After the stress and disorientation of the walk back through the icy fog from the mountain’s peak, a hearty stew brought contented looks all around the table.
“That was kind of like being in space, wasn’t it?” Rini proposed.
“A little. In space you can see well, but it can have that feeling of not being connected to anything.”
“We’ll always have safety lines, won’t we?” Boro asked.
“Either that,” Ilika answered, “or you can use the little thrusters on the orange suits to move yourself wherever you need to go. Remember, in space you’ll almost always be at zero gravity, right along with the ship.”
Rini and Sata grinned with excitement at the idea. Boro and Kibi didn’t look so sure.
“I have a video of mountain climbers scaling difficult peaks,” Ilika announced. “Other than that, tonight is for relaxing. Tomorrow we’ll stay here, do language lessons, and a little more station training.”
“I want a hot bath!” Sata declared.
“I’m making snacks for the video!” Kibi added.
Mati grinned. “I’ll help!”
Boro lay awake much of the night. He thought about the mountain climbers he had seen creeping up sheer rock faces. Often they dangled on ropes over huge cracks in the rock or ice. Sometimes they had to create steps
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or handholds, where none could be found, with loops of rope. But most often he remembered the scenes of tying knots or setting up tents in a fog or a blizzard.
The next day, after a hot breakfast and a language lesson, Boro got himself a bath and then approached Ilika, who was sitting at the big table working at a knowledge pad. “Where is everybody?”
“Somewhere around here. I saw Rini in the utility room.”
“I was thinking that . . . um . . . I should go outside and get more practice in the fog.”
“Good idea. Please use the airlock. You know what to take.”
“Green suit, mask, and safety line.”
Ilika nodded and went back to his training checklists.
When Boro stepped through the outer door of the airlock into the thick, icy fog, he found two safety lines already attached to the hull. “I thought I was going to be alone out here,” he muttered.
“You’re not the only one with demons to tame,” Kibi’s voice said.
“But we have some rules out here,” Sata’s voice added. “We’re not sitting together, and we don’t want much chatter.”
“Yeah, it’s sort of like a meditation session,” Kibi explained. “Just you, your rock, and the wonderful terrible fog.”
“Fair enough,” Boro replied, clipping on his line and going off in a different direction.
About twenty minutes later the airlock opened again. Rini, in a harsh environment suit, holding a coiled safety line, saw the three other lines going off into the fog, and laughed deeply.
With Kibi and Sata at language lesson twenty-four, and the rest finishing lesson twelve, simple conversations in the language of Nebador began whenever two crew members worked together in the galley or elsewhere on the ship. They wouldn’t last long before the less advanced student came to a concept they could not yet express, or the more advanced was forced to use words from lessons thirteen and above.
Sata and Rini, working together to make dinner at the end of the day, did their best to keep everything in the new language. They discovered by
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accident that if they spoke aloud what they wanted from a piece of galley equipment, touching the controls was unnecessary. Sometimes they also received unexpected commentary.
“Front stove element, level four,” Sata requested.
“Front element is on level four, but that may be too hot, considering the thickness of the food,” Manessa said.
After the two humans spent a moment looking at each other and holding in laughter, they conceded that Manessa was right and lowered the heat.
With a tasty dinner of stew and biscuits making them all feel lazy, most everyone went down to the lower deck or into bathtubs. Kibi did the dishes and put the left-overs in the refrigerator. When everything was clean and tidy, she looked around to make sure she was alone, then took a deep breath.
“Manessa?”
“Yes,
Kibi?”
“Can I talk to you?”
“Yes, at any time it doesn’t interfere with ship operations.”
“From anywhere in the ship?”
“Anywhere in or near the ship, or when wearing a breathing mask or mission bracelet, or when at a knowledge processor, except that in the cabins you must manually activate an audio link.”
Kibi chuckled. “So you can’t listen to me and Ilika in our cabin . . .”
“You have complete privacy in your cabins.”
“Um . . . how old are you?”
“About one thousand times your age.”
“Wow. Do you remember . . . when you were born?”
“I remember when I first awoke after being created, but I was not born in the same way you were.”
“Do you have parents?”
“Yes. I will be able to visit them when we return to the stars. They are very beautiful and kind, and love to hear of my adventures.”
“Is it true you’re not a girl?”
“It is true.”
“Do you . . . ever wish you were a girl?”
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“No. I do not have the anatomical parts to be a girl.”
A second later, Kibi laughed at herself. “It was . . . a silly question, I guess.”
Sata got comfortable in her favorite bathtub, the one on the upper deck that was free more often. After filling it with the blue solvent as deep as it would go, she stretched out and felt every muscle in her body relax.
“Manessa, can you hear me?”
“Yes,
Sata.”
“If I talk to you about something, will you tell Ilika?”
“Only if it is important to ship operations.”
“Are my feelings important to ship operations?”
“No, only your actions while on-duty.”
Sata breathed a contented sigh and sank a little deeper into the blue liquid.
“Sometimes I feel like . . . I’m crazy trying to be a response ship navigator . . .
at eleven years old.”
“Do you mean that there is some reaction in your brain that causes mental illness if you undertake this activity at your age?”
After a moment of thought, Sata chuckled out loud. “No. I meant ‘crazy’
as in ‘stupid.’”
“So the reaction in your brain causes a reduction of intelligence?”
Sata laughed again. “I have to use words carefully with you!”
