//------------------------------// // Choice // Story: A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW // by De Writer //------------------------------// Hassit tried to demand something but a quick flick of pale blue locked his jaws shut! Mildly, the blue creature told him, “Your name is not Hissin. YOU have no right to speak on this bridge at all.” Hissin simply asked, “Will we need to shut down all electrical and Displacement equipment again? I did order all of our candles to be saved as long as we remain near this globe.” The blue being nodded. “I am afraid so. This won’t take long to do, though. A ship like yours is WAY smaller than even the moon! Have Astrogation consult with Engineering and Damage Control about the necessities of your orbit. “I will let the Twins know what you come up with and, most likely, it will be Luna but could be Celestia that moves the ship for you.” Hissin simply nodded to his slaves and said, “So be it. Please do as the Respected One has asked. All three, nodded silently, already putting up information on a shared screen. It was really not long at all before Pilot brought the blue creature a sheet of densely written mathematics. “Respected One, can your, um, daughter, understand our mathematics?” Smiling, the blue being nodded. “No problem at all, Pilot. It was considerate of you to ask.” He slowly faded away to nothing, taking the sheet with him. ////////////////// The Twins opened the door of the observatory at once when they heard the soft tap of the page Flegar on the panels. Luna graciously took his envelope and repeated her suggestion, “Thank you for delivering this note. Please go to the Serving Kitchen and have your pick of the pastries there or a helping of the Sweet Clover Tops.” After shutting the door in the face of the Baron Nagoodny, who was trying to push his way in while the page was giving them the note, both Celestia and Luna almost collapsed in a giggle fit. Carefully spreading out the paper so that she could reproduce what was needful in their ancient and powerful mathematics of inequality, Luna chortled, “Equations! How quaint!” Celestia popped her head over Luna’s shoulder to stare! Snickering, she said, “Really now! imagine someone so backwards that they would use EQUATIONS for navigation around planets or between stars!” It only took Luna a few minutes to reduce the equations to a usable Matrix of Inequality and have a reply put into the Chronicle. //////////////// Sensors looked up from her station and spoke to the strange blue creature who was still resting on Hassit, holding him down firmly. “According to my screens, Respected One, you disappeared for a few milliseconds. Did you go somewhere?” He held up a sealed envelope in the blue field emanating from his horn. Opening it, he even let Sensors make an image of the note and an accompanying sheet. He watched her for a few moments before replying, “I went back to the planetary surface to get this reply to the request for Luna to assist your ship. You are very sharp at your work to have noticed my absence. Hissin is fortunate to have you on his bridge.” Hissin curiously asked Sensors, “What was his Displacement Signature like, when he vanished and reappeared?” Sensors replied with absolute confidence, “I have reduced the Respected One’s period of absence to picoseconds. The Displacement Signature is a flat line at zero. However he transports himself, it is not by either Quantum Teleportation or Displacement. “I am getting a disturbance in the local space-time complex that I HAVE located to him.” The blue being nodded briskly. “As I said before, VERY good at your work. Lacking the manipulative digits that you all use in one form or another, all of the variants of my kind use such small and controlled space-time disturbances to manipulate the world around us. “The cumulative effect of Billions of beings ALL doing that is one of the reasons that this whole volume of space-time is so unstable. It requires constant adjustments of the world and moon system just to keep the world habitable.” Both Sensors and Hissin nodded understanding. It was Sensors who put it into words. “So, what we see as appearing primitive is actually the result of a highly developed technology that is absolutely alien to ours. Our forms of technology cannot coexist. “I do remember what you told Hassit on the bridge of the Chain of Empire about wires conducting energy becoming bombs. Am I correct in extrapolating that to other devices that channel controlled energies, like for instance our Displacement Engines and our beam weapons?” The old blue being shifted his weight, digging his leg joints into Hassit’s obese form as he nodded. Replying to Hissin, he stated, “You really do have a VERY good bridge crew, especially this Sensors operator. She is exactly spot on in her analysis. “Now, I need to change the topic. We have about an hour to shut down all conductive energies, for exactly the reason that Sensors, here deduced. Will you need more candles?” It was Engineering who replied, “No, Respected One. Following Sir and Master Hissin’s orders, I had all of the candles and holding devices saved while we remain in this dangerous space. I feared that we might need them again.” He got busy at his board and speaking through a headset designed to hang stably from his three short horns. Hissin watched the smooth functioning of his bridge crew even in the face of a disaster of this magnitude. Astrogation was setting up her controls and orbital checking to verify the final orbit and storing the data before shutting down. Sensors was sadly closing down all of her complex equipment and displays. She so badly wanted to record what was about to happen but knew that she could not. Pilot stabilized the vessel’s orientation before shutting down. Life Support double checked all operational systems, verified that oxygen levels were sufficient and shut down. Engineering reported, “Sir and Master, some of our systems cannot be properly depowerd. The debris hits have disrupted the controls.” The creature asked the one now guarding Hassit, “Would you do me the favor of keeping my cushion from moving about? It almost appears to have mind of its own, sometimes. I am needed to assist Engineering in shutting down some systems.” Smiling in a most unpleasant way, the guard replied, “Respected One, I shall do that.” The old blue creature simply vanished. He appeared just behind the Engineering crew in their vacuum suits, preparing to cut through a bulkhead to get at a main supply cable. The arc suppression switching gear for it was a melted ruin partly embedded into a blob of still warm glassy stone. They heard the voice of the strange blue furred alien that had been coming and going so freely on their ship. “What, exactly, do you need to do here? I can assist you in powering down if you tell me what you need to do.” One pointed to the bulkhead. “We need to cut through here. When we do, this compartment will become a vacuum area. The arc suppressing switch gear was destroyed by that hit of whatever it is. One of us will have to get to the cable and cut it. The arc that results will kill him but, I understand, will save the ship.” The blue furred one nodded, “I see. Open to letting me do it for you? None of us needs to die or get exposed to vacuum that way.” The crew leader replied, “How can you do it? That is a solid metal partition.” The creature shrugged, “Not that hard for me, not really. Here.” A blue nimbus grew around his horn. It stretched out to the bulkhead and appeared to simply sink into it. The crew were watching their test gear in amazement. “Look at the size of that surge! Nowhere near to what an arc should produce! There it goes! Power is down!” They turned to thank their odd visitor but he was gone.