The Incident at Kruger 60, Part 1 Read online

We woke about twelve hours later. There wasn't any rush, the delivery service wasn’t going to be finished delivering our goods to the docking bay until later that day. We got up had some coffee, and decided check out the exchange on the station. We headed out door of the room, locked it behind us, and walked out into the main corridor. More people were around than before. It must have been end of work time on the station. Laura bought some books. Well she bought a package deal, like the 500 most popular novels for 2000 credits, all published in the last 25 years. We bought a few other odds and ends, and headed back to the docking bay. We unlocked everything and got on the ship. Supplies were still being delivered. Most of the food was here, still waiting on water. And some upgrades. And some ammo for the two small guns on the ship. could engineer some plasma balls from the UUP on board, but had bought some technical stuff to make it easier. It wasn’t much but it was something. And a plasma ball, while crude, could do devastating damage to any space ship.

  Once on board we started stowing the new supplies. It took a couple of hours, to get it all packed away properly, and to sign all the paperwork. But it wasn’t all that hard, and we got it done easily enough. Once we had loaded up we requested clearance to leave and visit the planets surface. We got our clearance, after explaining that Jochim was an old friend of mine, and made ready to depart. We separated the support systems connections and then the main docking connection, and gave a little push with the guidance rockets, and drifted away from the station.

  “OK, first, I'll call him and tell him we are coming.”

  She nodded.

  I pulled up a directory on the screen and found his number pretty quickly. I entered it in the computer, and waited. The videophone rang four times before someone picked up.

  “Hi, this is Alex Fire. I'm looking for Jochim Regenstein.”

  It was a woman’s voice that answered.

  “One minute, I'll get him for you.”

  The line was silent a few minutes and then the picture of Jochim emerged on the screen.

  “Hey Alex, long time no see, what brings you out this way?”

  It was good to see his smile again.

  “Long story really, we were working out on Kruger 60, and thought we would drop by for a short visit, if you got the time for it.”

  “Absolutely, your out near Kroatzy's Station I would guess.”

  “Yea. We can be there in about two hours maybe a little less. If you don’t mind unexpected guests.”

  “No problems, come on down. I'll send you landing coordinates and you can calc a flight plan. Looking forward to seeing you old buddy!”

  “Me too, Jochim, me too”

  “OK let me go get some stuff taken care of. Talk to you in a couple of hours.”

  “Roger that, peace out.”

  “Peace out.”

  Laura looked at me. “Sounds like you two guys are pretty close.”

  “Yea we have been. Known each other almost all our lives. Did a lot together when we were younger.” I looked at her. “We were in space command together once.”

  She was silent for a minute.

  “Oh. I didn’t have any idea you were in star command. What did you do there?”

  Now I was silent a minute.

  “I was a captain of a korvette. The Rattlesnake. Eight years. Worked in the special operation command for the closed zones. Gave it up after my service time was up. Since then I've been doing mining. Jochim was another korvette commander, of the Badger. We went to the academy together, served in the same operating squadron. Yea we go back a long way.”

  “Oh ok, I see. So you really do know this guy pretty well.”

  “Yea.”

  The coordinates were coming over for the landing. I entered them into the nav program, and ten seconds later we had a course. I put the ship on auto pilot. The ship immediately fired the guidance rockets, and we started a slow decent onto the planet. It would take almost sixty minutes to get to his place, we had to cruise around the planet once, and we were in a pretty high orbit. We strapped in for the decent.

  The ride down was quiet. Neither of us felt like talking. There was a very light methane atmosphere, and the ship glowed around the windows as we went thru. Not really bumpy, just a few hints that we were entering another atmosphere. We came thru and into the misty light greenish haze that hung over the planet. The ship guided itself into the main space port on black rock, Kandinsky city. We landed at a general docking port. The doors opened and we slowly set down into the landing bay.

  “Hmm Doesn’t look like a quick escape can be made from here...”