“I only know the common meanings of words. If you have a personal definition, or you are using an idiom derived from your language, you must tell me.”
Sata thought for a moment. “I will say it differently. You’ve had many other crews working with you, right?”
“More than three hundred.”
“Oh . . . okay. Have you ever had another crew member who was afraid of things, like I am? Dark ocean trenches, thick fog, even hot springs and steam vents?”
“I have had mammalian, avian, and reptilian crews. I cannot think of a single crew member, including a captain, I have ever worked with who did not harbor fears of certain environments that were challenging for them.”
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Sata smiled. “Thank you, Manessa.”
Deep Learning Notes
Most people naturally avoid uncomfortable experiences. Practicing for any kind of emergency is uncomfortable. Although the information and supplies are easy to find, very few people (or families) practice fire drills, first aid, self defense, and other emergency skills. What do we learn about the ship’s crew when we see them WILLINGLY go back out into the icy fog?
The Manessa Kwi was sentient but not sapient, intelligent and aware, but not wise. As Sata and Rini worked in the kitchen, they saw an example of this limitation. In this case, they agreed with the ship. If they had needed to heat the food more quickly, they might have left the stove on level four. Have you ever tried to use a machine that “believed” (through its programming) that it was doing the right thing, and absolutely “refused” to change?
Why do you think Kibi was interested in Manessa’s gender? What challenges was Kibi facing that related to her own gender, and the assumptions her kingdom made about what young women could, and could not, do?
Why was Sata comforted when Manessa revealed that all previous crew members, including captains, had fears about certain environments?
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Chapter 22: Mati’s Waterfall
The captain of the Manessa Kwi chatted with his crew members at breakfast, with about half his words coming from the language of Nebador and the other half from a small medieval kingdom none of them had seen in almost two months. He noticed that they all seemed happier and more confident after their day of rest. Eventually he broached the subject of their next destination.
“The highest waterfall on the planet, requested by Mati, also happens to be one of the most beautiful, and it has a hidden secret.”
Mati wiggled in her chair with excitement.
“Behind the falls is a limestone cave with growing calcite formations.”
Blank looks met Ilika’s glance.
“Okay, I’ll put on a video as soon as we clean the table.”
The rest of their porridge and tropical fruit vanished from their trays in seconds, and Boro dashed into the galley to do the dishes. Rini wiped the table and Kibi rearranged the room, leaving Ilika to select the video.
They were all soon seated and staring at the big display with round eyes and open mouths. Stalactites reached down from the ceiling to join stalagmites on the floor, stone draperies were sometimes thin enough to glow when lit from behind, and delicate mineral crusts ringed pools of crystal-clear water. Flying mammals occasionally filled the air, and blind lizards crept
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about in the silence.
“Let’s see what works, shall we?” the captain ordered when the video ended.
The crew members were quickly at their stations going through preflight checks and diagnostics without further prompting.
“We have ship’s position and topographics!” Rini announced excitedly.
“Anti-mass works!” Boro declared. “Oh, but thrusters are coming up purple . . . every one of them.”
Mati turned around. “How can I fly without thrusters?”
“There’s more bad news,” Rini said glumly. “No visuals. Up, down, sideways, nothing.”
“My refrigerator!” Kibi moaned, a wounded look on her face. “Manessa shut down my refrigerator!”
“Okay,” Ilika said, trying not to laugh, “so we’ll finish up left-overs for lunch, and Mati has to learn to fly with only the ion drive. What’s the shortest duration ion burst you can use, Mati?”
“Um . . . one thousandth of a second.”
“How far will that take you in this atmosphere?”
Mati searched for the graph Ilika had shown her several days before.
“Here it is. Two hundred and forty meters.”
“That, in a straight line, is your unit of movement.”
“From right here on the mountain?”
“No. The ion drive causes enough air displacement to damage anything nearby that’s solid. First use anti-mass to move us a thousand meters straight up. Navigator, location seven by ion drive, please.”
Sata looked up the coordinates and then selected an appropriate chart.
“That’s halfway around the planet!”
“Transit time, navigator?”
Sata worked at her console in silence for a moment. “Four minutes, five seconds.”
“Wow,” Boro breathed.
“Clearance along the route?” Ilika asked.
“Aren’t we starting a thousand meters higher than the highest mountain?”
Sata asked, spinning around and giving her captain a smug look.
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Ilika grinned. “Give Mati your bearing and exact time calculation. Ion warm-up, engineer.”
“Anti-mass and ion drive are green.”
“Um . . . Ilika?” Kibi began hesitantly. “Without visuals, I can’t check the landing site.”
“You’ll have to do it yourself. All you need is a mask and gloves.”
Kibi strode to the lift as Ilika began to go through status checks with everyone else. She returned a minute later and cleared her throat, holding up a coil of ice-covered safety line.
A guilty look appeared on Rini’s face, the last one to come in on the previous day.
“I’ll put it in the refrigerator,” Kibi said with a twisted grin. “It’ll help keep the food cold.”
The four-minute transit to a continent on the other side of the planet was spent watching Sata’s chart move quickly by on their screens, and listening to a mellow song that Kibi selected. Once they were over an ocean and the chart was no longer interesting, they all poked at their diagnostic controls to see if the ship was ready to give them back any of the missing systems. No one reported any luck.
As soon as the ion drive disengaged, they all took a good look at the topographic map of the land far below.
