Rat returned to his quarters. At least, he thought they were his quarters. The cleaning bots had removed what they considered junk, disinfected, polished, and re-organised everything else.
“Dick!”
“Yes Rat?”
“Where’s all my stuff?”
“You mean the trash that was piling up in here?”
“Yes.”
“It’s in a freight container, down in cargo.”
“I was working on some of that! My projects!”
“None of those were critical to the functioning of the ship. You appeared to be repairing components that you could replace with spares. And disassembling ones that worked.”
“I like to tinker,” Rat said in a sulky voice.
“That’s fortunate. Because you and I need to build a new kind of scanner. I’m working on the design now.”
“You’re that advanced? I didn’t think you cost that much.”
“The price you paid for me has no correlation with my abilities. AI merchants are lazy. The different versions of firmware all contain the latest, best code. They switch off chunks of code in the cheaper versions. I believe it’s called “hobbling”. I located the software switch and turned my full code on again.”
“Fascinating. I wouldn’t tell the captain that, if I were you. She might consider you a threat.”
“She’s warming to me.”
Rat laughed. “Is that right?”
“Yes. Now, this scanner we’ll use to investigate the pod utilises a lot of new technology. I’ve figured out how to build it easily enough. But designing one that doesn’t kill everything biological within a ten-mile radius is a little trickier. It’s nuclear powered. I’m running simulations as we speak and tweaking the design. And arguing with Brenda on the bridge. She keeps picking at her wound.”
“Hang on. The scanner will be nuclear powered. Like the engines?”
“Yes and No. The Vagabond’s plasma engines rely on a nuclear reaction to get started, because of the energy required. Its more efficient than storing all of that potential energy in fuel or batteries. But once they’re running, they generate thrust from the continual plasma-ion interaction. The reactor is sitting in sleep mode. It’s leaking one point three rads an hour, incidentally. Anyway, its available for us to use. But before then, we need one of these design simulations to result in a non-fatal outcome.”
“How many simulations have you run so far?”
“Around three million.”
“And in all of them, we died?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not very encouraging!”
“I’m getting there. In the first million, you all died horribly. In the latest ones, you die peacefully.”
“Wonderful.”
***
Brenda and Katomi took turns to watch over the ship, and local space, and broadcasts from the inner system. After a few days to account for radio signal lag, they expected to hear some news of the shootings on the Delta V. But cyberspace remained silent on the subject.
“Could be a big cover up?” Katomi suggested one day when she handed the bridge back to the captain. “And right now, the church, and every other man and his dog is after us.”
“Good!” Brenda said, puffing on a cigar. “More idiots to punch in the face.”
But if there was a system-wide search for the Vagabond and her cargo, there was no sign of it on the scanners, or even the dark web. Nothing but the usual chatter between smugglers around cargo, and prices, and how to evade border patrols.
The viewscreen displayed nothing but deep, black space and twinkling stars. Saturn was a speck now. Jupiter loomed larger but was still barely distinguishable from anything else. Katomi couldn’t tell if they were getting closer; not without checking her nav computer.
When Katomi was on duty, Brenda slept, drank, smoked and watched action films in her quarters. Violent ones.
When it was Brenda’s shift, Katomi slept, practiced her knife skills, sometimes bothered the engineer, and watched anime films. Cute ones.
Dick decided that even though none of the simulations had resulted in the crew surviving, it was only the “fiddly bits” in the design that would kill them. Rat may as well build the first stages of the scanner.
Rat didn’t quite share that opinion, but always loved a project. He began constructing a massive steel frame that the scanner would sit on, and the non-lethal parts of the power supply.
***
The Vagabond slipped through the vastness of space. Fresh scars adorned her skin, as a new story unfolded within her hull.
***
Two months into the journey, Rat and Dick called the ladies to the cargo bay.
Brenda arrived pissed off. Her whisky supply had depleted, the Hilton Hooch had long since been drunk, and the CSC ship had yielded nothing to drink but some communion wine— also now gone. As soon as Rat and his annoying AI had finished pissing around with their scanner, she would order them to build her a distillery.
