Awakening
By Michael Marek

Set in 2378 when Michael is age 42,
an appropriate age to go back to school

 

      "You're attending the University of WHAT?" asked Paula L'Esperance, one of my classmates from years ago at Starfleet Academy. I was in the student center, getting ready to pack my books up for class when Paula rang. We hadn't talked direct in years.
      "I get that a lot," I answered, looking directly at Paula's image in the screen. "South Dakota. They've got a good doctorate here in Xenoethnography, and my people have been coming here for years. Heck, there's a scholarship here in my family's name that dates from just after the Eugenics Wars."
      "OK, Mike," Paula said with a smile. "Anyway, I'm a little short on time. I just heard about what happened in the Pennington system and I thought I'd see for myself that you're OK."
      "I'm fine, Paula," I nodded, not wanting to discuss the events. "Thanks for the connect. Tell what's his name 'hi' for me."
      "Randy," she said, rolling her eyes. "Tell Charlotte 'hi' too."

      I guess civilian campus life WAS a different world. The starship Crazy Horse was undergoing an extensive refit, estimated to take 15 months. Technically it was a post-war refit, even though it had taken over three years from the peace treaty with Cardassia for space to open at Utopia Planetia. The engineering crew was still on board, along with our A.I. first officer Moira, of course, participating in the refit. The rest of the crew had been assigned temporary duty here and there, mostly with a guarantee of reassignment to the Crazy Horse, if they so wished. After that one particularly hair-raising adventure, I was grateful that command had allocated my late summer and fall to the classroom, the residential semester I needed to wrap up the doctorate I had been working on since before the war.
      My wife Charlotte was in Hawaii, developing some kind of software to identify and categorize galaxies observed in ultra-deep space scans. We usually met somewhere on weekends.

      The autumn weather was still warm as I walked home later, after class, past the campus's "Old Main" building, a 500 year old edifice that was both ostentatious and appealing. This was no cold post-warp structure. Rather I could almost feel the generations of teachers and learners who had gone before. It was comforting. On the way, I passed the Fine Arts building and heard musical instruments from the open windows of practice rooms. Young people -- some seemed VERY young -- sat under trees or talked in groups.
      I was thinking about the research I had done for a recent paper in XENO 751, History of Xenoethnography. My paper, about almost-mythical explorers known as Lewis and Clark (who had traveled through the American West when it was terra incognita to European civilization, recording what was essentially detailed ethnographic information about the native residents) was complete. But unmentioned in the paper were some odd discoveries I had made in the hard copy archives of the university.

      In the old Earth reckoning year 1804, the explorers and their party had camped not far from the future site of my university. Intrigued by native reports, they had hiked a few kilometers north to a unique geological feature, a solitary hill isolated in a flat plain. The hill is still known as Spirit Mound. The university library had produced some rare paper books written by expedition members, and the archives eventually surrendered even rarer documents that had never been digitized. In 1848, the son of the explorer Clark, Jefferson Clark, and the son of the expedition's guide, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, met and exchanged some remarkable stories about their fathers' expedition. Jean Baptiste was employed by one Sir William Drummond Stewart as a cart driver and hunter for the sporting expedition, comprised of some eighty men. Jefferson was one of Stewart’s many guests.
      The two men formed a close friendship. Both had the same nickname, “Pomp” or “Pompey.” On several occasions during the four or five months of the expedition, they regaled their comrades with stories about the Corps of Discovery that each had heard as a child. Jean Baptiste, at least, is reported to have taken great pride in being able to tell such stories. One of the participants on this trip was Edgar Lowry, a lawyer from St. Louis. Here is an excerpt from a letter I discovered in the archives from Lewis to his sister, Elizabeth, dated August 27, 1848 (edited for contemporary spelling):