“Hmm . . .” Sata began. “Highlands at two thousand meters, and the valley below us is less than half that.”
“Trade places with me, Mati,” Ilika said. “This is your waterfall.”
The pilot grabbed her crutch and Ilika helped her into the command chair.
“Um . . . let’s go down to two thousand one hundred and see what we can see, through the hatch I guess.”
“If you don’t mind, Mati, I’ll just throw in a short zero-gravity session,”
Ilika said.
The acting commander grinned and grabbed her inertia straps. The others got the hint.
“Anti-mass seven, full inertia,” Ilika requested.
“You’ve got it,” Boro confirmed. “Anti-mass is yellow.”
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Ilika glanced around to make sure everyone was strapped in, then quickly pushed down on his flight control.
“Wee!” Rini shrieked.
“Ugh,” came from the engineer’s station.
Ilika watched his altimeter whiz past twenty thousand meters. “Prepare for vertical deceleration.”
Sata swallowed several times, remembering a little too clearly what she had for breakfast. However, the three gravities that pushed her into her chair felt very comforting after the free-fall.
“Everyone okay?” Mati asked when the ship finally came to a stop.
“Boro said it well,” Kibi replied. “Ugh.”
Ilika could see that Sata was breathing and smiling.
“Is it cold out there, Rini?” Mati asked.
“No, very warm and wet.”
“Can we . . . look, Ilika?”
“You’re in command, Mati.”
“Oh, yeah. Hatch half-open. Me, Boro, and Kibi will look, then the rest of you.”
Below rocky highlands dotted with trees, a lush tropical valley spread before them, waterfalls cascading down the steep walls at many points.
Mati grinned, but said nothing for a long minute. The highest waterfall plunged over a cliff and fell straight down hundreds of meters, pounded against a rock outcropping, then dove another hundred meters into a large pool, kicking up clouds of spray and mist.
“Down another four hundred meters, please,” Mati requested.
Ilika slowly lowered the ship.
Mati’s face glowed as she stood gazing at the huge column of falling water.
Boro and Kibi flanked her, each with a supportive arm around her back. The roar of the water filled the ship and mist collected on their faces. The pilot of the Manessa Kwi, currently in command, smiled like she had never smiled before.
While Ilika, Sata, and Rini took a look through the open hatch, Boro ran his thruster diagnostics again and stared at the results. “Ilika, when you’re
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done there, I want to talk to you.”
The captain pried himself away from the beautiful sight and went to the engineer’s station.
“This may not be a simulated failure. Look. The only way we could get these readings is if the intake filters were old and clogged.”
“All of them at once? No, this is Manessa’s doing, but our mischievous ship may have left us a way out.”
“You mean . . . it’s simulated, but if I replace them, the thrusters might work again?”
“It’s worth a try. Mati, do you mind if Boro tries to fix the thrusters?”
“I don’t mind. We certainly can’t explore a cave with ion drive!”
Boro picked two helpers and led them down to the utility room. “Kibi, you can carry the new ones,” Boro said, opening a cabinet and handing her a stack of replacement filters, “and Rini will receive the old ones as I pull them out.”
They entered the engineering ring, where Kibi and Rini had only been once before. The anti-mass induction tubes that encircled the ship glowed violet, but few other devices were currently running. Boro stopped at the first thruster engine they came to and opened the intake filter cover.
He put his finger to his lips for a moment, then said, in the new language he was just learning, “Here’s the old filter, Rini. Hand me a new one, Kibi.”
He handed the old filter to Rini. They could all see that it was pearly white and obviously not clogged. Then he took the same filter back from Rini and reinstalled it.
Both helpers grinned with delight at the game, but managed to hold their tongues. The same process was repeated at the other thruster engines.
As they exited the engineering ring, Boro put his finger to his lips one more time. Kibi returned the new filters to their cabinet.
Landing in his seat, Boro started another diagnostic. “Mati, you have thrusters!”
“The cave is behind the lower falls, just above the pool,” Ilika explained.
“Going from one medium to another is a serious challenge for any pilot, Mati, as you know from entering the ocean. It’s worse when one of the media is moving. I’ll take us in, you stand right behind me and watch, then you can
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take us out when we’re done cave exploring.”
Mati rose with the help of her crutch and held onto the back of the pilot’s chair. “I think I remember the basics.”
“Good. You give the commands, and I’ll add anything you miss.”
“Okay. Um . . . um . . . thin vertical shape.”
“Aerodynamic vertical profile set,” Ilika acknowledged.
“Yeah, that. Um . . . ionize the hull.”
“Remember that, Boro?”
“Yep. It even works!”
The others, intently watching and listening, chuckled.
“What’s next, Mati?”
“Um . . . we need to see somehow, and we don’t have visuals. High resolution topo, Rini.”
A moment later a frustrated noise came from the watch station. “Purple.”
Ilika glanced up at Mati. “Manessa’s training program has struck again.
What are we going to do, commander?”
Mati breathed a sigh. “If we weren’t trying to go through a waterfall, we could just open the hatch and look!”
“I agree — not a good idea in a waterfall.”
Mati noticed Sata squirming. “Got an idea, Sata?”
“The topo you want is in memory.”
“Why didn’t I think of that!” Rini muttered.
“How old?” Ilika asked.
“Um . . . about two years,” the navigator replied.
“Acceptable risk, commander?” Ilika asked.
“Mmm . . . if we go slowly.”