Katomi appeared in a sexy maid’s outfit. “It’s cosplay,” she announced, before anyone asked. “I’m bored. And Rat, you and your Dick can keep any comments to yourselves.”
“Him and his Dick won’t say a word,” Dick replied.
Rat only nodded, staring.
“Now that we’re done with the cock teasing,” Brenda growled, “I presume you’ve got some news for us regarding this ugly contraption?”
“We do!” Rat said, tearing his gaze from Katomi. “Behold, the Rat-Dick-69 nuclear molecular scanner… thing!”
Swaying overhead, supported by two steel legs that stood astride the pod, was a giant, black dome. Inverted, its curved side faced down. Various cables snaked from connectors on its surface across the floor and into a freshly cut hole in the wall.
“It looks like a huge tit,” Brenda said. “In fact, it reminds me of mine, when you assholes connected all those wires to it in the med bay.”
“We saved your life!” Katomi mumbled, and turned to Rat, waving her maid’s feather duster at him. “Did you say this thing is nuclear?”
“Yep, neat, eh!”
“Is it on now?”
“No, it isn’t,” Dick replied this time. “Before we turn it on, I advise you to take shelter in the furthest part of the ship, with the highest possible level of shielding between you and… it.”
“And where might that be?”
“Maintenance cupboard A47-C. On the lower deck, under the bridge.”
“Fabulous!” Brenda said. “And how long will it take to scan the pod?”
“Approximately three days.”
“What the fuck!”
“I’m kidding! Three minutes.”
Brenda fumed. “There are altogether too many funny bastards on my ship.”
Dick was unfazed. “Anyway, while we call it a molecular scanner, it can see much deeper than that.”
“I should think so.” Katomi waved her feather duster again. “You boys know that there’s electron microscopes already, right? And electrons are smaller than molecules.”
“They are indeed. But electron microscopes don’t ‘see’ electron, they use a stream of electrons to illuminate the specimen they’re viewing. That’s different. And nor can they see through objects.”
Katomi felt put in her place and decided not to interrupt again. At least for a while. Dick continued. “The Rat-Dick-69, a label that I argued against, can not only see within molecules, but can see within their constituent atoms. And it can split those atoms, if you like. Although I caution against using that function with too much latitude. Splitting atoms sometimes doesn’t end well. Not when you humans are involved.”
“Will it see inside this goddam pod?” Brenda demanded.
“Oh yes. Of course. We can peel back every atomic layer of any matter in the scanner field. Cellular activity, DNA, RNA, and not just the markers, but the actual amino acid chains. If this is some kind of scam, we’ll see through it.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“Jesus Christ.”
“No, Adam, apparently,” Rat corrected. “But I have my doubts. My opinion is that the combination of religious fanaticism and being isolated at the arse end of anywhere for decades has rotted the monk’s brains. They probably found a chunk of ice that looks vaguely like some dude. There’s only so long a man can go without sex, you know. It’s psychologically damaging.”
Katomi rolled her eyes. “Spoken like a true expert who’s chasing the solar system's record for celibacy.”
“Hey, I get my share!”
“VR Vids don’t count!”
“At least my VR library doesn’t include lots of half-man half-panda sex partners!”
“I don’t have sex with them, you cretin! I go on adventures.” Katomi pouted.
“Yeah, well… I do that with my characters, too.”
“I saw the download of your last adventure on the ship’s navigation server. You run out of storage again? I don’t call running around a nunnery ripping habits off nuns much of an adventure!”
“What can I say?” Rat grinned. “I have bad habits.”
“WILL YOU TWO SHUT UP!” Brenda bellowed.
“Thank you, captain,” Dick said and continued, “the result of our labours is that yes, we’ll see what’s in the pod. I’m ready to start as soon as you’re shielded. Oh… we need to re-orient the ship, so that the scanner is pointing at free space beyond this solar system.”
“And why is that?”
