By the time he reached the “front” of the pod, it was no longer the front because of the tumble. But he figured he’d just park where he was. There was no way he was going to chase the tumble.
Master Sergeant Guzik and Sergeant Hanel had to. They got into position, then fired up their jets, basically trying to catch up to the nose and tail of the ship. Guzik managed to snag the nose with a vacuum clamp on the first pass but Hanel missed his snatch and went rocketing off into the void before he got control again. In the meantime, Guzik had gotten flipped around but by reeling in managed to get into contact with the hull of the pod. Applying full force from the really low acceleration jets, he managed to get the tumble slowed enough for Hanel to hook up on his second pass. With two jets working on it, the pod eventually stopped tumbling. More or less. It was still not quite in sync with the ship but that could be dealt with later.
However, as soon as the tumbling stopped, the nose of the ship recessed into a curve instead of a point. It had by then rotated back to Berg’s position and he was the first one to spot it.
“There’s a change here,” Berg said. “The nose just did something really weird.”
“Define ‘really weird,’ ” Gunnery Sergeant Neely said.
“It just… flexed,” Berg said. “It didn’t move like metal, Gunny. More like memory plastic. I don’t know what it means.”
“So do we move it down to the hull?” Master Sergeant Guzik asked.
“I just had an interesting thought,” Sergeant First Class Hanel said in a very strange voice. “What if it’s not a life pod? What if it’s a boobytrap?”
“Oh… grapp,” Lieutenant Monaghan replied. “Tell me that wasn’t a general broadcast.”
“Team leaders only, sir,” the SF sergeant replied. “But it’s an interesting question.”
“Whoa,” Guzik said, releasing his hold on the pod and backing away. “I’ve got a seam opening.”
The pod split open along its length, revealing three creatures in suits. They were about the size of large dogs and had six limbs, four apparently “legs” and two “arms.” However, the ends of the arm portion of the suits split into multiple flexible appendages that looked more like tentacles than hands.
Two of them were holding devices in those tentacles. They might be communicators or guns, it was impossible to tell. They looked like PDAs, but for all Berg knew they could throw lightning bolts.
Guzik backed up his suit and held his claws up, rotating up the shoulder mounted rocket launcher.
“Hey,” he said. “We come in peace and all that.”
“Well, that wrecks this as a salvage operation,” Himes muttered.
“I’ve got it,” the LT said, jetting slowly up to hover beside the master sergeant. He held out one of the suit claws while waving to the ship with the other. “Come on. Your survival gear’s not going to hold out forever. We’ll see what we can do in the ship.”
“I doubt they can understand you, sir,” the master sergeant said.
“Hey, maybe they have a universal communicator,” the LT quipped.
One of the beings slowly put away the device in its hand, then reached under the couch it occupied and pulled out a box. It looked not unlike a metal attaché case. He used his flexible tentacles to scramble up to the edge of the escape pod and then took the lieutenant’s claw.
“Sir, what’s in the box?” Master Sergeant Guzik chimed in, holding out his hand to another of the creatures.
“Good question, Master Sergeant,” the LT replied. “Why don’t you ask him?”
As the second being hooked onto the master sergeant, the latter pointed at the box and made a negative gesture. The being paused and turned his head back and forth.
It was at that point that Eric noticed the weird part about the suits. They appeared to be normal space suits, albeit of a strange material. But they had no visors. There was no way for the creature to see out.
The being, nonetheless, looked at the other two and then made a gesture at his head and to the, very small, environmental pack on his back. He did it again then moved his tentacles in a motion that was oddly disconcerting.
“Sir,” Berg interjected. “I would interpret that as food and air, sir.”
“And it could be a nuke for all we know,” the LT said, but he engaged his jets and started backing towards the ship. “Tell Dr. Chet he’s got three patients inbound. Hopefully their food and air will hold out long enough for us to figure out how to keep them alive.”
14
“Thank you,” Dr. Chet said, taking the air tank from the small, suited creature. He still had no clue what their visitors looked like, but the apparently senior one had carefully changed the air-tank of one of its brethren, then handed over the nearly empty spare to the neurologist, along with a small chunk of what was probably food.
“They’re handling all this remarkably well,” Spectre said from beyond the glass partition to the isolation area.
“Yes, they are,” Dr. Chet replied, taking the canister to a testing station. “Extremely stable for the situation. But that is based only on human reactions. I would have expected situational hysteria in most humans, even the toughest. Adar less so, but they still would show some signs of stress. There is virtually none in these beings.”
He squirted some of the air into the test chamber and there was a flare of light as it was hit by a high energy laser.
“Hmmm…” he muttered, opening the chamber again and crumbling some of the food into it. “Their air is high in nitrogen and low in oxygen. This air is completely absent of CO2, but any mixed gas might be. I have an isolation chamber I can put them in and adjust the atmosphere.”
He examined the second flash and then shrugged.
“The food appears to be Chloro B,” he continued. “It’s similar to Adar food. I’ll need to do more analysis but some of Tchar’s food may be consumable by them. But I’ll need to do more tests.”
“Okay,” the CO said. “Where’s Miss Moon?”
“In with Miss Cutler,” Dr. Chet said. “She’s already said that she’s going to monitor remotely at first. But I need to get them out of their suits and talking for her to have anything to work with. Let me set the containment suite up and we’ll see what we see.”
“Keep me apprised,” the CO said. “But I’ve got other fish to fry. We’re closing on the next bit that has energy readings.”
“Sucker’s fairly hot,” Himes pointed out as they approached the broken bit of spaceship. This one was made of an iron alloy, not quite true steel but perhaps a stronger version. At least, part of it was. Other parts appeared to be carbon fiber and “exotic” materials.
“But it’s also putting out particles that aren’t consistent with nuclear reactions,” Berg said. “And EM. It’s a device of some sort.”
“But exactly what sort?” Master Sergeant Guzik asked. “A communicator? An engine? A washing machine as someone suggested?”