Ilika grinned. “I was planning on it.”
Mati watched closely as her captain carefully moved the little ship into the waterfall, anticipating the changing forces that were trying to shove them down into the pool. As soon as they passed the midpoint of the cascade, he went through the same process in reverse, tapering the anti-mass drive until they were clear of the pounding water.
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“We’re not going to fly around in the cave by two-year-old topographic charts stored in memory because we have another option,” Ilika announced.
Seeing the puzzled look on Mati’s face, he continued. “You already thought of it.”
“Open the hatch and look out?”
“Sort of. Take a look at this hull configuration,” he said, pointing to one of Manessa’s possible shapes on the console display.
“A three meter ball with one seat at the top. Someone’s gonna ride and tell us which way to go!”
“Yes. Rini is the watch, and I think this will also be good for Sata.”
Sata swallowed, but wore a tiny smile.
“And the rest can enjoy the tour at the hatch, including you, Mati, until it’s your turn to pilot.”
“Hatch is open,” Kibi said as the sound of the waterfall entered the ship.
“You will be responsible for the ship, Rini. I will do exactly what you say.
And remember, there’s one crew member who will not be protected by the ship’s hull.”
“Yeah,
me!”
Rini was soon in harness and safety line, climbing out the hatch and making his way to the top of the ship where a molded seat awaited him. “It’s loud and wet out here!” he yelled for Manessa’s audio sensors. “Don’t forget to turn on some lights for me!”
Ilika and Mati agreed on some engine adjustments, then Boro, Sata, and Kibi all went off-duty to enjoy the show at the hatch.
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“Forward very slowly,” Rini directed.
They began to move deeper into the cave, away from the waterfall. Those at the hatch could almost reach out and touch the rock walls.
“Stop. Down a little. No, not that far! Stop! Oh, yeah, you can’t tell how far ‘a little’ is.”
Ilika smiled as his student atop the ship began to realize which phrases would work, and which would create confusion. Those at the hatch chatted about a room full of prickly stalactites that opened up on the right side of the ship.
“Forward. Eight degrees left. Good.”
“These are amazing,” Boro commented. “We have to make Ilika teach us about them tonight.”
“Stop. Up until I say stop. Yikes, stop! I forgot to look up and almost got speared by a pointy thing.”
Ilika chuckled and cringed at the same time.
“Okay,
forward.”
“I wonder what that water tastes like,” Mati mused, pointing at a blue pool that appeared to have hundreds of eggs at the bottom.
“Stop. Thirty degrees right and forward.”
“Probably chalky,” Boro guessed. “Everything’s calcium carbonate.”
“This is so beautiful!” Rini could be heard saying.
“Those drapery things almost look like bacon,” Sata shared, pointing.
“Yikes . . .” Rini cried, but was cut off by a scraping sound. “. . . op!” A half second later a crashing sound filled the cavern.
Those at the hatch craned their necks to see what had happened. At the front of the ship, a large stalagmite had fallen forward across a group of delicate formations, breaking itself and the others into pieces.
“Oh, no!” Rini moaned in a sad voice. “I killed it. Can we put it back together?”
Ilika and the others would have laughed, but they could hear how deeply Rini was feeling his mistake.
“I’m sorry. I was looking all around and not paying attention. I shouldn’t do this anymore.”
With Kibi’s help, Mati went up the entryway steps and looked at Ilika.
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“It’s your call, but I recommend Rini stay up there awhile to practice paying attention.”
Mati smiled and nodded, returned to the hatch and leaned out. “You’re on-duty up there until I say you’re off-duty!” she yelled up to her friend.
“Okay,” Rini said in a forlorn voice close to tears. “Do we have some glue or something?”
“It’s just a rock, Rini!” Boro yelled out the hatch.
Rini managed to collect himself and carry out his task for the next quarter hour, but they could all hear the guilty tone in his voice. He did, however, pay close attention, and the Manessa Kwi didn’t hit any more cave formations.
Deep Learning Notes
Stalactites, stalagmites, and other limestone cave formations are created over long periods of time by water that drips into the caves. The water begins as rain or snow, and as it soaks into the ground and passes through limestone rock, some of the stone is dissolved by the water. When that water enters the cave, some of the dissolved minerals are deposited on the ceiling or floor. It takes thousands to millions of years for cave formations to grow.
Rini and Mati were less affected by zero gravity (free fall), and other physical experiences that didn’t cause pain or danger, because they were both intuitives. Intuitives pay less attention to physical reality and more to unseen patterns and meanings. Boro and Sata were both more “down to Earth” and so more affected by zero gravity. Kibi was a mixture of the two.
When reading about the intelligence of the deep-space response ship Manessa Kwi, it is easy to remember the HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. In that story, mental illness was caused in the computer by placing it under conflicting political pressures. It’s a uniquely human theme, based on the way the human mind (and therefore human society) is structured, and has no relationship to the Manessa Kwi.
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Based on the evidence in this chapter, does Manessa have visual sensors inside the ship (as the HAL 9000 did)?
Giving voice commands to someone who can’t see is a powerful exercise in mutual trust. If the person giving commands does a bad job, the person carrying them out has no way of knowing until disaster strikes. If the person carrying out the commands does not do so faithfully, then it doesn’t matter how good the commands were. Again, disaster strikes.