  “No worries. Like I said I got a few tricks up my sleeve.”

  We waited for the docking bay to pressurize, and and then exited the ship. We walked to the greeting room, and a customs guy was there to meet us. We signed a few papers, and he was gone. Since we had already registered at Kroatzy's Station, this was routine at this point.

  We entered the city. Its all underground except for a few storage facilities on the surface, and ship building yard. There are about 10,000 people here. Largest settlement out this way, for several star systems, and the last one in the open zone on this side of the zone. We entered one of the main corridors, and found a info computer. I entered Jochim's address, and got a quick printout of where to go. We followed the map, down several large corridors, and then some smaller ones. The big ones were big, you could put twenty people across in them. The smaller ones were more like for ten people across. It took us about twenty minutes to make our way to his quarters. We found the address, and rang the bell.

  Jochim opened the door.

  “HEY mon! Good to see you again!”

  He gave me a hug, and we slapped each other on the back.

  “And who is this then?” He asked.

  “This is Laura. A friend of mine. Met her a few months ago on Bernard's star, she was looking for work, and I decided to take on a junior partner. Tired of cruising around alone.”

  “You... Tired of being alone?” He gave me a quizzical look, and then threw one at her. “Well... Wonders will never cease. Come in you two, make yourselves at home.”

  We entered the cabin. Jochim had a little living room, about twenty meters square, with a couple of sofas, we sat on one, he on the other.

  The small talk didn’t last very long. It must have been obvious that there was something more important to talk about.

  “So Alex. What brings you out here to visit me? You're not usually much of a stay in touch kind of guy.”

  “No you are right about that. We were off on a mining trip, and we saw something. To be blunt about it, we saw a ship. One that wasn’t human built. Or at least one that was unlike any ship in the data records. We have a little bit of video and the records of some of their transmissions, at least what I think are their transmissions. You weren’t that far away, and it seemed that you were the best choice to inform about this.”

  He was silent a minute, and then looked at me. “That’s a pretty serious claim, Alex. Yes, I'd like to see the film and listen to your recordings.”

  I reached into my pocket and gave him a memory card, I'd brought from the ship. He took it with out saying a word, and put it in the reader on the table. The big screen lit up, and now displayed the video from my helmet camera. Jochim played the tape through twice, only looking over at us at the end of the second run thru.

  He looked at me, and his smile was gone. “Yes, I'm glad you brought this here. This is pretty amazing Alex. I’ve seen video from other so called contact stories. What do you think of it? You were there.”

  I shifted on the sofa, and so did Laura. “Honestly I think its some kind of alien ship. We don’t have anything like that. That’s clear, unless S.C. has some kind of black ops project that is at least 100 years ahead of our time. Or unless someone somewhere has invented something well beyond what we know of as a space vehicle today. What ever it is, it doesn’t seem human to me.”

  “What do you think about them not making any eff
ort to contact you? You were what, less than 200 meters from them? Something like that, based on the range info of the cameras focus mechanism. Where was your ship? How did you manage to avoid contact?” He was silent a second. “Or did you?”

  “No, we didn’t make any contact.” He looked relieved. “Our ship was in a hollow, about 500 meters behind the ridge. On low power. The way I always leave it when I leave the ship on some rock far from civilization. We were behind the ridge. Maybe they weren’t looking for us, maybe they didn’t expect to find anyone there. Or maybe they were occupied with other matters. They probably looked at the area, which is pretty rough, didn’t see anything threatening on their landing scan, or what ever it is they do when they land, and put down. After that they probably only monitored the immediate region for incoming devices. That would be my guess anyway.”

