Chapter IV

A'Kuul stood over his console. A look of perplexity pierced his stone face. "We seem to have lost contact with the other mapping ships. The link is gone."

Niilan assumed control of the ship. "What does that mean?"

"I don't know... It has never happened before. I assume the communications array is defective."

"Uh... Can you fix it?"

"Only if it is defective. I will examine it." A'Kuul and the Paktu engineer disappeared into the equipment room.

Niilan picked up the receiver for the intercom system, thinking of contacting the commander, but he restrained himself. He was not so eager to give up his first command post... Not yet. But the intercom talked first.

"This is Ordin, aboard the derelict--er... There are people in here!"

"Kiith's blood... He's gone completely mad..." Niilan yelled over his shoulder. He composed himself and picked up the transmitter. "Commander. Settle down. What do you mean there are people in there?"

The response was slow, and increasingly distorted by interference, what sounded almost like a lot of voices in the background. "I'm telling you, I'm in the central chamber of the ship, and there are thousands of people here with me. They're Hiigarans, but... They speak a strange language, I can't quite understand it. We, officer Mirin and I, are here with them. I think you ought to get down here too, soon."

Niilan rolled his eyes. The rest of the crew had appeared behind him, listening to the intercom. "Taii... I mean, Officer Mirin, bring him back here, quick. He might be dangerous, in this state. We need to sedate him and--"

The voice of the Taiidan interrupted him. "He's sane. I see them too."

Dumbfounded, Niilan stumbled in his speech and tried to rationalize his world. "Uh... Are you saying that you've found Hiigarans there, who have survived in that ship for three thousand years with nothing?"

"I don't know... But I think you should all come here. Don't bring any weapons--they're afraid of us enough already. Mirin out."

The acting commander was caught in a mental quandary for some time. He ordered the engineers to stay and try to fix the uplink. Unsurely, the others boarded the derelict and sealed the airlock. Ziir lead them into the central chamber.

 

* * *

The crowd had deposited the two explorers in a small room on the outskirts of the living establishment. The people seemed very reluctant to let them leave... Creta got the impression that they were supposed to wait for someone. They struggled to understand their situation, in the mean time.

Ordin looked out at the young man who was now standing outside as a guard. "Their language is very familiar. I can almost understand it..."

"It is Hiigaran, isn't it?"

"Yes... But very archaic. It's not a form of our language that has been spoken for a very long time." He welled up the courage to try something. He called in clear, slow speech to the guard. "Uh... Can you understand me?"

The Boy seemed to nod.

The commander tried a test. "Can you get us some water? Water?"

The guard nodded, left, and returned with a small bowl filled with the pure, clean life-giving liquid. "I was right..." He offered the water to Creta.

Looking at her semitransparent ghost image on the surface of the bowl, she was deep in contemplation. "Do you think it's even possible that these people survived in this ship for three millennia? Without a planet, without contact, without anything?"

Ordin stood, stretched his legs and unlocked his pressure suit to compensate for the increased heat. "I don't think so... But the protectors of Kadesh... They built their entire fleet starting with a single transport ship like this one. They never had any planet, that we know of. Maybe it is possible."

Just then, a number of Hiigarans in strange uniforms appeared at the door. One pointed at Ordin, and the guard came in to lead him away.

"I had better not try to resist... I'll only hope this isn't an execution." he said, without sarcasm.

Creta nodded and watched the commander vanish in the crowds.

Ordin was lead far off, up seemingly endless ramps, stairwells and lifts, farther toward the front of the ship, out of the central chamber, into more corridors with gray walls. After half an hour of walking, the group of Hiigarans brought him into a small room which he guessed to be somewhere near the bridge of the ship. The one he guessed to be their leader sat down at the other side of a desk and looked squarely at him.

The Hiigaran spoke. After a moment, Ordin was able to interpret it as "Who are you, and how did you get here?"

"I... My name is Edan Ordin, and... I came here from my ship."

The Hiigaran seemed distraught, unsure as to how to proceed here and yet knowing that this encounter would be vital to himself and his entire race. "You must help us."

 

* * *

Four more of the crew were thrown into the small room with the anxious Taiidani, a short time later. The newcomers only increased the tension there... No one knew where the Commander was, and Niilan was becoming increasingly worried about meeting the schedule for the next set of mapping coordinates. Somehow, the gravity of the situation never seemed to hit him.

Luckily, the Hiigarans here never thought to remove any of their belongings... Ziir and Creta still had their suit intercoms, which they promptly used to contact the ship.

"Yes, I'm here." A'Kuul's monotone came through the helmet's speaker. "I've found something. The uplink is not malfunctioning."

"What?" Niilan was really getting irritated. "Why can't we contact the other mapping vessels?"

"I don't know. They both vanished from the communications array simultaneously, approximately forty-three seconds after we linked with the Khar-Toba class ship."

The pilot rubbed his forehead. "Ugh..."

"There's more. I attempted to trace the locations of the other ships, with our mapping sensors. When I did so, I noticed that our new maps of the galaxy do not conform to the galaxy's current distribution."

"What does that mean?"

A'Kuul looked for the words. "The galaxy has changed. So far I have noted that sixteen supernova remnants are now final-stage red giant stars, twelve planetary star systems are now planetary nebulae... Three spatial rifts have sealed themselves, two more have formed..."

Ziir looked up, suddenly. "The Galaxy has undone itself."

"What?"

"A'Kuul... Do you have a record of older galactic maps on file? Very old maps... say, from around GSY seven thousand?"

He took a moment to look through the database. "Yes."

"Compare those maps with current scans."

"Running comparison..." The five prisoners waited anxiously for the next transmission. Finally it came. "...The old maps correspond, almost perfectly. Galactic drift, stellar phenomena, alignments... All parameters match. Do you realize what this implies?"

Ziir looked around, and then at Niilan, whose face was twisted into a despaired frown.

"Sajuuk help us... We have moved three thousand years into the past."