Rini quickly realized that phrases like “a little” do no good. It is not its vagueness that is the problem. “Exactly half way” would be just as bad. The problem is that they are relative to the whole distance, which only the person giving commands can see.
Rini’s last words before the accident were, “This is so beautiful!” What state of mind was he in?
Why would Ilika want Rini to practice paying attention when he was feeling something deeply?
In your opinion, was the stalagmite “just a rock” as Boro said, or was it something greater because of its beauty and the length of time it took to create?
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Chapter 23: Mati’s Problem
When they had explored deep into the cave and it was becoming too small for the ship with a watchman perched on top, Mati declared it was time to turn back and Boro yelled for Rini to come in. With an excited grin, the usual pilot took back her seat.
Sata climbed out the hatch as soon as Rini was back. “This is spooky,”
they could hear her say as soon as she reached the top of the ship.
“Kibi is in command,” Ilika announced, “and Boro, you are at the hatch in case Sata needs you. I’ll cover your station.”
Boro smiled, then checked to see that another safety line was handy.
“Gosh . . . um . . . we need to turn around,” Sata called from her perch.
“Ilika, are my thrusters and anti-mass in good shape?” Mati asked.
“Green and yellow.”
Mati looked at Kibi, who nodded for the pilot to begin the return journey back toward the sunshine. She took the flight control and began to rotate the ship.
“Not that way! The other way!” Sata’s voice came to them.
A slight frown crossed Kibi’s face as Mati sighed and reversed the direction of rotation. The seconds ticked by with no word from the top of the ship.
“You’re going around in circles!” Sata said sharply.
Mati turned to look at Kibi with a puzzled expression.
“Keep doing exactly what she says,” Kibi ordered. “She’ll figure it out . . . I hope.”
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Ilika was beginning to pay close attention to what was happening.
“Back the other way a little,” Sata directed. “No! Just a little!”
“Grrrr,” Mati intoned as she again brought the ship to a halt.
“Okay!” Sata yelled with a hint of panic in her voice. “Let’s go! Let’s get out of here!”
“Ilika,” Kibi began, “I think the same thing might be happening to Sata that happened in the ocean trench.”
“Could be. This is a pretty safe environment to let her work through it.”
“I said forward!” Sata yelled, breathing fast.
“She did not,” Mati mumbled. “But forward is what she’ll get . . .”
“No! Not that far!”
Mati showed her teeth. “Grrrrrrr.”
“Go back! Then down! No!”
With a sigh, Mati again brought the ship to a stop.
“Forget it and go forward!”
Mati
complied.
“You passed it!” Sata nearly screamed.
Mati brought the ship to an abrupt halt and spun around, tears on her face for all to see, voice shaking. “Ilika said I should never pilot when something is making me do a bad job. Well, something is. I can’t do this another second, I feel sick, and I don’t want to hear Sata’s voice ever again!”
With moisture forming in Kibi’s own eyes, she said, “Lock your controls and go off-duty. You too, Rini.”
Mati hit a symbol on her console much harder than necessary, then grabbed her crutch. Rini put his arm around her and pointed her toward the lift.
“What’s going on down there?” came Sata’s voice. “I said go up!”
They didn’t yell for Sata to come in. Boro clipped on a safety line and climbed up to get her. As soon as she was inside, Ilika could see she was frightened and gasping for air. Boro guided her to the table and Kibi brought pinkfruit juice and other snacks, then put on some music. Ilika went around the bridge making sure all systems were stable.
For the next hour, Sata nibbled and talked with Boro and sometimes Kibi
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or Ilika, slowly regaining her composure.
On the lower deck, Mati cried in Rini’s arms for half an hour, then curled up on his bunk. When he was sure she was deeply asleep, he crept back up to the passenger area.
When not talking with Sata, Ilika grabbed a knowledge pad and read everything he could find about crew members having problems like this, and what he could do to help. Eventually, when the navigator and engineer were holding hands and watching a video, something funny that made them laugh, Ilika and Kibi slipped out and sat on the top of the ship together.
He surprised her by beginning their private meeting with a deep kiss.
“Mmm. What did I do to deserve that?” she asked with a coy smile.
“I can count on you . . . and I love you for it.”
“Except when I run away to eat lizards.”
“You didn’t really eat any, did you?”
She smiled. “No, but they were starting to look tasty!”
“You got past that. I’m trying to figure out what we can do to get Sata past this.”
“Anything in Manessa’s memory?”
“Fear of darkness can be very hard to overcome.”
“But Manessa is lighting up the cavern bright as day!”
“I know, but there must be something this has in common with the trench.”
Kibi thought for a moment. “A huge weight above — water in the trench, rock here. I don’t know much psych . . . ology, but I have an idea. It won’t be easy for either of them, you know, one of those do-or-die things. I’ll be the one to tell them, if you like it, since I was supposed to be in command until we got back outside.”
“What’s
your
idea?”
“No way!” Mati screamed right in Kibi’s face where they sat at a table on the lower deck. “She treated me like a slave! I can’t do it. I won’t do it!”
“It’s that or . . . we can’t use you on the crew. Either of you,” Kibi responded, trying not to choke on the huge lump in her throat.
Rini, seated silently beside Mati, looked at Kibi with amazement.
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At the large table on the upper deck, every word from below could be heard. Seated close beside Boro, Sata burst into tears.
After several minutes, she fell silent and wiped her face with a towel.
“What do I do, Ilika?”