      ...we were much taken by the yarns spun by these two voyageurs, late at night, as the fires burned low. Knowing, Elizabeth, of your predilection for the mysterious, I shall recount one for you that all present agreed was quite puzzling, should it be true.
      One day, in the first summer of the expedition, rather before Lewis and Clark reached the Mandan villages, where they spent their first winter, the officers took it in their heads to visit a hill not far from their camp. The savages thereabouts vowed that this particular hill was the abode of little devils that killed all who approached this hill. The intrepid military men had little expectation of meeting these devils, but were enough impressed by the fables to wish to see this place for themselves.
      When they arrived, they were much taken back by the curious symmetry of the formation and began speculating that it might be a burial mound, as are occasionally found along the lower reaches of the Ohio River. Were it that, all agreed, it would represent a remarkable feat of engineering for the local savages to devise such a large underground chamber as the size of the hill suggested.
      The summer heat was oppressive and the men arrived at their destination with the sun near its zenith. It seems that upon reaching the summit of the mound, to a man they collapsed into a deep sleep, awakening no less than an hour later. Each remarked on the very vivid and disturbing dreams he had experienced, which they attributed to the effects of the heat and lack of water.
      They promptly made for the nearest water they could espy, a brook meandering through the broad plain, where they refreshed themselves before making their way back to their boat, with which they returned to their camp a short distance up the river.
      As they arose the next morning, the men remarked at the brilliant star they espied in the eastern sky. They concluded that while it appeared to be the familiar morning star, it seemed to flash and flutter as if alive. All agreed that they were most pleased to be on their way west, leaving the Mound of Spirits behind. I shall hope that it does not offend your sensibilities, dearest sister, that the famous Captain Clark was quoted by his son Jefferson as calling it “that dammenable hill.”
      Jean Baptiste agreed that those who visited the place brooded upon it, even years later, and when they returned down the river two summers later, pushed hard to bypass it as expeditiously as possible...

      "How weird is that?" I though when I first read it, wearing white gloves to protect the ancient paper. The Mound is now the central fixture of a large park of natural prairie, visited by many people over the years and not a single mystical death on record. One of the hiking, jogging and bicycle paths that crisscross the Great Pains runs north from the campus through the prairie, past it, so I decided to go take a look.
      The university has an "outing center" where I checked out a short-range ground car. I used it to whir along the trail out of town, over the river that borders the community, and out into the grassland. I saw it long before I reached it, a broad hill jutting into the sky. As I pulled even with it, I realized that it was not perfectly symmetrical. It was long and narrow, the long axis stretching north to south. The high point, however, was off center on this axis, about two thirds of the way to the north.
      I parked the fliver and hiked to the top along a nature trail that had been placed carefully to make it unobtrusive. It was breezy (alright, windy) but the evening was pleasantly warm for autumn. It was interesting to know that the two explorers whose words I had read had stood in that very spot, almost 600 years earlier. I tried to imagine the herds of buffalo they had seen.
      I'm not sure why, but I pulled out my tricorder. Maybe it was the reports about the geological uniqueness of the site. Maybe being married to a science officer.

      Glacial till -- gravel, that is, left when glaciers retreated 11,000 years ago -- a few "erratic" boulders also left by the ice, and some low level radiations. The radiation wasn't too surprising, since there were minute traces of radon gas. But some of the radiation was not radon-produced. I couldn't figure out what it was from, given the limitations of a general purpose tricorder. It was just a tiny bit odd, and coming from a place where odd things had been reported in the distant past, it made me curious.