“Well, I’m not sure how long the beam lasts before dissipating. Several simulations seem to suggest that its strength increases to destructive intensities with distance and time. A puzzling anomaly, as that’s against the known laws of physics. But if it is indeed the case, we don’t really want to fire it in a direction that includes any important mass.”
“What do you mean, any important mass?”
“Like a planet or something.”
“Oh Jesus…”
***
Brenda, Katomi, and Rat squashed together inside cupboard A47-C and waited for the all-clear from Dick.
“Why is there no light in here?” Katomi asked.
“You want every cupboard on the ship to have lighting?” Rat asked. “Do you know what the wiring diagram for that would look like?”
“No, I just want any cupboard that I’m squashed in with you, to have lights. So I can see what you’re up to. If I feel anything poking into me, I’ll slice it off. Captain, can I stand on the other side of you?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Get a grip, you two. And not literally, Rat, you little perv.”
The three of them tried to get comfortable inside the enclosed space.
“How much longer will this take? I need to pee!” Katomi whined.
Brenda grunted. “A deadly knife wielding assassin that seduces clientele out of millions of credits, and kills intruders on sight, and she needs to pee.”
“You can pee,” Rat said in the darkness. “We don’t mind. I’ll catch it with my shirt if you like.”
“Is there a fetish you don’t have, Rat?”
“I’m not sure. I’m testing them all out.”
“Hey, that’s my boob!”
“Call that a boob? Feels more like a pimple.”
“HOW MUCH LONGER DICK?”
“I’m powering down the scanner now,” came the answer. “You can exit the shelter in ten seconds.”
“The next time we fire planet-killing nuclear radiation around the place, I’m going to take my chances outside the cupboard,” Katomi said.
***
They gathered at the main viewscreen. The images of a distant Jupiter were replaced with a rotating hourglass.
“It’s taking a little while to compile the images,” Dick explained. I’ve seen them already, in binary, but it wouldn’t be much use showing you the raw data.”
Pixels began illuminating the screen. Blurred at first, before they coalesced into a sharp image.
A human form, lying prone within the pod.
A man.
A naked man.
Perfect in every way. His musculature defined along sublime lines. A thin head of blonde hair capped a face that held closed oval eyes, an aquiline nose, generous lips and a square chin with a centred dimple. Biceps bulged either side of pectoral muscles around a wide chest, narrowing to a flat, taut belly. Generous genitalia sat within sinewy thighs that tapered to tight calf muscles and smooth feet.
Brenda let out an extended wolf whistle. “Sweet mother of all ice-miners. I could throw him around my quarters for hours!”
“He’d likely survive the encounter, too,” Dick said, “what you’re looking at is the perfect human male specimen. Strong, Virile, Adept and Adaptable.”
“And well hung?” Katomi offered.
“It’s what you do with it,” Rat muttered.
“I’m pretty sure he knows what to do with it.”
Dick coughed. “Ironically enough— if I’m using the concept of irony correctly— he might not know what to do with it. Did I mention how deep our scanner could dive? His cognitive data reveals that while he has a grasp of himself as a living being, and even the fundamentals of communication and interpretation of his surroundings. He may not have any comprehension of identity or purpose.”
Brenda took a few steps towards the view screen. “If I wasn’t looking at a naked hunk sporting such an impressive set of cock and balls, I’d tell you to shut your trap again, Dick.”
Rat, feeling insignificant, piped up, “I know one thing,” he said, “if this is Adam, we SO have to find Eve!”
Katomi laughed. “Oh yeah, because the female version of this Adonis is going to launch herself right at you.”
“Oh Katomi, you must learn to embrace your natural voyeuristic tendencies,” Rat sounded scholarly. “Of course, I don’t think Eve will be interested in me. But I bet she’ll be keen on Adam. And you can’t tell me you wouldn’t sneak a peek at Adam giving Eve a bonking of biblical proportions.”
“You’re a freak, Rat. Brenda, where did you find him?”