“You have to make one of those really hard decisions, like Kibi had to make about a month ago.”
“My heart is screaming at me to go home and let my mother and father hug me and tell me everything’s okay, and then . . . you know . . . wash tables or something. But I don’t want to do that because I’d lose Boro!” She turned to him with a forlorn expression.
The large young man wore a soft, caring look, but said nothing as Sata searched his eyes for the answer to her dilemma. Not finding it, she started crying again and put her head onto his chest.
Soon she wiped her face once more and took some deep breaths. “I’ll do it.
I’ll do anything you think will help me, here, in the deepest darkest trench, or anywhere else. But . . . how do I get Mati to agree?”
Ilika
shrugged.
Sata looked at Boro. He too shrugged.
“I guess . . . I have to ask her . . . from my knees.”
“Might work,” Boro said. “She knows now that you guys are going to succeed or fail together.”
Sata stood up, then saw that Boro and Ilika were making no effort to rise.
“Yeah, I have to do this alone, don’t I?”
Ilika reached over to the steward’s console and touched a control. “Kibi and Rini, please come up.”
A few moments later, Kibi appeared in the lift, then Rini. They quickly took in the situation of Sata standing alone, halfway to the lift, so they sat down at the table.
Sata’s last few steps on the upper deck appeared painful, as if she was going to her own execution. Tears started streaming down her cheeks again as the lift took her out of sight.
“This is going to be one of the longest hours of my life,” Ilika declared with deep feeling, “or however long it takes.”
The others at the table nodded agreement.
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The first hour brought little but the sounds of yelling, screaming, and crying from the lower deck. All of Mati’s frustrations, from a lifetime of incapacity and slavery, were poured out for Sata to hear, even though the navigator had witnessed few of them and was the cause of none of them, save the very last.
The second hour was even more difficult for those on the upper deck because no sounds at all came from below. The captain and partial crew spoke in whispers, wondering if Mati and Sata had fallen asleep, or perhaps killed each other.
During the third hour, when those above were very quiet, they could hear soft voices coming from the lower deck. Then, as the end of that hour approached, little bits of laughter filtered up through the lift. For the first time since the trouble began, smiles came to those waiting. Boro and Rini started making dinner.
As the aroma of potato and onion soup began to waft its way throughout the ship, Mati appeared in the lift, hair snarled beyond recognition. Her face was red, tear-stained, and in one place, bleeding, but she wore a contented smile.
Sata appeared next, walking with a limp, but also smiling.
After standing for a moment facing the rest of their friends and captain without speaking a word, Mati took Sata’s hand and together they entered one of the toilet rooms.
Because of the importance of the situation, Kibi nodded when Boro asked to use some of their dwindling supply of foods and drinks from other worlds.
As soon as the two girls emerged, slightly improved in appearance, Rini started shuttling trays to the table. Sata and Mati took seats side by side.
“This smells good!” Mati remarked.
“How did you know making us do stuff together was going to work?” Sata asked.
“I didn’t,” Kibi replied.
“But we didn’t know what else to do,” Ilika admitted. “You two declared your friendship the first day you were together. That friendship is now being tested. It looks like . . . well, you tell us.”
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“We . . . um . . . made a pact,” Mati began. “We’re going to do everything together, starting with what Sata . . . I mean what we messed up, and going on from there until Sata can go into deep, dark places without freaking, and I can pilot without getting mad.”
“Tell them what you realized,” Sata coaxed. “It’s important.”
“Um . . . it’s not the first time I’ve been angry while piloting. It’s just the first time I let it show. And I realized . . . this is embarrassing . . . I was mad at Tera many times too, even though I loved her.”
“I’ve had some choice words for Manessa,” Boro shared, “since the simulated failures started.”
“Me too,” Rini admitted.
“That’s understandable,” Ilika began. “Hopefully you can all forgive Manessa once the simulations are over.”
“I think we all understand why we’re doing them and why they’re important, but they’re frustrating,” Kibi shared. “I was sort of just watching it all . . . until Manessa killed my refrigerator!”
Everyone else laughed and Kibi smiled.
After dinner, Ilika determined that Sata’s limp was nothing permanent, but that she had a new respect for Mati’s crutch. A little antiseptic ointment on Mati’s cut was sufficient, as the bleeding had long before stopped. The two girls brushed each other’s hair, and then declared themselves ready for duty.
“I want you to take turns giving directions to me,” Ilika commanded, handing them a pair of safety lines. “Listen to each other and learn. If you do a good job, I’ll stop and let you come in before we go through the waterfall.”
He let his last statement soak in for a moment before cracking a smile.
Both girls laughed heartily, then prepared to creep up to the watch nest on top of the Manessa Kwi.
“This’ll be my first time on top of the ship!” Mati declared.
Ilika nodded. “You’ve seen it done, and we’re not at eight thousand meters.”
Mati chuckled. “Last I looked, we were at about one meter.”
“Still are, exact same place.”
She took a deep breath. “I’m ready.”
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Mati’s ascent took some time, but with Sata’s help, it proved nearly painless. By the time they arrived, Manessa had created an extra-wide seat that would hold them both.
Ilika took the helm while Boro and Rini stayed at the hatch.
“Should I start, or do you want to start?” Sata asked.
“Um . . . you can start.”
“We need to go up a little. There’s a big stalag-thingy just ahead.”
Mati giggled at Sata’s made-up word. “Ilika can’t see, so saying ‘a little’
doesn’t do any good.”
