Did you see Kibi’s dream? Arantiloria asked Manessa.
No. I do not have that ability.
It was beautiful! She had all the pieces of the puzzle floating around in her mind, and as soon as she drifted into sleep, they came together. She doesn’t remember the dream, but it was quite bizarre, and left her with a clear understanding of what they were doing wrong. No rational, logical thought process could have accomplished that.
The avians dream also, from what I’ve seen, the ship said.
That opens up some wonderful possibilities for passing bits of information and wisdom to them when they get stuck and need a nudge.
You can do that?
Kibi was nearly bouncing with excitement, and had difficulty letting the others finish breakfast before standing up at the head of the table. They chewed their last few bites as they listened.
Kibi started with a slight cringe. “You’re not gonna like what I realized last night.”
“Don’t worry about it!” Boro said firmly. “We don’t like the numbers we’ve been getting, and we all feel like failures, so we’ll try anything that might work.”
Rini, Mati, and Sata all nodded.
Kibi cleared her throat. “We’ve been . . . how do I say this . . . treating
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them like we’d like to be treated, but the truth is, we wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do if our sun went supernova, and neither do they.”
After a long silence, Mati frowned. “Okay . . . but that’s why we’re here, to rescue them. After all, they don’t have starships. They don’t even have rowboats! ”
“True, but what I’m getting at is they don’t know how to be rescued. They don’t understand what’s important at a moment like that. They’ll always put their old, respected leaders first, and not think of the young females they’ll need to start a new civilization.”
After pondering Kibi’s words in the silence that followed, Rini finally looked at her. “So you mean, we shouldn’t let them decide who gets in the ship . . .”
“Exactly!”
Mati was frowning again. “That’s almost like . . . slavery.”
“The alternative is death,” Rini pointed out. “And not just for the individuals, but for the whole species, and all their memories and culture.”
Mati nodded slightly, but didn’t stop frowning.
Sata noticed Boro’s mouth hanging open. “What?” she demanded.
“I’m . . . remembering something Ilika once said.”
Several people looked at the captain, but he shrugged.
“Manessa,” Boro began, “you can put people to sleep, just like our mission bracelets, right?”
“Yes.”
“How far away?”
“About one thousand meters.”
Boro looked at Kibi with wide eyes, she looked back, and they both nodded.
I know they’re on the right track, Manessa shared with Arantiloria, only because I’ve done simulations like this many times before.
They’re struggling against some powerful instincts. The highly-social creatures have the hardest time with tasks like this because they crave to put social values ahead of physical reality.
The avians can do it, Manessa replied, after fussing and fuming for a
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while. You are wise. Do you think these monkey mammals will be able to?
I don’t know. You’ve known them longer than I have.
The ship was silent.
Rini’s hand came up timidly.
Kibi looked at him.
“Um . . . I don’t think the field’s gonna work. The young ones are curious, so they come out of the caves and tunnels first, but then the adults run to the field faster, leaving the young ones confused and following slowly. You see what I’m getting at?”
Kibi
frowned.
“That means we have to . . .” Boro began, but didn’t finish.
Sata whimpered with pain at the thought.
“That means . . .” Mati started to say, but then had to close her eyes and shudder.
Mati claimed a bath tub, hoping it would relax the huge knot in her stomach.
Rini busied himself re-running sensor diagnostics at his station.
Kibi entered the galley and shuffled things around, but didn’t accomplish much.
Boro and Sata just held hands in the back of the passenger area.
Ilika smiled to himself, remembering a similar day in his own training.
Suddenly Manessa spoke in her pleasant but urgent voice. “Emergency mission, supernova detected, one sapient race vulnerable, transit time fourteen minutes, complete planetary incineration in twenty-four minutes.
Prepare for star transit.”
The star drive waited nearly a minute for everyone to get into a meditative state. The crew member in the galley wrestled with several overwhelming emotions before finally getting comfortable and relaxed on the floor.