      "I'm in a staff meeting," said my wife when I connected to her communicator after arriving back at my apartment. "Call me after work, love you, bye."
      Hum, I thought, and used my household Comm terminal to signal another address, the USS Crazy Horse at Utopia Planetia, in Mars orbit.
      "Welcome to the USS Crazy Horse," said a familiar voice. "Please listen carefully, because our menu changes at random every 4.2 seconds. For party planning, say or shout 'one,'..."
      "Moooiiirrrraaaa, it's meeee," I called into the communicator, and was rewarded to see my first officer's face materialize in the viewscreen.
      "Michael," she smiled. "Shouldn't you be studying, or drinking, or something else students do?"
      "I am studying, sort of," I replied. "You might call it non-linear research. What do you make of these tricorder readings?" I keyed the gadget to beam it's recording to the comm terminal.
      "Boring, boring," she intoned, "boring...well, how about that?"
      "The radiation?" I asked.
      "Yes," she nodded, with a frown. "It shouldn't be there."
      I assumed she had correlated the tricorder positioning readings with various database, so she knew the location and history of the site. I told her briefly what I had found.
      "There appears to be an unnatural source of radiation under the surface of that hill," she said. "Your tricorder doesn't have the oomph to tell me what it really is, but a few odd little subatomic particles are blipping up above the noise floor now and then. It looks a bit like a technological power source."
      "Out there?" I asked in surprise.
      "You asked," she said, with that Moira look. "As an historical site goes, that place is a curiosity. One of the few places we absolutely know that Lewis and Clark both stood during their legendary expedition. Clark, you know, is one of the more famous redheads in history. Anyway, they where there for maybe an hour and left. Little chance that they left anything of note that could be found hundreds of years later. I'm not finding any record of modern sensor scans of the site."
      "Unless the explorers passed out and were molested by little devils."
      "There is that."
      "Would the sensors on the Diana tell more?" I asked, referring to my little flyer that I used to fly back and forth to the Black Hills, or wherever Charlotte was pursuing her research, for the weekend. She began her life as a ship for Starfleet Academy stunt flying teams.
      "Sure," Moira said. "We put good gear into her."
      "Maybe I'll do a flyover tomorrow," I mused.
      "Anything to get into the air for a bit?" Moira teased.
      "Well, maybe."

      My residence in the college town was in an old but well maintained house, known as Richardson House, that had originally been built by some faculty member. It had long ago been acquired by the university and divided into multiple private quarters with common rooms. Like many other similar buildings, the university allocated the rooms by discipline. My neighbors in the building were also my classmates -- Vickie, Vivian, Richard, Brendan and married couple Amy and Peter were all on my floor.
      Behind the house was another structure that the locals called a "garage." It may have started its life as a shelter for ground cars, or even for horses. Now, it hangared the Diana. I backed her out and hover taxied to the street, where it was permissible to climb above the treetops. Then I set course for what the old explorers called "North by Northwest."
      The autumn colors splayed out below me, particularly the red and gold of the maple trees that were the pride of the community. To the south was a sweeping curve of the Missouri River. Ahead of me, though, was a wide, even plain, broken only by occasional stream valleys and a few patches of trees. I kept Diana's speed down -- no need to go supersonic for trip of a few miles.
      I killed my forward velocity as I neared Spirit Mound and hovered over it, keying the little ship's sensors for a subsurface scan. It didn't take long for the processors to start spitting out results. It is always nice, commanding a bridge shift, to have other people to do the analysis, but I hadn't been away from Tactical so long that I couldn't interpret what I saw. It was a large metallic underground structure. Further scans revealed its architecture -- almost certainly a vessel of some sort -- aerodynamic shape, but no actual wings, rear facing engines... I could even pick out three decks, with a pretty high likelihood of a bridge location. Oxygen, but no life signs. Hum.
      I set Diana down in the visitor's parking lot and studied the readings in more detail. The ship, whatever it was, had minimal power. The blips on my original tricorder scans were clearly energy readings on Diana's scan, but limited to one chamber, behind and below what appeared to be the bridge. The rest of the craft was cold, which you would expect if it had really been there for hundreds of years, or longer.
      As I studied the readings, I saw that the ship was canted slightly. The nose was lower than the centerline of the superstructure and the starboard was a bit lower than the port. Was it possible that this was some alien craft that fallen to Earth centuries ago, sliding into the ground with enough speed to build up its covering of gravel and soil?
      Nobody would believe that, unless I brought back proof.
      I stroked my beard (did I mention that I was wearing one, for the duration of the semester only?) and considered the possibilities. After a few minutes, I did another scan, probing deeply with the highest a resolution I could. I got a very strong signal back from the scan beams. There was clearly space in the ship, although the ceilings were low. There was air, although it was probably a bit stale. No life signs that I could detect.
      If you can't figure out what I was thinking about yet, let me add the detail that the Diana had an emergency escape transporter on board. Yah. Charlotte would kill me, if she knew what I was thinking. On the other hand, I've beamed onto unknown spaceships before. One of those occasions earned me a decoration. I had the gear I needed in a storage compartment -- I don't go flying without a survival kit in the storage compartment. The transporter scanners had no problem targeting the chamber below that had a few blips of power coming from it.
      I was well aware, however, that this was an archeological site. Whatever the ship down there was, it had been there long enough to qualify as an artifact requiring minimum disturbance and maximum respect.
      So I put on the transporter control armband, made sure my tricorder was ready to record, turned on my handheld light, and keyed the transporter to energize.