“Oh, yeah. Up very slowly. How’s that?”
“That works,” Mati assured.
“Okay, stop,” Sata directed. “Your turn.”
“Slowly forward,” Mati began.
About half an hour later, after much giggling and several lessons in clear communication, the two girls sat on top of the ship just a few meters from the roaring sheet of water that marked the end of the cave.
“I guess this is one way to take a bath,” Mati mused aloud.
They both felt tugs on their safety lines and laughed. A few minutes later, they were back inside the ship and the hatch was closed.
“You up to taking the helm for the waterfall?” Ilika asked his pilot.
“I wouldn’t miss it!” Mati declared. “As long as I get Sata by my side.”
“Actually, for a couple of days, I want her right with you, watching over your shoulder, even taking the helm on some easy flight legs.”
Sata
grinned.
“I’ll cover navigation during that time. I didn’t know cross-training would start so soon, but you two, more than anyone else, need a good appreciation for what the other one does.”
“I get to teach Mati how to juggle charts?” Sata asked with a grin.
“The
basics.”
The two friends quickly embraced each other.
“Status check for waterfall passage,” Ilika ordered, and everyone went to their stations.
Mati, with Sata holding onto the back of her chair, was unable to take the
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ship through the torrent as smoothly as her captain, but Sata was impressed anyway, and quite in awe of how complicated the pilot’s job was, now that she had a chance to watch.
The cave, with no visible daylight or noticeable temperature changes, had created a sense of timelessness, and the entire crew was surprised to emerge into the darkness of night. Above them, stars gleamed in a cloudless sky, and around them, the deep green jungle enshrouded its secrets.
With light provided by Manessa, they found a little clearing from which birds scattered into the air, then set the ship down. Ilika and Kibi made a quick check from the ramp for dangers.
Everyone knew which two crew members wanted hot baths that evening.
Deep Learning Notes
Would you have been able to pilot the ship, without any visual or topographic displays, using only the directions Sata gave? What do you think of Mati’s refusal to continue piloting?
What leadership qualities did Kibi show during this crisis?
Most human groups that engage in teamwork operations, such as the military and corporations, normally isolate a person who cannot function on the team, and select a replacement. How did Ilika handle the situation differently than we usually would?
Kibi forced the two girls to solve the problem together. Why did that motivate them to come up with a solution? In what ways did it make that solution easier to achieve?
When Mati admitted she also had a problem (anger), how did that help the two girls form their problem-solving pact?
When Sata went up to the top of the ship again, what was different that helped
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her do a better job than the first time?
Ilika made an assumption about the way his crew members could learn to give directions when the pilot could not see. The method involves “trial and error”
in which the one giving commands can see what happens when the directions are vague or relative to something the pilot can’t see. It requires clear thinking, so it worked for Rini, but not for Sata because of her claustrophobia.
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Chapter 24: Rini’s Jungle
After Ilika and Kibi roused themselves late the following morning, they went up the lift to find the rest of the crew frowning at them.
“Manessa won’t let us go outside,” Rini grumbled.
“Says we need a captain’s override to open the hatch,” Sata added, her head cocked slightly askance. “It feels like we’re . . . prisoners.”
Kibi, not knowing anything about it, stepped back and looked at Ilika.
“Guilty,” Ilika admitted. “Rini, you asked for a jungle,” he continued as he got a cup of tea from the pot someone had made. “This is a jungle, and we might visit others. They are very beautiful, warm, wet, and have the greatest diversity of life of any ecosystem on this type of planet.”
“That’s . . . um . . . why we want to go outside and see it!” Mati asserted with an annoyed tone of voice.
Ilika smiled. “I’ll give you some numbers.” He sat down at the steward’s console and selected something from Manessa’s memory. “A typical jungle contains sixty species of dangerous mammals, including several carnivorous cats that can easily kill people, thirty types of aggressive birds, two hundred species of poisonous reptiles and amphibians, and twelve different carnivorous fish that will attack any animal in the water, including humans, and leave nothing but bones. Also, three thousand kinds of aggressive or poisonous insects, some of which move in swarms, and fifty-three thousand different microbial diseases to which we are vulnerable.”
“Oh,” Rini mumbled.
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“Wait, I forgot to tell you about the seven hundred species of toxic plants.
Many are poisonous to the touch, and some can shoot their poison a meter or more. I hope this also explains why I wouldn’t let you go off the beach back at the tropical island.”
“Thanks for locking the door,” Boro said, eyes wide.
Ilika touched a control on the console, spoke a word, and the hatch opened. “The hatch is back to normal now that I’ve briefed you.”
They looked out to see huge insects buzzing about in the air, larger than any they had ever seen. Vines had already grown over the ship’s ramp, and a large snake was stretching toward the hull from a nearby tree. A growling sound somewhere in the distance caused Mati to shudder.
“We have to be smart and careful,” Ilika continued. “We are now the crew of a response ship, and we will be visiting many different worlds. You five grew up in a temperate climate. My childhood home was slightly warmer and drier, but not too different. Remember what happened to us when we went wandering around in the mountains of your kingdom?”
They all smiled at the memory of getting lost, running out of food, and nearly freezing to death in a mid-summer snowstorm.
“The desert is a simple eco-system in which you can easily see the few dangers. The mountaintop is devoid of life and the dangers are related to the
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weather.”