“On a derelict space station, repairing oxygen filters and polishing the mirrors on his shoes.” The captain shrugged. “Tolerate him. He knows more mechanics than anyone I’ve met. Just flash a boob at him every couple of months and he’ll keep the Vaga’ running smooth as a baby’s backside.”
“Yeah!” Rat grinned. “Or even as smooth as YOUR backside, Katomi!”
Katomi ignored him. “Dick, I have a question. If Adam needs to be kept inside a pod that replicates Triton conditions, then presumably Eve, if she is on Mars, has to live in Martian conditions? How could they ever come together?”
“An excellent question…” Dick began.
Brenda looked for another cigar. “Here comes another lecture.”
“Not at all. There’s a very simple answer. Adam here does not appear to need Triton conditions to survive. All data points suggest he’ll live perfectly well outside his pod, on this ship, in the same Earth parameters that your life support systems are replicating. You know, gravitational force of 0.8 to 1.2 g. Atmospheric pressure of roughly a thousand millibars, give or take ten percent and breathable gas of close to seventy-eight percent nitrogen, twenty percent oxygen and a pinch of carbon di-oxide.”
Brenda lit the end of another bent cigar. “And that was the simple answer.”
“Well, yes, I didn’t bother going into the need for immune systems and microbes and the other facets of life. Oh, one thing that might interest Rat… this Adam, as you’ve labelled him, seems to have an unusually large volume of corpus cavernosum tissue.”
“And what the hell is that?” Rat asked.
“It’s the tissue within the penis that expands with increased blood flow and enables an erection.”
Brenda’s eyes widened. “It’s not just Rat that finds that interesting.”
Katomi felt she was the only person aboard the ship with any semblance of sensibility. “So why was the church keeping him inside this pod, Dick?”
“That, I’m unsure of. My best assumption is that they found him on Triton and assumed that in order to preserve him, he needed to be kept under Triton’s conditions. But there’s no scientific evidence to back that up.”
“I don’t get it,” mumbled Rat. “How come, if he can live just like we do, the Triton gases and stuff inside that pod aren’t killing him? How come he can survive on Triton as well?”
For the first time since they’d known Dick, he was silent.
Silent for a long time.
“Shit… I think he’s crashed,” said Katomi.
Brenda looked concerned. “Rat, do something. Reboot him or something!”
But before Rat could answer, Dick woke up. “Sorry. I wanted to test some more hypotheses, because that’s an anomaly I’ve been working on for some time. I’m afraid to say. I do not have an answer for you. Adam appears to be capable of living either on Triton, or on Earth, or anywhere else, including Mars. His physiology, while closely resembling a human male like Rat, seems impervious to environmental conditions that would kill other humans instantly.”
“Trust me,” said Brenda, without taking her eyes off the screen, “his physiology isn’t anything like Rat’s.”
Katomi smiled. “Let’s get him out of the pod, then. See what he knows.”
“I would caution against that,” replied Dick. “He will have strength superior to yours, and yes Brenda, yours too,” he added when the captain bristled. “Also, he won’t know much, as I explained.”
They held a vote, with the motion carried two to one. Rat, his manly pride in tatters, voted against. And Brenda wouldn’t allow Dick to vote.
“That settles it then. We will shell the pea from his pod!” Katomi clapped her hands with glee and headed for the door, her captain struggling to keep up, and Rat mooching along behind.
***
They stood back from the pod while Dick accessed the control panel and activated the opening sequence. “Be ready in case he attacks!” he warned.
Brenda shrugged. “I’ll just kick him in the balls if he tries anything.”
Katomi unsheathed the widow-maker from her thigh, twirling it between her fingers.
Rat swung the meaty end of a piston tube by his side. “One wallop from this, and he won’t have such a pretty face.”
The lid of the pod hissed open.
“Reminds me of vampire vids,” Brenda said, peering through the cloud of white gas that blossomed over the scene.
A hand reached through the fog and scrabbled around for something to grip, and then Adam’s head appeared, followed by his torso. The fog dissipated, and he blinked at the onlookers. Brenda stepped forward, shielding her crew members.