  He got up and went to the kitchenette and got three glasses and a bottle of wine. On his return he put the glasses on the table, and opened the bottle and poured everyone a small glass. “Well this is pretty sensational. I’m glad you didn’t take it to the normal authorities.” From the look in his eyes I could see he meant it. “I think,” he started slowly, “That we are going to have to investigate this.” He picked up his glass and we did the same. “And I think I'd like to have you two along on the expedition, since you have the most experience with this phenomenon.” Laura looked at me, and you could see the doubt in her eyes. Jochim caught her look. “No, young lady, I'm not talking as our... What shall we say... Guests of SC. I know Alex pretty well, I can think of better capacities for him in this. Alex, you have ten years background in special operations for the commission. My suggestion would be you and Laura take your ship, and accompany the expedition out there. I'll get you your commission back, as a reserve major, you are eligible for that anyway, as you would still be in the reserves as long as your flight physicals are good. That gives you some authority in this situation. And I'd like to have a man like you along, Alex. You're both experienced and educated enough that I'd like to think we could avoid the worst of all possible outcomes if this is indeed a real first contact situation.” We all took a drink, and he continued. He turned to Laura. “And I'd propose that SC issues you a mission specialist certificate, that puts you in the scene, as a civilian, and gives you some status as well. Obviously you two were smart enough to come back from this... This occurrence alive, so that makes you something of an expert as well, given the circumstances. You got any ideas on those burst transmissions you picked up?”

  “Not really. We ran them through the computer, but it looks like its all digitally encoded. Laura you ran some tests on that stuff, was there anything there that looked understandable?”

  We both turned and looked at Laura. “No, although when I ran some Keligman-Strauss algorithms on that tape, it appeared to break the randomness into something that did have some patterns in it, here I can show you.” She picked up the keyboard on the table, selected the first file, and opened it, and activated the transform function. After the computer ran the transform, she played the tape. It was clear there were groups of something, you could here faint alterations in the tones, that was still random, but had something of a pattern to it. It might have just been a coincidence, or it might have been something more, but we didn’t really have the software on board to do a deeper analysis. “That was the only thing I found on the tapes.”

  “Hmm. Interesting. You have a background in electronic communications?” Asked Jochim.

  “No, not really. I like to read, and I like languages. I spend a lot of my free time studying languages, and I also have read a lot about the tones. I read a couple of books on the study of the tones, and from that I knew something about how you would go about trying to figure out what a interstellar electronic communication said.”

  Now it was Jochim's turn to look a little surprised. He smiled. “OK, well then I'll have them place you as a language expert on the mission specialist cert. If you know enough to do that, you know enough to provide some credible help in that area. I'll have some additional comm software loaded on board. We have a new program we developed for listening for code communication in deep space, something we are using to try and clean up the pirating problem in the Niva 4 quadrant, in the closed zone.” He turned and looked at me. “So Alex, what do you think, will you go along for me. I can use a pair of eyes like yours on something like this. And yours too, Laura.”

  I paused. There was a lot to consider. Yes I could see his point, having us along might be useful. Also, I wanted to see for myself, what evidence, if any, there was for our experience.

  “Yea, OK. We'll go back.”

  “Glad to hear it. It will take a bit of time to get a ship underway, probably at least 24 hours, maybe 48. I can have your ship refitted with some more weaponry and sensor devices, just in case you need them.” He looked at me. And smiled. “And like I said, I'll get you a mission duration commission. That gives you some standing in the fleet. As a free officer. So you aren’t taking orders from the captain, rather acting as a guide, and advisor. Also that solves some problems with the local governance. This is going to take a bit of time to inform people and get things moving.”

  Laura spoke up. “Um, excuse me, but what exactly do you do here, Jochim, I mean, I know you work for star commission, but, um, well, I'd just like to know.”

