He almost felt like he was a different person, or that he was flo