There was a vibration: light but irregular. A groggy throat groaned acknowledgement.
Some moments later, there was another, stronger vibration.
"I know."
"Good waking, Captain Sent?"
"Tolerable."
"Merely tolerable?" The note of concern in the synthetic voice was patently
maternal.
Sent sighed.
"Leaving the dreaming can be soooo..."
He drew the vowel out from irritation to humor as he swung into a brief,
textbook stretch -- whirling his limbs in elaborate counterrhythms --
and released a final head-tossing "so so!" when the exercise was complete.
"...but duty calls. Let's see what I've missed. Aura? Queue top two?"
"Our aura is peach. The queue top two are 'aura' (three factors) and 'dreaming'
('fact' and 'fict')."
"We're peach? What's coloring our aura?"
"Aura factor one -- 'greetings': overzealous greetings (detail). And."
"They're hailing? Surprising! How did they sense our approach?"
"They are not hailing. We are arrived."
"We're there? So early!"
"We are not there. We are here. Aura factor two -- 'early': arrival was
approximately one half-sleep ahead of schedule; you are sleep-deprived
(detail)."
"Mmm. Why so early?"
"Early detail: two points. One: 'last squirt' more accurate than anticipated
(detail). And."
"And?"
"Two: local conditions more 'navigable' than anticipated (three factors)."
"Navigable?"
"Navigable factor one -- Last pre-squirt probe reported numerous objects
in orbit around the target planet. There are none. And."
"And?"
"Navigable factor two -- Intrasystem traffic predicted 99% probable; none
detected. And."
"And?"
"Navigable factor three -- Hostile reception predicted 42% probable; none
detected."
Sent was halfway through a small meal.
"No sattelites, no ships, no missiles, " he mused. "Aura three."
"Aura factor three -- 'delay' NPS 10 (detail)."
"HmmMMmm," pronounced Sent, bringing up a healthy glob of phlegm to send
into the sterilizer with his breakfast dishes.
The ten-sleep delay on his ship's Next Potential Squirt would be due to
the accuracy of the last squirt: probability math and engineering... but
first a hot shower. He closed the sleeplace and, doffing his nightcap,
entered the bath.
When Sent had been bathing silently for several minutes, the cleanstream
began to cool. "I know," he said, and it became hot again. "Dream fict,"
he mumbled.
"In the Ko system, on Ul, a moon of Pu, sleeps the boy whose dreams get
bigger the longer that he sleeps. And."
Sent could imagine how that one went. All of the ficts he'd cued so far
on this terminal had been moral-heavy and poetry-shy. "Dream fact," he
prompted, toggling the cleanstream from liquid to gas.
"In the Ko system, on Ul, a moon of Pu, sleeps the boy whose dreams get
bigger the longer that he sleeps. And."
Sent lept from the bath and visually checked the squirtship's aura. Sometimes
a sudden burst of color could cause an error of repetition. The aura was
still peach. Taking the console, he performed a few diagnostics, yet could
detect neither justification for the fact/fict error, nor any indication,
even, that it was an error.
"Dream fict and?"
"He thinks your squirty ship is neat."
"Dream fact and?"
"He thinks your squirty ship is neat."
Standing naked at the auxillary console in the bath, Sent surveyed the
detail of the last squirt. No relevant data was forthcoming. When his
squirtship refused despite increasingly radical diagnostics to register
any alarm, curiousity, or even acknowledgement of error, he decided to
spend some credits he didn't really have on a priority transmission to
his intelligence agency.
Then he dressed and made an apprearance on the bridge.
Afterwards, in his forward quarters, while waiting for advice and any
available information on the factuality and/or fictionality of the Ul
dreamer, he brunched and evaluated the detail on what the ship was calling
overzealous greetings.
He learned that the squirtship, having put down on a bed of small rocks
between the sea and a forest, was now surrounded by a small contingent
of the planet's most technologically advanced species. For some hours
now, this handful of bipeds had been launching small projectiles at the
hull. To Sent, this seemed an obvious case of hostile reception. The ship's
more optimistic hypothesis was based on the fact that the projectiles
were small bits of lead. The reasoning was that a> technology-centered
cultures often use metals for currency, b> currency is often offered as
a gift of welcome, and c> a species as technologically advanced as this
one ought to be able either to perceive that little bits of lead were
not going to harm the squirtship, or to detect, after a few misguided
attempts, that little bits of lead were not harming the squirtship.
It was a persuasive argument. Sent tried to keep an open mind. He viewed
the action, both recorded and live.
The first to approach the squirtship had been a male of nearly full physical
development, piloting a rover with a cargo bed. This man, whom Sent deigned
to name Daldon, after the inventer of the squirtdrive (and thus the very
first to 'discover' the squirtship), circled the landed craft twice, conveying
on the second pass two bunches of lead, and brief verbal and visual gestures,
then left the area.
Daldon soon returned, his rover full of men and women and leading several
other rovers. Many lead-launchers were put into operation, to such zealous
effect that a few of the 'greeting party' were struck, one fatally, by
lead which glanced off of the hull.
With nothing to do but wait for the arrival of intelligence or further
developments planetside, Sent requested, and was granted, a nap.
[Ulsan, August 2001]