  “Oh, Alex didn’t tell you, eh?” He looked at me. “Well, I'm on the governance board for the outpost here. Scientific affairs in the sector. But like Alex, I have a military background. I’m a reserve colonel. We were in special operations together, I went back to university and got my doctorate, Alex dropped out and became a prospector. He was always reading books about the old west back in school, so I guess he really wanted to go to the San Francisco gold rush.” And he cracked a smile. “Alex, if you need anything let me know. We can have your ship fitted with some extra plasma torpedo launchers, and a couple of thermo nuclear torpedoes. That’s some pretty powerful weaponry, and I'll have them add some of the more recent scientific monitoring apparatus. Laura, you were smart enough to figure out the algorithms, and get a pattern, I'd like you to work with one of our techs for the next 24 hours or so, and learn how some of this stuff works. We can load instruction guides, but I think you could put some of this stuff to use. Will you accept?”

  She thought about it a minute, and looked at me. I nodded slightly. “OK yes, I'll do it.” She looked at me again, and I gave her a little hint of a smile. She relaxed a bit “Actually I like this kind of stuff, and I don’t get much chance to learn about it, except in what I read. Sure I'm in for some education.”

  “Good!” Replied Jochim quickly. “Then let's get started. I'll have you introduced to one of our sci techs and he go thru it with you. Alex let's get your ship ready, and I have to go talk to the board here. He was already at the keyboard, sending out requests for an emergency meeting. Within ten minutes the board members had replied and the meeting was arraigned for two hours later.

  Jochim contacted an aide, and he came and took Laura to the scientific labs. It felt a little weird as this was the first time in ten weeks we had been separated. Jochim also contacted the military commander, and they talked shortly on the videophone. Commodore Roderker was the local commander here, and he had an idea that his services were going to be needed. After a short discussion it was decided to prep a frigate for a scientific military mission. They discussed my ship, the Star Chaser, and Jochim indicated my status as a reservist and that I would be accompanying the mission. Weapons were ordered, and they signed off.

  “Well, Alex, looks like you are in for another adventure. You'd better get back to your ship and get it ready. I have this meeting, I'll call you afterwards.”

  “Sounds like a plan, Jochim, I'm looking forward to hearing from you.”

  We shook hands and I left for my ship.

  Back on the Star Chaser, I microwaved a coffee, and then took a seat at the table. The doors were all open, and I was waiting for
the delivery of the new weapons systems and the scientific gear. It would be a while, no matter what, at least until after the meeting. I considered all that had transpired. Jochim was a good judge of people, and had picked up fast on the fact Laura was pretty smart. His suggestion to go back along was, on consideration, clever. He knew I would want to know the outcome, and he knew he needed someone with a very level head involved in this. Also he had never wanted me to leave the commission, so he was killing two birds with one stone, even if it was only temporary. Given the situation, I didn’t see a good reason to say no.

  The time passed slowly. 2 Hours and 40 minutes after I had returned to the ship, I got a call. I turned up the video screen in the galley, and it was Jochim.

  “It's a go. We are going to send you and a frigate. Upgrades are on the way, should be there in the next hour. We are going to have a operational meeting at 8 pm local time. That’s in about seven hours. I'd like both of you to be there, pass the word on to Laura.”

  “Sounds good. I'll be there.”

  “Good. Well this is going to be a busy morning, I need to run but I'll see you this evening. If you need anything or think of anything contact me, you can call me if you think of anything we should outfit either your ship or the frigate with. By the way, you are going out with the Volga, full complement, plus scientific crew. The captain is Lt Commander Reitenherr. Good guy, a little on the cautious side. Should be a good choice for this one. I have to run, much to do, call me if you need me.”

  “OK, peace out.”

  “Peace out.”

  I turned off the monitor, and sat there for a minute. This was going to be interesting, was the only thought that came to my head.

