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"Wealth is simply a matter of finding what people want, and providing it to them." - Zeus, Ruler of the Well, AS 2623 |
2780.203 - 241 The Deep Dust |
Maury is in his stateroom (or, at least, the guest stateroom that he's been given), meditating with the Starwayist techniques he's learned, when he gets a sense that that particular direction is a good one. That's back the way the ship came, though since the way they're going is getting to a dead end, that's not so bad.
Maury heads up to the bridge, and points out a very small passage through the dust that he thinks is the Right Way. As the ship navigates the passage, Aristotle begins to pick up a faint signal - it appears to be the archaic Morse code of "SOS". And the source of the signal is definitely the place to be going! Everyone has that feeling.
The Inopportune Moment reaches a "clearing" in the dust - there's a smaller ship (which Maury immediately concludes is the Elmer's Gold) in the center of the clearing, broadcasting the SOS. There's a comfortable feeling, as if it would be nice to go over to the ship. Captain Megaera hails the ship - a man with a strange gold netting on his head (like a ceremonial sort of headdress, not a psychic amplifier) answers, identifying the ship as the Light of Truth. He says that everything is all right. Janina enquires about the SOS. He seems startled, and says he will check into it, hanging up. A short while later, the SOS ceases and the man calls back, saying that it was a malfunction and has been cleared up.
This seems a bit suspicious, and Janina thinks for a bit. Then she thanks the other ship for their invitation, and informs them that they'll be docking shortly. The Light of Truth tries to call back, but the Inopportune Moment doesn't answer. Janina instructs Maury to bring Razor over with him, from the other side, while they go through the airlock. Maury and Razor suit up, jump to near the ship, and then jump into a stateroom.
In the stateroom, there's something that looks like a radio, made out of bits of a disassembled food dispenser, and there's a man laying on the floor, unconscious. The radio is apparently what sent the SOS. Razor does first aid, instructing Maury to watch the door.
The pair report in to Captain Megaera. She's a little taken aback to hear that "these robed goofs have a prisoner?" Maury notes that the prisoner isn't robed, he's in an overall.
Janina announces to the "robed goofs": "My men have your ship surrounded! Don't ask why, I just do!" (Of course, she's a pirate captain, so surrounding hapless ships is certainly in character). Maury and Razor hear a boarding action going on outside, and Maury teleports the two of them to the other side of the door. There are, in fact, guys in robes with golden stripes, and golden/bejeweled hair nets, being herded along. The Painted Ladies report that the group was all in the mess hall, chanting.
The guy who first answered the radio (who identifies himself as First Praetor Jonathan of the Golden Ascension) demands that Janina explain herself. The ship is properly chartered! Janina wants to know about the prisoner, and Jonathan claims that he's been feeling ill. He also claims that they're simply holding worship services, and that there's no cause to bother them. Phoenix snatches one of their hair nets, and notes that it's got diamonds in it! Maury takes a look, and wonders whether it's a psi amplifier - probably only in the sense that tinfoil protects you from mind control rays, by making you think that it should. Placebo psi tech. Maury and the Painted Ladies collect the "evidence".
Two of the Ladies are detailed to watch the prisoner, while Janina talks to the original captain. A bit after, there's a brief feeling of comfiness again, which stops when the Ladies make the prisoners stop chanting.
Maury breaks into the ship's computer - the flight plan was to cruise out into the middle of nowhere, and sit there for a while. The ship was temporarily renamed, at the behest of the chartering passengers. The last captain's entry notes that the delay on returning has grown excessive, and they really should be returning to Crux before supplies actually grow short.
Once the captain has woken up, he's in a state of distress - he says the passengers are trying to get them eaten by the Omphalos Dust Wyrm - they're going to get them all killed!
On that note, Aristotle calls from the bridge of the Inopportune Moment - there's something huge incoming. In fact, it's the Great Omphalos Dust Wyrm! The passengers go into a frenzy, calling out to the Great Unknowable Other to come and accept their offerings and speak to them. Everyone is immediately herded back to the Moment at top speed - they blow the airlock and flee.
The tiger-striped Dust Wyrm heads into the clearing. It's originally heading for the Light of Truth, but begins to veer towards the Inopportune Moment. The Painted Ladies knock out the prisoners with blaster fire, and the Dust Wyrm goes back to its original plan of eating the other ship, long enough for the Inopportune Moment to escape.
