“True—but there shouldn’t be a planet there at all,” Captain Berenguer points out in turn, intrigued. “Nuria’s right: it’s almost impossible for a planet to develop spontaneously in a triple system.”
“It could be a rogue planet,” Jordi speculates thoughtfully, still stroking his ginger tabby. “There aren’t many of them in this zone, but if the star only captured it recently, it wouldn’t show up in the catalog.”
“Captured? Nuh-uh. It would have been attracted straight into one of the three stars and burnt up in its corona. You know how slim the odds are that a wandering planet—and a metal one, too!—could fall exactly into one of the Lagrange points of a triple system? And then happily remain there, if it didn’t have an active course-correction system?” Amaya furiously brushes off his idea, completely in agreement for one fleeting instant with her former lover, Nuria.
“Negligible,” the captain declares, then adds, raising his voice, “Pau. Leave the battery recharging for later. Manu. Activate inertial thrusters. Amaya will send you the coordinates.” Then, looking at us all, he concludes in a worried tone, “I suspect this isn’t a planet, but a bunch of Qhigarian worldships. No other species has so many. Or so much metal. So I greatly fear they’ve already learned the secret of the intergalactic hyperengine. I think they’re gathering here, planning to use what they learned to escape the galaxy. All of them, all at once. And if there are 20,410 known worldships on record, I’d say we got here just in time.”
“Less than one kilometer to docking. Approach is normal,” I transmit after checking the telemeter on my space suit. I float without activating the jets; the minimal gravity intrinsic to the giant conglomeration of thousands of Qhigarian worldships is enough to attract me slowly toward the open airlock, the coordinates of which were almost reluctantly given to us by the Unworthy Pupils only a few minutes ago. Made of some translucent material, it’s practically invisible against the starry background. “Amaya, you copy?”
“Perfectly, there’s no interference at all. You know they don’t have to use radio waves and they don’t trust field technology. That airlock must be completely transparent to electromagnetic waves,” Amaya replies. She’s my remote Contact operator today, praise Shangó. As a little hologram on my helmet visor, she smiles as if ready to instill all the confidence I need in me. “Josué, I really do wish you luck. You’re a good guy. If only you were a woman… Well, nobody’s perfect, right?”
“Then I’d be heterosexual.” I parry her joke, sticking out my tongue. “We could have been the couple of the millennium, but as things stand, impossible.”
“¡Viva la tolerancia! We’ll talk it over in my cabin after you get back.” Amaya keeps the joke going with a wink. “But for now, heads up, you’re almost there.”
On my final approach to the inlet hatch for the titanic Qhigarian complex, I break my momentum with a brief flaring of my initial engines and alight on the threshold of the lock.
One more tiny jump, which in this microgravity takes only a quick flex of my muscles, and I’m inside.
The hatch, made of the same translucent material as the rest of the airlock, seals quickly and silently behind my back as soon as I advance a few meters across the nearly invisible material, to which the magnetic soles of my boots nonetheless adhere perfectly well.
Wow. A metallic plastic? It’s going to turn out these Qhigarians are also experts at polymers. Did they inherit that from their Taraplin mentors, along with almost everything else? Or maybe they picked it up from trading with the Furasgans, who have a reputation for being good chemists.
The sensors in my suit tell me there’s enough external pressure for me to take off my helmet. I do so. I don’t take off my translation earphones, though. Qhigarians have an almost morbid curiosity in every language they run across, including our universal translation software. That’s weird for a telepathic species, isn’t it? Also weird that they have as many spoken languages as they do worldships.
Yes, there are plenty of odd things about these Unworthy Pupils of the Wise Creators.
As was to be expected, the air has the “previously used” smell typical of something that’s been recycled a thousand times. It must have passed through the breathing sacs of billions of Qhigarians before it got to my lungs. But as if to make up for that, its oxygen content is slightly higher than that on Earth.
Once more it occurs to me that Quim Molá didn’t have such a hard time of it on that mythical First Contact when he got the hyperengines. Almost humanoid, breathing nearly terrestrial air. Lucky Catalan devil.
I keep moving forward. One lone man, wearing an ultraprotect suit but holding his helmet under his arm, walking to make Contact through a small patch of atmosphere trapped between nearly invisible walls, beyond which stretches the vacuum of space. The daily grind, in other words.
To my left, the three stars of the Gamma Hydri system, intent on their endless ballroom dance. Ahead of me, the immense sphere made from the agglutination of thousands upon thousands of enormous Qhigarian worldships. They’ve got 20,034 here already, and more keep arriving every minute. If Captain Berenguer is right and they’re just waiting until they’re all together in one place before they take off, I’d better hurry.
This Contact will be admirably brief.
A vague shadow approaching from the other end of a long series of translucent partitions, which open as it reaches them and close as it passes through. Here comes my partner for the day.
Now I get the usual sweating, itching, and trembling. I was wondering when it would start.
What’ll it be like? I’ve made Contact with Qhigarian worldships a dozen times in my career, and I’ve met with almost everything, from a worm with a huge composite eye and ten pairs of vestigial legs to blue humanoids with scales in continuous motion, and between them there was a sort of blind, fuzzy bear with just six limbs. There were two of the bears, now that I think of it…
The worst was the starfish-octopus with the slimy tentacles all covered with eyes. Hope I don’t get that one today.
I can see it now. Purple, a little smaller than me, central body, multiple extremities branching out through bifurcation, covered with eyes, doesn’t touch the ground. That would explain the microgravity. Shit.
My luck’s run out. It is that thing. The most disgusting symbiosis you can imagine, a starfish joined to a slimy octopus, nearly six meters from tip to eye-encrusted tentacle tip.
“God damn fucking shit,” I mumble, annoyed.
“What is it, some new form?” Amaya’s holographic image, now projected directly in the air before my eyes, frowns with worry. “Calm down, Cubanito, your heart is racing. Listen, Josué, if the translation software doesn’t recognize its language, I can always call on the full processing power of the ship’s central computer to help you out.”
It’s good to feel like someone has your back at times like this, even at a distance.
“No,” I sigh, resigned. “It won’t be necessary. It’s not a new morphology. Not new at all.”
Nerys might have enjoyed it, I guess. After all, it looks like an aquatic form.
But as for me—yuck! We all have a right to our own preferences, don’t we?
I remember Contact with the last little fucker like this as one of the most difficult, most disgusting I’ve ever experienced. Lacking any sexual orifices of its own, the damn “Unworthy Pupil” spent the whole time slowly coiling its myriad slimy, bifurcating ocular tentacles all over my body, and not just on the outside. Good thing its mucus serves as a lubricant, because otherwise I would have gotten hemorrhoids and esophagitis at a minimum. That’s right, a Contact Specialist’s job isn’t always a pleasant one.