  Weapons systems started arriving about an hour later. They outfitted the ship with eight thermonuclear torpedoes, and two large plasma torpedo launchers. Serious heavy weapons. That took about three hours, to get everything mounted and operational. Then the scientific gear started showing up. Several computer modules, and some external sensor arrays. Hi sensitivity electronic monitoring gear. The computer was uploaded with the appropriate software. Then about 6 pm local time, Laura showed up back at the landing bay, with a sci tech in tow, a middle aged woman. They were going thru the capabilities of the monitoring gear. We said hi, and Laura took her to the ship, where they went over the operation of the equipment, and then the sci tech ran thru some methods for data analysis. It wasn’t long before we got a notice on the monitors that the meeting was going to start in twenty minutes. We got our stuff together, and we all headed down the corridor to the meeting room. Laura introduced me to the tech, Ms Guthrie Meyer. She would be one of the techs on the frigate, and would be working with us on comm. Presently we entered the meeting room. There were about sixty five people there, obviously the crew of the frigate, and scientific staff, as well as Jochim, the military commander, and some other people, who were probably in the scientific departments.

  The meeting was professional, almost routine. Jochim introduced us, played the tapes, and announced that the local commission had decided to investigate. There would be our two ships, the Volga and the star chaser on this, with back up of the rest of the local fleet on standby. If anything was discovered, another party of two ships, one military, one scientific would be sent out to Kruger 60. the rest would be on full alert here, in just case... They were needed for something else. As of 1 pm this afternoon, the quadrant around Kruger 60 was closed, temporarily, due to possible pirate activities. The announcement had been made on subspace radio, and there were two ships in the area that were on their way out. A freighter, probably also a prospector, and a small scientific vessel studying an asteroid cluster about a light year from Kruger 60. The scientific vessel, as it turned out, had picked up faint signals similar to what we had seen, but thought them meaningless, some radio signature of a supernova or something somewhere. They were very faint, and short. No information had been obtained from them at this point, but if they were of alien origin, that would probably take some time. It was decided that we would travel in two different courses, and rendezvous outside the star system. Scan it, and move in closer. We would use passive scans, not active, unless we determined the need for an active scan. As per policy it was highly discouraged. We would land, and the scientific team would see if they could get some samples, etc. Once we had thoroughly investigated the site, we would leave the planet, and contact Kroatzys'. A second frigate would join us, and we would head out in the direction of the last known trajectory of the mystery ship. ten days travel, look around, and then return. Then the commission would decide how to proceed.

  Jochim introduced me to captain Reitenherr. Typical star commission officer. Very business like, clearly cautious. We went over the route plans, and comm procedures, we would use direct laser comm in normal space, so as to isolate our transmissions, and would keep them to a minimum. His scientific group included a linguist, and she was already working on the tapes we had made.

  The meeting broke up, and Jochim asked me if I would join him for dinner with Captain Reitenherr. Laura wanted to continue to learn about the software that Reitenherr's linguist was using, so she went and introduced herself and they were quickly lost in conversation. Two bookworms, I thought. I said yes and we headed off to a restaurant in the commercial section of the colony.

  We entered the restaurant and Jochim got us a table. A quiet one at the back of the place. We sat, and a waitress came and we ordered. No one was really thinking about food. As soon as she left, we started talking.

  “Alex this is Krazmin Reitenherr. Fifteen years service, worked in special ops for seven years, but on the other side of the open sector. You might have heard of him once.”

  “Yea I've heard the name. You led the raid on the rebellion at Tannhauser didn't you?”

  “Well, the lead party. I took a ship in, landed and led the initial assault.”

  “Impressive. Alex Fire. I guess that's major Alex Fire again.”

  “Pleased to meet you, yea, I've heard of you too, pirate chaser in the Mondon quadrant. Caught some pretty rough characters. And you had some trouble with the rebellion at Sternschen 9 didn’t you?”

  “Yea. I was there. Ran the black op to infiltrate the base and gather intelligence.” We were silent, and looked each other over.