A moment of eternity later, they could think again.
“Anybody wanna be pilot?” Mati asked as she burst from the bathing room, still pulling on a robe.
No one responded to her offer, so she slid into her seat and began
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arranging her displays.
“Emergency descent,” Kibi ordered, and watched as each crew member did their part. The chart and destination marker quickly appeared, Boro had engines warm almost before Mati spoke, Rini added an infra-red scan, and Ilika declared the ship ready.
The planet’s nighttime surface, now mostly glowing cinders, rushed toward them.
“Bunny ears!” the pilot nearly screamed as she slammed her fist onto the special hull configuration symbol.
“Here they come!” the commander squeaked as she felt tears fill her eyes.
“Put them to sleep, Manessa!” she shrieked with a broken voice.
Everyone could see the furry white mammals drop to the ground.
“Don’t look down, Mati, just land the ship!” Kibi somehow managed to say, heart in her throat.
The pilot was ready. A touch of her display selector switched to three-D
topographic, showing her nothing but ground and rocks. She knew she dared not think about anything else. Manessa hit the plaza hard, struts taking most of the shock.
“Hatch open, ramp out!” Ilika declared.
“Seven minutes!” Sata yelled as she started the timer.
“Everybody move!” Kibi screamed. “We’ve done what we had to do, now let’s make something good of it! Two or more at a time!”
They felt nothing, even when they stumbled and scraped arms and legs.
All six crew members of the little ship scooped up armloads of furry creatures as fast as they could. Most focused on young females, finding they could carry four or more.
They were all careful to avoid looking at the many furry bodies they had crushed upon landing. Mati was especially careful.
Boro was assigned to get males, larger and far less numerous. He could carry two at a time easily, maybe three, but sometimes he dropped one, and knew he couldn’t stop for anything.
Ilika had to activate his bracelet light and enter the cave to find a few older bunnies to provide leadership at their new home. He managed only three
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trips, two at a time, before he heard Manessa give a twenty-second warning.
Boro was struggling toward the ship with three males when he saw Sata in front of him, her mouth open as if screaming something, but he couldn’t hear her. Suddenly she closed her mouth, put her arms across her chest, and tackled him hard. The three limp bunnies went flying. She grabbed his hand, and pulled with all her strength.
For a split second he was confused, then saw everyone else at the hatch, yelling and screaming without sound, so he made his legs move, dove through the hatch with Sata, and a second later it snapped closed behind them.
Boro gasped for breath as he picked himself up from the floor of the entryway, and could see all his shipmates standing or sitting near, all trying to speak to him. But he couldn’t hear their words, any of the usual sounds of the ship, or even his own breathing. Eventually he tried to say, “I can’t hear anything,” but wasn’t sure he succeeded.
His shipmates stopped trying to speak to him, so he figured they must have understood him. Sata wrapped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest. Ilika, after looking him over carefully, went up to the passenger area.
Boro could see limp white bunnies all over the floor, several crammed into every seat, four or five on the galley counter, and a few spilling onto the floor of the bridge. As he watched, they all turned into little blue balls of light, then disappeared.
Over the next hour, Boro’s hearing slowly returned.
Ilika and Sata, both unhurt, applied ointments and small bandages to scrapes and bruises. Even though Satamia Star Station’s medical center was only a short walk away, Ilika explained that it was best to learn all they could from each simulation.
The captain waited until his engineer could hear well enough to share in the good news, then announced the totals. “One hundred and forty-seven young females, eleven young males, and six elders.”
“I hope they weren’t monogamous,” Kibi said with a slight smile.
“They
couldn’t have been,” Boro said. “There was only one male to about
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every twenty females. I really had to hunt to find those eight.”
Everyone else laughed, releasing all the tension of a very challenging simulation.
Boro finally sighed. “Can I go to the medical center now, see what happened to my hearing?”
Ilika smiled and nodded. “We’ll all go.”