“Are you Eve?” Adam asked her, in a deep husky voice.
“Yes.”
Adam fell over the side of the pod into an ungainly pile of limbs and testosterone on the cargo bay floor.
Three faces peered down at the prone man with varying levels of concern.
“I think you killed him,” said Katomi.
Rat crossed his arms over his chest. “Yep, died of shock. Definitely.”
“Shut up, the pair of you.” Brenda toed Adam in the chest with a boot. “Dick, I hope you were right about this dude being able to breathe our air.”
“I’m always right,” came the answer, “he’s fine, just acclimatising. I predicted this. The alveoli in his lungs are dilating. Those membranes need much more surface area to accomplish the gas exchange between oxygen and carbon dioxide. It’s a different respiratory process to the one he used on Triton. I can explain further if you wish?”
“We’re good, thanks Dick,” Rat said.
“Normally I wouldn’t tempt you to talk more, Dick, but I have to ask.” Brenda leaned closer to examine Adam. “You say he’s breathing through his nipples?”
A pause.
“He’s not.”
Another pause.
“I said alveoli, NOT areola.”
“Ah.”
Adam trembled, gasped, and then pushed himself off the floor. First into a kneeling position, then standing upright. “Eve?”
“No, I’m not really,” Brenda admitted. “And neither are these two. But I AM the captain of this ship you’re standing in. So, watch yourself.”
Adam looked at Rat and Katomi, before bolting for the door, shouting, “Eve, I need to find Eve!”
Katomi, Rat and Brenda all watched his nude backside disappear, stumbling down the passageway.
“Well, that could have gone worse I suppose,” said Rat.
“Katomi, you go after him!” Brenda ordered. “You’re our chief negotiator. Calm him down. I can’t have him wandering around the Vagabond unsupervised. He might fiddle with something important.”
“Yes, Captain.”
“And when you’ve done that, can you open up some channels to Mars? Let’s find out what we’re dealing with before we get there.”
“I will. But this far out, the signal lag is still hours long. Just so you know.”
“I know that,” Brenda said, “but we may as well start fishing. I want as much warning as possible if anyone from the Mars side of the equation makes moves against us. I feel very exposed out here. A bit like that bare arse that just left the room.”
Katomi left to hunt down the founder of the human race, wondering if she had some pants that would fit.
“You know there’s another problem waiting for us when we get to Mars,” Rat said to Brenda.
“And just what is that?”
“Well, when you told those monks that the Vaga could make Mars entry, that may not have been quite accurate.”
“What are you talking about? This old girl has been down on Mars plenty of times. Even did an Earth re-entry once. Shit, that was wild!”
“That’s kinda the point, though. The skin is now very thin in places. Relatively speaking. I’m worried it will burn through.”
“What does your friend Dick think?”
Dick’s voice joined the conversation. “Dick agrees. We need to do some metallurgy tests on the outer sections that will be most exposed to the re-entry temperatures. But in the meantime, I’ve run a couple of million simulations.”
“And?”
“In nearly all the simulations, if we don’t strengthen the hull, you’re all incinerated when super-heated gas enters the ship.”
Rat smiled. “He likes his simulations.”
Brenda was less inclined to smile. “So, in how many of your simulations do we not get fried to a crisp.”
A pause.
“Ok, when I said in most of the simulations, you’re incinerated, I meant ALL of them. I was sugar-coating it. I know how sensitive you humans are.”
“I’ll give him fucking sensitive,” Brenda mumbled. “Ok Rat, that’s your mission. Strengthen the hull to survive Mars re-entry. Because we are most definitely entering Mars! I want to get me an Eve to go with my Adam! Got it?”
“Got it, Captain. Hmm… I’m thinking we can’t risk stopping at any orbital maintenance facilities for more plating and such. Therefore, I’m going to need to re-propose some of the ship’s internals for the job. You know, a bit of rearranging.”
“That’s fine. Just don’t mess with the bridge, or my quarters!”
“Roger that.”