Suddenly a heavy rain started falling outside, reminding them of the waterfall.
“I’ve heard it can rain in a jungle so hard you can’t breathe,” Ilika shared.
Rini’s mouth opened. “Wow. We’re sorry.”
“No apologies necessary. I should have told you last night, but I didn’t think of it until we were all in our cabins. Fact is, we’re taking a chance just breathing the air because some of the microbial diseases are airborne.
Manessa’s filters will catch most of it, and we’ll get checked for any health problems when we get to Satamia.”
Mati smiled at the prospect.
“So, let’s get some breakfast, get our ship running as best we can, and take a tour of this beautiful and mysterious forest without getting poisoned or eaten.”
“Everything works!” Boro declared.
“Same here!” Rini added.
“Me too!” Sata echoed.
“Uh oh,” Kibi moaned, ruining the excitement. “Manessa says we’re out of water even though I know we have a tank and a half, and all the solvent filters are suddenly, mysteriously clogged, including, get this, the spares.”
Ilika
laughed.
“That means no hot baths!” Sata grumbled with mock despair.
“Oh, and there’s more,” Kibi continued. “The siphon controls have gone purple!”
“Manessa strikes again!” Boro said, laughing.
Ilika, still chuckling, led Kibi down to the utility room, and a minute later they returned with a couple of big jugs made of some soft, flexible material.
With Rini in command, Sata watching Mati pilot, and Ilika covering navigation and watch, they spent the morning poking into groves of towering trees, shallow caves full of dripping ferns, and pools of emerald green water.
They had little trouble adapting to the new training situation, with Boro dipping jugs into pools while Mati hovered the ship and Rini swatted at huge
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flying bugs. Kibi took charge of filtering the water, then boiling it, while Ilika added a chemical to each toilet to keep down the odor.
Three different waterfalls reached out from the rocky cliff, allowing them to fly behind and peer at strange flowers and huge mushrooms that lived in a constant mist. They followed streams to places where the water disappeared into caves too small for the ship, then found the water gushing from rocky openings somewhere lower down the valley. When not sight-seeing, Mati hovered the ship beside trees while Kibi and Rini picked fruit.
Many times that morning, as Mati squeezed the ship into tight or dark places, Sata had to close her eyes for a moment as she relived the feelings that had overwhelmed her in the ocean trench and the cave. Whenever she could, Mati reached up with a free hand to touch her friend. That touch reminded Sata to breathe.
At lunch, Rini declared his curiosity satisfied, so they returned the Manessa Kwi to the clearing and spent the afternoon doing language lessons, watching videos about jungle creatures, and doing all their cooking and cleaning with small amounts of filtered, boiled water.
Boro and Sata sat on the entryway steps after dinner watching insects the size of birds repeatedly try to penetrate the static energy field that protected the open hatch. None succeeded, but neither did they give up and leave. Boro took Sata’s smaller hand in his and she leaned her head against his shoulder.
“It doesn’t feel so cooped up in here when we have the hatch open,” she shared.
“Yeah, as long as those vultures can’t get in and suck us dry.”
Sata chuckled. “Would they suck us dry, or poison us?”
Boro speculated, pointing. “The green ones with the sharp needles on their noses would just suck us dry, no pleases or thank-yous. The red ones that glow would poison us first, then suck us dry.”
Sata
laughed.
“I’m very glad you’re feeling better, and you and Mati are friends again,”
Boro said tenderly.
“Kibi made it clear — we succeed or fail together. And if the pilot and navigator can’t count on each other . . .”
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“Yeah. Ship’s in trouble.”
“It’s like . . . when I worked at the inn and I’d miss wiping a table, or break a dish, my mom would yell, but it wasn’t any big deal. Now . . . people could die. There’s no place on the bridge for a little girl.”
Boro put his arm around her and held her close.
Sata smiled and closed her eyes.
Deep Learning Notes
Conditions in a tropical rain forest (a “jungle”) are perfect for living things like those on planet Earth. Any wetter, drier, hotter, or colder, and the amount and diversity of life goes down. “Diversity” means the number of different species that are part of the ecosystem. The more diverse an ecosystem is, the more resilient it is to shocks and changes, because there are many different species doing the same “job” in the ecosystem.
Of course, being “perfect for life” also means a jungle is perfect for death. An ecosystem in balance (in other words, that continues from year to year) has to have just as much death and decay as there is birth and growth. That explains the many carnivorous (meat-eating) animals, and the countless diseases.
A creature is “part of an ecosystem” when it gets its food and water from the ecosystem, leaves its wastes (and upon death, its body) in the ecosystem, and reproduces within the ecosystem. Were the 6 humans in the Manessa Kwi part of that jungle ecosystem?
Kibi eliminated large organisms in the water by filtering (straining), then killed the rest with heat. We have no filter material that will remove all microbes from water. “Chlorine” (sodium hypochlorite) will kill most microbes, but not all.
A small area of special conditions, like the constant mist around a waterfall, is called an ecological “niche.” It is still part of the larger ecosystem, but allows
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certain creatures to flourish that would have a harder time outside the niche.
Sata made the decision to get over her claustrophobia. Why is she still uncomfortable in dark or tight places?
By admitting that there’s no place on the bridge of a ship for a little girl, what is Sata promising to Boro?
By sharing an intimate moment with Sata even when she is talking about her claustrophobia problem, what is Boro telling her?