  “OK gentlemen, a few words of advice.” Jochim had interrupted us. “First of all be cautious. If you have a chance to make contact, remember, don't, unless you are really sure you have no other options. Observe first.” He went silent as the salads came. After the waitress left he went on. “I think you should both know the meeting was a bit explosive this morning. There were a lot of opinions on how to proceed. We need to be cautious on this one. If something is out there, well, we need to be careful.” He ate some more salad. “Having said that I know we don’t know what is going to happen. Use your best judgment, and try not to shoot if you don’t have to.” He finished his salad.

  Krazmin spoke first. “Agreed. Caution is the word of the day. Do you think central will send more ships out here? Or are they going to wait for our report?”

  “Central has been informed of the developments. They are meeting this evening, probably over as we speak. Yes, they are going to send a special flotilla out here, probably a dozen ships or so, and also strengthen some of the other stations in the area. I'm sure they will take this seriously.”

  “If this is a real contact, you know this is could spin out of control pretty quickly...” I added.

  Jochim was silent a second and looked at me. “Yes, we know. The possibilities are endless. It could be as we have always planned it by the book, slow and careful or it could go totally in another direction. We will have to cross those bridges when we come to them.” He looked at Krazmin. “The best thing I can tell both of you is caution and carefulness, should be the operating words of the day.

  “No worries Jochim, we are going to take this one nice and easy, don’t you agree, Alex?” He looked at me, like he wasn’t quite
sure what to expect for an answer. But it was clear that what his feelings on the matter were.

  “Definitely, it's agreed. This is too big to leap into the blind, if we can possibly avoid it.” Dinner arrived. We paused as before, and then continued. “No I don't want to leap without looking,” I started, “And I don't want to do any shooting if we can possibly avoid it. That could lead to a lot of long term unpleasantness.” Krazmin was clearly relieved. On the one hand, it was the holy grail of space exploration to be the person or persons who discovered intelligent life in the universe, on the other everyone knew the risks. They had been discussed since the 1960s, for almost 300 years, so it was unlikely, given our range of experience in the expanse so far, that anyone had any illusions about what first contact would be like.

  “Good, it's settled then.” Said Krazmin. He smiled. “Besides, we will probably only find some indication of their landing, and that isn’t going to be a real first contact situation. I would say less than a five percent chance of actual contact.”

  Jochim looked at him. “Probably true, but one really doesn’t know what we will find out there. It could be anything, or nothing at all.” He ate some more steak. “At any rate, I am hoping we at least find some useful clues. You may still find some trace of matter disruption, and if so you can locate their last trajectory. That, if we find it, will probably be the most useful thing of all.”

  I interrupted him. “So you are going to send out a search patrol, if we find it?”

  “Maybe not right away, but inevitably we will send out someone to investigate. A warp trail is just that, a warp trail, and would be a solid indication you saw something made by intelligent life. Even if it isn't alien we would still like to know who and what built that ship, and what its capabilities are. Something such as you described, with that kind of maneuverability, would represent a potential threat to spacefarers, if it fell into the wrong hands. The last thing we need are a bunch of pirates armed with equipment like that.”

  “True” I replied. “Krazmin, what are your thoughts on our arrival. How do we get down there, in the safest manner?”

  Krazmin scratched his chin, through a thick red beard. He was going a little bald on the top, and that and his round frame give him a cheery, friendly look. “Well, I'd say we scan the planet, and other planets first. Look for any recent signs of a warp journey, also broadcasts etc. We have your tapes to listen to for examples, and the science vessel coming in from the asteroid belt there sent us their data. We have a good idea of what to look for. Then if its all clear, we fly in, one on each side of the planet. You have a much smaller ship, so you come in from the far dark side: Low on the atmosphere edge, so as to hide from their scanners. We scan passively at that point, we'll be close enough we don’t need active sensors. If all goes well, we land, investigate the site, collect anything useful we can find, and take off. We can go 10 days, maybe two weeks out on their old trajectory, and see what we see out there. We observe, and report back. First sign of trouble we warp the hell out of there. We don’t know what their intentions are, and a retreat is safer, under these circumstances, than to do otherwise.”