      I remembered to crouch down during beaming, but even so, the ceiling was low as I materialized. There was no light at all, other than mine. I played the beam around. The space was maybe 10 feet across and longer than it was wide, but there was little floor space. But to my surprise, after I had been in the chamber for about 15 seconds a small lighting panel in the ceiling began glowing, very faintly. I still needed my own light to pierce the dark.
      "So the ship is powered down, but not completely dead," I thought. "'Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.'"
      There were four sets of smallish reclining couches, paired two-by-two, in the chamber. Each pair had a console and multiple screens before/above it, but few actual controls that I could see. They all faced the same direction, which I took to be forward, and all were empty. I was happy because I was not in the mood to find long-dead bodies. The air smelled musky and humid, but not unpleasant. As the scans had shown, the floor was tilted slightly toward the front and starboard.
      I recorded a visual pan of the chamber with my tricorder and then did a comprehensive electronic scan. It wasn't hard to pick out the primary unit still drawing infinitesimal amounts of power, toward the back and along one side of the chamber. Still recording, I faced it and studied it carefully, but touched nothing. One does not casually begin poking at unknown equipment on alien spacecraft, contrary to what you see in popular fiction.
      I had been there no more than a second or so, however, when a screen that was at about my shoulder height above the deck, lit up and a face appeared in it. It was not live because it made no eye contact with me. Rather, the being's lips parted and a sort of chittering came out. After maybe 20 seconds, the image in the screen was replaced by rapidly scrolling characters while the sound continued. In fact, the number of "voices" quickly multiplied, each at a different pitch. It was clear that large amounts of information were being presented. I made sure to keep the tricorder aimed at the screen, to capture all of it. The whole data dump took seven minutes, after which the original being returned to the screen and in a single voice, made some sort of final statement or, in my imagination, a final appeal. The screen went dark and the ceiling panels started to fade. I took one last look around and hit the contacts on my armband to beam me back to the Diana.
      The next obvious step was to get the recording of data decoded or translated and analyzed. During the seven minutes while I was recording, I racked my brain to try to identify the species of the being that had appeared on the viewscreen. I had an idea, but it didn't make much sense.

      I'm in a staff meeting," said my wife when I connected to her communicator from the Diana. "Call me after work, love you, bye."
      "Welcome to the USS Crazy Horse," said Moira's voice. "All our operators are busy right now, helping other entities, but your communication is important to us. Please listen to these delightful musical selections while you wait."
      "Moira," I began, knowing that some part of her was listening, "would you please take a look at this recording and tell me what you think?"
      "You went ahead and did it?" she asked, her image appearing on the little screen on the Diana's control panel.
      "Yes, and it is very strange."
      "OK, shoot," she nodded, and I keyed the tricorder to upload to her.
      "What are they doing there?" she asked as the data began transferring.
      "Binars?" I asked.
      "Certainly, and...oh, oh, they're in trouble," Moira replied, frowning. "They crashed...resources running low...they set off a beacon and went into some sort of stasis...this was almost 600 years ago. Michael, the ship is programmed to wake them up if power drops so low that the stasis can't be maintained and their power is VERY low."
      "I'll contact Starfleet," I said, nodding my head. "Get a team here, and somebody from the Federation Binar embassy, too."
      "There's no time," she said, with much more urgency than she usually uses. "The kind of stasis they're using takes power to initiate and power to cancel, but only the tiniest trickle to maintain. The power they used to activate the screen and do the data dump used years, maybe even decades of power. They could be waking up now. They'll be in the dark with no power and no way out. Even if they could get out, they won't have an interface for any language spoken on Earth. They'll be digital in an analog world."
      "Uh, OK," I said, thinking fast. "I've got spare power cells in the Diana that'd last them for a while, at least, if I can figure out how to get them hooked up." I had already hit to contact to transfer Moira's signal to my Comm Pin and I was headed to the back of the little ship.
      "You get them ready," she nodded. "I'll access the Bynaus computer core and see if I can find the engine designs."
      "You can do that?" I asked.
      "You doubt me?" she said with assurance.