The captain (by the name of Trent) is fully debriefed. His ship was chartered to go out into the middle of the nebula. It seemed to be a pretty boring vacation, what with all the chanting, but they were paying well. When nothing kept happening, they kept asking to stay a few more days. Eventually he started to worry about the supplies - they weren't going to starve, but it would be better to go back before things got tight. When he insisted that they start heading back the next day, they locked him in his cabin that night. They explained the glory of summoning the Great Omphalos Dust Wyrm - but he'd seen it, and the ships it left behind, before. Ships fly in, and they don't fly out again. So he's glad to have been saved.
First Praetor Jonathan is revived, and also interrogated by the Inopportune Moment crew. He's most distressed that the ceremonies were disturbed - the Maker, the gateway to the Unknowable Other, will shun them for another sixty-three years. Janina doesn't find this particularly unfortunate, all things considered. Jonathan wants to know what they did with the offering to the Great One? The what? The nettings. Oh - those were lost with the ship. Praise be, Jonathan exclaims! The offering may have been accepted, then!
Several hours later, when the Dust Wyrm is well gone, the Inopportune Moment heads back to look for the other ship. It's been crunched, as expected, but at least no one was killed. Captain Trent is very sad - it will take forever to make it flight-capable again. Maury and Trent (who appears to have a lot of jury-rig ability) try to fix his ship. After several hours of work, most systems are working, and Maury has cobbled the engines into something of a ramjet, with full speed only. He's going to try and get it back to Crux - the Inopportune Moment says they'll come by and see how he's doing after they've run a further errand. On the other hand, Janina gets to keep the religious fanatic prisoners.
The next day, everyone thinks the ship is a really great place to be, which immediately causes the Painted Ladies to head down and shoot the fanatics again, who have discovered that they don't actually have to chant out loud. They get rearranged into different staterooms, which are all locked.
The exploration continues. Eventually, the Inopportune Moment comes upon a larger clearing in the dust, with an actual star and a single planet. Everyone breaks into spontaneous dancing. As they approach the planet, there's a faint radio signal detected. It's transmitting the standard greeting ping - when Aristotle pings it back, it sends an automated message:
"Should, in the course of years, lesser explorers come to this place and attempt to land, I will not be held responsible. Rupert Milhouse".The planet is extremely low-albedo, flat matte black. A laser shined through the atmosphere indicates that it's smoggy, with some black particulate matter in the air, but that the surface is definitely also black. There are no large oceans, but the planet seems to have about the right concentration of elements for a habitable planet. There are mountains (black), and things that might be regular-looking trees (black), and a lake (black).
Aristotle, scanning the surface, is briefly startled to find that he thinks he duplicated a section - but no, it's just that there are two mountains which are essentially identical in shape.
A drop pod is sent down to the surface, with Aristotle, Razor, and Maury in it. They pass the two disturbingly identical mountains, and land between the "lake" and the "forest". Aristotle instructs Razor: "Very dangerous. You go first."
Razor does, in fact, go out first, suited up. She kicks the dirt around. It's black. Maury takes some samples of the dirt. He and Razor head to the lake to take samples of the water. Razor crouches down to get some water in a container, and then notes that her feet are stuck in the black mud. She pulls one boot loose, dropping her sample container, and then gets the second free as well.
Maury goes to pick up the dropped sample container, and notes that there are three or four black sample containers, in addition to the one Razor dropped. He fills one of the black ones and one of his own, and they head back to the dropship.
Upon arrival, they see that the bottom foot and a half of the landing gear has turned black. Aristotle has been working on chiseling it off, but he's not gaining ground on the creeping black mud. Razor and Maury open fire on the mud - that works a little better than the chisel, but it's still a losing battle while the ship is on the ground.
Maury notes that his first sample vial, with the black dirt, now seems to have a coating on the inside. He puts the black vial inside a container of its own, and gets a larger sample container of dirt. Aristotle lifts the dropship off, and hovers, while Razor and Maury crawl around the landing gear chipping off black mud. Razor is impressed at Maury's gymnastic abilities. Most of the black gunk is removed, though the chisel is turning black. Razor and Maury take off their boots (which have also gotten a black-mud coating climbing up them), and toss them down to the surface, and Maury tosses the chisel.