  “And what if they try to make contact with us, and don’t act in a hostile manner?” I asked.

  He paused. “good question. That, I think, we would have to play it by ear. We are not really a contact party, we don’t have the crew or experts for that. I would say we broadcast a simple star calendar and mark a date, and location, far out in the closed zone, were we can try and put humans in touch with whatever we contact. Personally I would like to assume that anyone that had the technology you are describing, and that is shown in your video, is benevolent. But realistically I can't make that assumption. Who knows what their intentions are.”

  “I agree. We should be cautious. No question about it. And backing off early is probably much safer than any other course of action. Of course I don’t really expect we will find anything like that. Probably just some evidence of landing and that’s it. Then the scientific teams will have to follow up, probably with a couple of cruisers posted along.”

  “That would be my thought. This is basically a reconnaissance mission. Nothing more, or less.”

  “Yes, agreed.”

  Jochim joined in again. “I'm glad you all are on the same sheet of music as far as this is concerned.” He paused. And his look turned serious. “OK, what if you run into something and its not peaceful... Thoughts?”

  We looked at each other.

  “Good question, all depends on how... Unpeaceful they are...” I said.

  “Yes good point. If we have a chance, I'd say we shoot a round of plasma torpedoes at them. Hopefully that will slow them down, without killing a lot of people. Then we warp out of the area, away from the direction of earth and the open zone. At that point we would have to mobilize everything we have, as we don't know what they have for forces. Only logical solution. The key would be, if we can create a delay and warp out of the area, before... Before someone gets hurt. I would suggest that Alex fire a couple of quick shots, hopefully he can distract them, and then warp into the unknown, in any direction away from earth and the open zone. Then I can pound a few shots into them, and do the same. Our shields are a 100 times better than Alexis', so its obvious he isn't going to be able to hang out long for a fight. But as a small, maneuverable craft, he might be able to distract them for a bit, and we can use that as a chance for a get-away. But it's all really theoretical, because if it happens, well, we will have to play it by ear. The best I can say is, get his ship out first, its too small to really fight, and then we get out of there afterwards. We can do a burst data exchange on the lasers to send data back and forth, if we need to, but I'd prefer not to have any more comm than needed, as long as we are not in contact with anyone, and as long as the situation doesn't require it. Keeping things quiet would be better on a mission like this.”

  We finished dinner. Jochim ordered coffee and some dessert, and we talked some more about the theoreticals, but in the end it was, as Krazmin said, theoretical. There was little we could do to plan for a situation that we couldn’t predict in advance, and, as everyone had mentioned, this was more of a recon mission than a first contact event. We finished up, and headed out. I said my good byes to Jochim, and Krazmin and I agreed to talk again before we pulled out, sometime tomorrow afternoon. I headed back to the ship.

  I got back to the ship late. Laura was there, reading one of the manuals for the software on the sensor devices.

  “Hey, how was your dinner” She asked.

  “Good. Reitenherr is a good choice for this. Smart, cautious, a thinker. Not the type to over react. How was your day?”

  “Fun actually. This is some pretty amazing stuff. The tech gave me a bunch of material to read on cryptography. I'm going to read it all on the trip back out there.” She got up and went to the galley, and got some tea. “I also have some ideas to play with the tapes we made. Yea, it was a fun day.”

  I lay down on the bunk. It had also been a long day for me. “Remind me in the morning to ask Jochim for more fuel. We can always use some more fuel, and under the circumstances who knows how much we might need. Plus, it won't hurt to use his, not ours.”

  “OK, good plan.”

  “OK Laura, I'm crashing, talk tomorrow.”

  “Nite, Alex. By the way, I want to know about this time you spent in the commission...”

  “OK little one, but not tonite. We got time ahead of us...”

  “No problem Alex... Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow little one.”

  I pulled the curtain over the bunk and promptly went to sleep.

  The Trip Back to Kruger 60