      Diana carries four power cores. She isn't a big enough ship for a warp reactor. One power core would get me to the moon and back, with a comfort margin (remember she's designed to fly at impulse from Earth to the outer solar system, fly a stunt sequence, and then fly home). I dismounted three of the four cores, since I would still need transporters and Comm. I was just pulling the emergency repair kit, which included a selection of electronic tools, including my second-favorite sonic screwdriver, when Moira chirped my Comm Pin.
      "Got it," she said, with triumph in her voice. "It's a scout ship of the class 1001101010...well, you get the idea. Cold fusion reactor. You should be able to couple power optically." She added the current and voltage settings, which I entered and locked into the control circuit of each of the cores.
      "Hurry," she said, "and take your tricorder. I told it how to find the power inputs."
      "It's on my hip," told her as I set the transporter control armband for a wide enough field to include the cores and the tool kit and picked up my lamp again. "Wish me luck."

      I beamed back to the same spot I had left a few minutes earlier. But the ship was different this time. I was hearing noises, far in the distance. The ship was no longer dormant. I heard a sound that clearly seemed to be Binar chittering. I tentatively identified it as some sort of automated ship's message, maybe.
      "Moira," I said, tapping my Comm Pin. I assumed that since the scanners and transporter could read this far underground that Comm would work, also.
      "Right here," and replied.
      "What's the ship saying?"
      She waited a few moments to catch the entire message, then said, " Oh, no. It's already started the countdown to wake them up. It says it willb e readyin, call it seven minutes."
      "Do I hook up power, or not?" I asked. I was well aware that power fluctuations during a delicate operation could be disastrous. Moira hesitated just a moment, no doubt consulting her the ship's plans and calculating odds.
      "Hook it up, if you can get it done before the countdown ends," she answered. "With a system this old, who knows if the ship is calculating it's power reserve accurately."
      "Roger," I affirmed. "So, where am I going?"
      Using the plans she had found, Moira directed me aft and down a level to what appear to be a Binar version of engineering. I could only carry one of the power cores, plus my toolkit, but I managed. It had been 17 years since I actually held an Engineering duty assignment, prior to moving into security and then helm and command tracks, but I pride myself that I have not lost ALL of my technical skills. Sure enough, near the reactor was an auxiliary console that had what bore all the hallmarks of an optical coupling port.
      I had no sooner set down the tricorder and started to open my toolkit when the hologram projector of the tricorder glowed and Moira appeared.
      "There," I said to her, pointing.
      She cocked her head, probably accessing data, and said, "Yes. I've got the entire protocol. I'll show you which keys to use to activate the receptor."
      It really only took a few minutes to get the ship drawing energy from my power core. As soon as it was clearly working, I hustled back up to the bridge for the remaining two power cells, which I connected in parallel with the first core. By then, the lights were coming on and I was hearing more and more of the recorded Binar chitters.
      "Yes, it's waking them up," confirmed Moira, who could translate even when the Universal Translator could not. "Only a minute or two, about, until the stasis shells open. I don't think it is wise to try to halt the wakeup, at this point.''
      "Help me find them," I nodded.
      "Yes," she said. "I'll be on your tricorder screen."
      With that, her hologram disappeared and I picked up the device. The projector wouldn't work well while I was carrying the tricorder.
      I made my way forward on the engineering deck to a chamber near what must be the nose of the ship. It had six things that looked a bit like diagnostic beds, but on them were silvery, perfectly reflective fields about the size and shape of a photon torpedo. I set the tricorder down, so Moira could appear again.
      "It is a sophisticated stasis technology," she said. "What is inside really is cut off from our space and time. The tiny trickle of power used by the ship for the last 600 years hasn't so much maintained the stasis as it has kept a sort of 'hook' on it so it doesn't wander away in some different space-time. Definitely something we don't want to mess with."
      I stood well back, by the door, and watched as the silvery shells began to ripple and flash different colors. The colors slowly became pastel, then faded even more, at the same time becoming first translucent and then more and more transparent. At some point in the process, the Binars saw me, no doubt a startling thing because they were expecting either one for their own kind or maybe no one to be present at their egress from stasis. I did my best to be as non-threatening as I could.
      One by one, the beds chimed, probably signaling that the stasis was fully dissipated. The occupants sat up, and immediately began chittering to each other, looking at Moira and me at the same time. Moira took a step forward and began chittering back at them. The aural data packets flew back and forth, intensely for a couple of minutes, culminated by Moira uttering an extended 90 second sequence of chitters.
      "There," she said, turning to me. "I've uploaded a language and semantic database to them that will allow you to communicate, at least with a non-technical vocabulary. I've also contacted Starfleet and they should have people here in an hour or so, including some embassy staff. You're on." With that, her hologram winked out. I turned to face the Binars.

