Lost Worlds (my sci-fi short collection)

Lost (Part 4)

(Kav's POV)

I came out of stasis with a second's warning. I just managed to reach the bag I had thoughtfully placed in my left hand minutes? years? earlier, before throwing up. Not that there was anything much in my stomach to eject but my body still went through the motions. Unfortunately stasis always had that effect on me.

Eventually the dry retching shuddered to series of gasps and I took my first sip of water from the tube next to my mouth. Honestly, nothing ever tasted as ambrosial as that first mouthful of stale ship's water.

I looked around for the others.

I saw Protos, hair as black as night, already seated at the control panel, the silver helmet on his head connecting him to the ship's operating system. As leader of the expedition, Protos would have been the first to come out of stasis, to decide whether the ship was close enough to our destination to justify rousing the rest of us.

Chia, the medic, was hovering to my right, drawing her diagnostic scanner over Moh who was rousing next to me. Io, Ada, Pi and Del were still in their stasis units. I took another sip of water and swirled it around my mouth.

Protos was both the leader of our expedition and the controller of the ship; pilot, navigator and engineer combined. The rest of us were scientists. Representing the galactic sciences was Ada, the tall astrobiologist who worked closely with Del the geochemist, studying what they liked to call the big picture, the origin, evolution, and future of life in the universe. Everyone else would study the planet's ecology as it related to itself. Io and Pi were xenobiologists, Moh, a xenocultural expert and Chia was not only our medic but a specialist in alien diseases.

I was starting to feel better, time to stand up and make sure every part of me was in working order. I climbed rather shakily out of the stasis unit. Automatically, my body ran through the standard exercises to get my organs and muscles functioning again, my mind already speculating about the new planet which lay ahead of us. A new world to be investigated, its species catalogued, its culture examined and recorded.

I wondered whether the others were as excited as I was.

True, this was my third mission so I should be getting more blasé but this one promised to be different, far more interesting than the last two worlds which had only been in very early stages of developing life. This one had attracted attention by sending radio waves into space and a survey drone had discovered it, far out on an unexplored arm of the galaxy. It's discovery caused huge excitement on Cuore. Only one in a billion stars had planets which produced life and of those, only one in a million went on to develop intelligence.

And so the eight of us had been sent on a mission to investigate S-504033, packed unconscious into stasis pods while the silver ship travelled billions of kays across the galaxy, one FTL jump at a time. Fast as the jumps were compared to other means of transport, they were painfully slow when it came to crossing a galaxy. Years would pass on Cuore, our home world, before our return. But that was our job, our purpose, to seek out and investigate new lifeforms.

We on Cuore, were the first intelligent life in our galaxy to venture into space. In the beginning we had tentatively explored the other eight planets in our star system, and taken an excruciatingly long time about it according to the few remaining histories of the time. Space travel had taken centuries to develop, star travel even longer. You would have thought this lengthy process would have taught our race patience, but ... all I can offer in excuse is that our race was young in galactic terms.

No sooner did we discover the star drive than we sent out probes in all directions, hoping to discover other worlds, other civilisations, like a child seeking new friends. And like a child, when we found them, we burst upon them, eager to show off our latest toys and start playing together. I suppose in one, oddly twisted sense, it was lucky that we found Suanides early, lucky for the rest of the galaxy that is, not the Suanis.

It was our first encounter with 'religion.' How could our ancestors have known that the Suanis believed they were the only people in the galaxy? That they believed their god had made them lords, rulers of all the other creatures on their planet, free to use the whole world to please only themselves? They had not coped well when confronted with another more advanced race. There had been riots, mass suicides and in the end they had destroyed themselves rather than deny their beliefs.

It had been a painful lesson for us. All our explorers, wherever they were in the galaxy, were recalled immediately to Cuore and all contact with intelligent races was forbidden. Eventually of course, after a few centuries, our ancestors realised this was scarcely practical and so the three Rules of First Contact came into being.

As the only Social Scientist on board I, Kav, would be the one recommending to Protos the appropriate level of First Contact. Whether we could justify the risk of landing in person, a Level Two Contact, or whether we should be satisfied with remote monitoring, Level One.

All contacts started with Level One, remote surveillance, anything from a ship's month to a year or more, whatever was needed to evaluate the distribution of life and the stage of development it had reached. If there was intelligent life, we studied that until we were able to copy their appearance and mannerisms well enough to progress to a Level Two contact. Very rarely, the environment or the dominant species would be too hostile for our race and we would stop at Level One, recording what we needed remotely, from devices sent forth from the ship.

Despite all that I have said about Suanides, it may surprise you to know that Level Two is by far the most common form of contact. Honestly, in the majority of cases, the evolving lifeforms are so primitive that our arrival goes unnoticed. Amoebas and lichen don't have awareness of themselves, let alone anyone else! Even when intelligent life is present, our skills in camouflage are generally sufficient to allow us to move freely amongst them, at least for short periods.

Most rare of all, are Level Three contacts. To date there have been forty two Level Three encounters in the entire galaxy, those are the ones where we actually introduce ourselves and welcome a new world to the Federation.

I wondered where S-504033 with its radio waves, would fit on the spectrum.