When Razor and Maury get into the ship, Razor is distressed to find an itchy black spot on the bottom of her foot. Maury notes that if it gets an bigger, they might have to laser it off.
The drop pod heads back towards the Inopportune Moment, but doesn't dock. They report that the planet is full of EVIL BLACK STUFF, that makes copies somehow.
Janina holds a mass spectrometer up to the porthole, gesturing to Maury "Here you go!" Eventually Maury gets it teleported across to him, and sets to work looking at the black stuff. Razor notes that the black spot on her foot is moving, but not growing. Creepy.
Of the sample containers, only the black container with black water looks like a "real" sample, with the water behaving like water. (And it's also translucent, like the original, but darker). Both the container with dirt and the container with water are coated on the inside.
"Coordination of Dirt is a terrible stat"Maury determines that the dirt is made up of nanites ("evil black nanites!"). He suggests putting a gauze pad on Razor's foot, so that maybe the nanites will go onto the bandage instead. They put a sample container past the bandage, just in case the black goo can be lured in.
The gauze pad turns black. When they take it off, there's a white gauze pad underneath, and Razor's foot is okay. Maury checks with materials engineering to see if the black gauze is really cotton. No, it's an unknown material with all the physical properties of cotton, but not cotton.
Maury goes out again in a space suit, to deal with the landing gear. All the black mud has clustered around one particular leg of the landing gear - it's still like caked on mud, so it's not hard to get the last of it off.
Maury tests the big container of dirt by throwing a watch in. The watch gets coated with mud, and then shortly thereafter, there are two watches. The second is black, and is blinking 12:00, with black on black LEDs. It does seem to be programmable to the right time.
The dropship crew declares that if it's ever going to be safe to have the dropship dock again, it's safe now. They do so.
The question now on people's minds: How do we use this to get fabulously wealthy? It could possibly be used to manufacture specific high tech things (like black plasma brands!).
More experiments are done. The black watch is smashed up, in the box of dirt. Eventually, there are more black-watch-bits, more of the smaller pieces than the larger ones. They get scooped in with the cotton pad. Everything just sits there.
Maury realizes that tech level is basically two levels up beyond Alliance tech.
Janina tests the dirt with a gold coin, and a ruby. This produces a black gold coin, and two black rubies. Chemically, the coin has the tensile, conductive, and other properties of gold - but the gamma ray spectrographer thinks it's dirt.
In further experiments, black algae is made out of some algae from hydroponics - over the course of several days, it produces green algae. This is deemed too creepy, and the algae is destroyed. The idea of duplicating religious fanatics is considered, and discarded. The idea of landing the ship in the lake and getting ten ships is considered, and discarded. Maury makes dark purple paint out of purple paint and black dirt.
"If you drop sodium in the black water, does it explode, or make black sodium?"Several sealed barrels of samples are acquired, through more hovering tricks. The samples include black dirt, black lake water, black rocks, and black bits of "tree". It's all basically the same as far as the nanites are concerned, though.
The exploration party is startled to discover that the pile of about a dozen black boots is no longer bootlike in texture - instead, it crumbles back to dirt. And when the black watch bits are scattered on the ground, they also "reset" to non-fixed nanites in about twelve hours.
On the way out, the paint is deemed Too Dangerous, and tossed into the sun. Everthing else is kept for experimental purposes. The exact location of the system is classified as an Inopportune Moment secret - Maury has no astronavigation and probably can't generate the exact route back, though he does have a general sense of where it is.
The Inopportune Moment does head by where the Light of Truth was left - Captain Trent has run into trouble, hitting a wall, so the Moment has to transport him to Crux. Once on Crux, the religious fanatics are turned over to Crux authorities for mutiny. Jonathan declares ominously that "the great maker and his voice will be displeased with you for all the days of your lives." Maury comments that he wasn't, last time, but Jonathan doesn't actually catch it. Trent starts making arrangements with another pilot to go and get his ship back.
Maury is given 1500 ml of black goo, two black diamonds, one gauze pad, plus a couple of non-black diamonds from the "offerings". Captain Trent tells Janina, Maury, and the other Inopportune Moment crew that if they need anything at all, give him a call, he's their man. Once he gets his ship back, that is.