      "You’re A.I. has informed us of your efforts on our behalf," said one of them, in a high monotone voice.
      "You have our thanks," said another.
      "We must check our ship's power systems," said a third, and that Binar and another left the room.
      "My name is Michael," I told the four who remained. They were grouped two on each side of the room, each standing close to its partner. "Some of your people will be here soon. We believe you have been here for a very long time."
      "Yes," said the first one who had spoken. "Those of your species who attacked us when we crashed did not appear to have your technology abilities. You may call me Zero-one."
      "That was a long time ago in our culture, Zero-one. My people have advanced greatly in that time, both in our technology and in our treatment of people who are different from ourselves," I nodded. "You have nothing to fear. But I am curious, what brought you to this world?"
      The Binars looked at each other and chattered back and forth for a moment.
      "My short name is One-zero," said the first a Binar. "Our people have used technology for over one hundred thousand years. We long ago used up the resources of Beta Magellan, such as the rare elements that must go into computer systems."
      I nodded.
      "During periods when there are few species traveling interstellar space, we mine asteroids in various stars," One-zero continued. "We established an outpost on the edge of this solar system, but needed to check this world for intelligent species. We avoid star systems where local species may develop and need the resources themselves."
      "Your rescue beacon apparently failed," I said. "No one knew you were here."
      The Binars looked at each other glumly.
      "But all is well on Beta Magellan, " I assured them. "Your people are part of a federation that includes hundreds of other intelligent species from as many star systems.
      The two Binars who had gone to Engineering returned. I later learned to identify them as One-one and One-zero-zero, not so much names as crew positions, I believe.
      "Your installation of emergency power was most satisfactory," said One-one. One-zero-zero added, "we have power now for normal operation for several weeks."
      The Binars chattered back and forth again at length.
      "You’re A.I. informed us that others from our world are coming here?" One-zero asked. "We have doubts that our spacecraft dam fly again."
      "Yes," I said. "There are several of your people...on the western coast of this continent, with their own ship. Maybe more than one ship, I don't know for sure. But you won't need this one to get home."
      They chittered again.
      "And you have a way to the surface?" asked One-zero-zero. "We are not confident of our own transporter system after it has been dormant for so long."
      "Yes, " said with a smile, "I can take you to the surface whenever you are ready."
      "Allow us a short time to gather our legacy data," requested Zero-one, and I nodded in assent.

      When the Binars were ready, we beamed to the surface and waited near the Diana. A runabout, the USS Cavally as I recall, landed a short while later in the public use area south of Spirit Mound (the immediate vicinity of the hill is native prairie and landing there would be a no-no). To my surprise, my wife was the first person off the runabout. She had, I learned later, received word from Moira about my situation and beamed from Hawaii to Starfleet in order to catch the runabout. She was followed immediately by a protocol officer and two new Binars.
      "Were you crazy?" whispered Charlotte as we stood beside the Diana, off to the side of where my Binars and the newcomers were interacting. "Beaming into an unknown ship, underground, and with no backup?"
      "It's not like the first time I've beamed onto an unknown ship," I said, a bit defensively.
      "Well, I've calmed down a lot, and it did work out in the end," she said, giving me a hug. "I won't repeat what I said when Moira told me."
      "I will, but not now," said Moira, her hologram reappearing beside us.
      "You're probably right, though," I admitted to Charlotte. "If I'd just reported it to Starfleet, they wouldn't have used up their reserve."
      "But when somebody ELSE beamed in, they would have triggered the same download," observed Charlotte. "Which would have cut into their reserve by the same amount, and who knows whether THOSE bozos would have had Moira's instant access to the Binar computer archives, to find the design documents. The power could have failed during the wakeup cycle, and their status fields could have been left wandering in another universe."

      The event ended with an anticlimax. My Binars were bundled onto the runabout. A Lieutenant came over and thanked me, every so briefly, for calling Starfleet, but that was that. It was the end of the week so Charlotte stayed behind when the runabout left and we flew in the Diana the next day to our home in the Black Hills.

      But a few weeks later I was in San Francisco, clean shaven, for a ceremony. It wasn't really a decoration, from a Starfleet sense, but it was recognition from the Binar government. I had struggled into my dress uniform and stood patiently during the ceremony, about two thirds of which was translated chittering. The xenoethnographer in me was interested in how the Binars had adapted to the customs in human culture for ceremonial recognition. Thre were ambassadors from several other worlds there, all known to be allies of Beta Magellen in the various squabblings of the Federation Council.
      At the reception afterwards, I had a chance to talk with "my" Binars again. They were unaccustomed to the formality, but seemed leased to see me, and thanked me personally.
      "I do have a question, as we say 'off the record,'" I said after we exchanged pleasantries. The Binars now had full language databases, so I could speak idiomatically. Zero-one nodded. "There are very spotty records from 600 years ago of a group of humans visiting the hill over your ship. If they records are correct, they lost consciousness, but then woke up and left. There are other legends, well, of people who died when they came too close to the hill over your ship."
      The Binars in my group chittered their binary language at each other, then Zero-one replied.
      "When we first landed, we...sometimes used a...neural suppressor on the...biological units that came to close," said Zero-one, haltingly, as if concerned about my reaction.
      "None was ever killed," added One-zero, in its high-pitched voice. "But, believing that we would soon be rescued, we...sampled the creatures that approached our ship, for analysis. Some we now recognize as humans, but we also patterned many other creatures. We have recently identified them by your names -- bison, ground squirrels, and birds of many species. After sampling, they were released, totally unharmed."
      "What kind of pattern scanning did you do?" asked Charlotte, intrigued. "To what level of detail?"
      "Sub-molecular," said One-zero-zero.
      "Could I...get a copy of your data?" asked Charlotte, with force casualness.
      "Of course," said Zero-one. "We will deliver it to you’re A.I."
      Moira, of course, was standing with us and tilted her head. "We'll take care of it," she said.
      "So, looking for the DNA from Messieurs Meriweather Lewis and William Clark?" I asked my wife teasingly, after the Binars had moved on.
      "Heck no," she said emphatically. "Seaman."
      "Huh?" said several people in our group.
      "Lewis's black Newfoundland dog," she said, as if anybody could figure it out. "I love big dogs."