The Gas Giant Captain's log, Stardate 62217.4. The USS Crazy Horse has arrived at a gas giant planet about twice the size of Jupiter, designated Sigma Bellenté VII. The Bellenteen system was surveyed seven years ago, but there were problems and a probe had to be abandoned in a location where it could eventually contaminate one of the gas giant planets in the system. Crazy Horse is here to take care of the matter... The sunrise was spectacular over the gas giant planet as we watched it on the bridge view screen. The clouds far below us were mostly orange, with shades ranging from red to yellow to white. The distant star lit succeeding cloud layers as it rose -- or as we circled the planet toward it. The shadows of moons and moonlets showed as dark ovals on the cloud tops. We had barely achieved orbit, just moments ago.
"Beginning scan," reported my wife, Charlotte, our science officer. She frowned. "There IS some of the unusual EM activity they told us to look for, along with all the normal stuff," she said. "Ah, there's the probe, way down below the water vapor layer." The Intrepid Class USS Victoria had visited the planet on a routine survey. It didn't seem to be that interesting a system, so they didn't land anywhere but simply sent off Class III probes to each of the planets. The probe that plunged into the atmosphere of this gas giant malfunctioned and didn't come back, but it transmitted plenty of data before coming to rest. Rest on what? Well, as you go deeper and deeper into the atmosphere of a gas giant, the density gets thicker and thicker. Eventually you reach a point at which things can float, below the ammonia and water vapor clouds, but above the liquid and metallic hydrogen layers. The Victoria science team shut down the probe remotely (standard procedure), and let it go at that, since they had no way to recover the probe. Then last year in Paris, a doctoral student studying the Victoria's readings, noticed momentary electromagnetic radiations that did not appear to have natural explanations. The planet was 155 days travel from Earth at warp 7, so was not a high priority for a special sortie. Crazy Horse was apparently the first Starfleet ship passing reasonably close enough that could be diverted for the recovery and analysis assignment. Another captain might have asked the science officer questions, like "condition of the probe?" or "analysis of the EM readings?" I knew it was better to let my wife just focus, so I had a cup of coffee. She resurfaced a few minutes later for her first report. "The radiation is in the UHF band," she said, to me and the other bridge staff. "Normally I'd say the radiation we’re seeing is artificial, but the only...construct we are seeing is the Victoria's probe. No indication of any other technology down there at all, but we'll keep scanning. As far as I can tell, the probe's intact. I think we should attempt to wake it up." "Will it have power left after seven years?" I asked. Our chief engineer, Ray Brown replied. "If they shut it down properly, the deuterium power plant should still be viable. The shells on planetary probes are pretty tough, but they’ll eventually break down and you don't want those things spilling out contamination on strange planets. As cold as it is down there, the metal is probably already getting brittle." "That's exactly why we need to salvage the probe," I nodded. "The Victoria didn't have any way to do that. They only had light shuttles, and I assume their report was correct that transporters can't probe that deep?" "Way too much interference in the water vapor layer," Moira said, shaking her head. "The heat from the planet's core drives storms with 1,000 times the lightning you've ever seen on Earth. You'd be crazy to beam through that, and it's anybody's guess what would come out the other end." "So we're going to fly a runabout through that?" asked Samantha Neal, the nominal pilot of said runabout. "You'll have to pick your way and keep shields and inertial stabilizers on maximum," advised Charlotte. "Give the science team 24 hours for further analysis." "If we can wake the probe back up, I'd like to place one of my selves in its memory and check it out firsthand," said Moira, the Crazy Horse's A.I. first officer. "'Moira Lite' hasn't had an assignment for a while and she's itching for a challenge. It's not impossible we could find a solution to the probe's engine problem and just fly it back out under its own power." "We'll follow all three of those paths," I said. "Charlotte, take your 24 hours. Moira, try to reestablish contact with the probe and send in your alter ego, if you can. Sam, prep a runabout for a recovery mission, taking into consideration the conditions we've discussed."
It was a bit odd to see Moira, herself literally the computer, sit down at Science Station Two in her simulacrum form, to attempt contact with the probe. If things had been more urgent, she would have just DONE it. But she manually called up the access codes, configured the signal, and sent it off. Moments later one of the science station screens lit up with text and numbers.
"There it is," Moira commented, as much to herself as to anyone else. Then she added, for our benefit, "This is a startup diagnostic followed by environmental readings at its location. I'm passing the readings to Charlotte and the position fix to Sam." "Do you see all those amino acids?" asked Charlotte. "We're picking up some from here, but the probe has them more clearly." "I noticed that," murmured Moira. "I've instructed the probe to assign a block of free memory and... am transmitting M.L. Bandwidth is good and she is on site...now." Moira touched a contact on the console and we heard an electronic version of her voice from the probe. "Oh, ghod, it's like being locked in a coffin." "Hello, Mei Mei," said the Moira on Crazy Horse, looking at me and shrugging. "Hi, Sis," replied M.L. "I'm sorting things out now. The engine is definitely inoperable. There's a fried circuit in the fusion control node that caused an automatic engine shutdown. I'm sending you details back channel." "Moira," Charlotte transmitted. "Please use passive scans only, for now." "OK," said M.L. "Why?" "Take a look at visual receptor 16." "On the main screen," I said. A cloudscape appeared on the screen. There were many colors. The middle horizontal band was white with blue tinges. Higher levels were pink, red, orange, and yellow. There was no land, but the probe seemed to rest just above a fairly uniform light grey layer of something that stretched to the horizon. The clouds changed slowly as we watched, as they do on any world. I soon became aware, however, that there were other things moving within the panorama -- little specks moving counter to the apparent winds. "If you would, please," asked Charlotte the Moira who was with us. "Certainly." The view screen zoomed in to one of the blurry specks, then cleared, as Moira processed the image to add resolution. What I saw looked for all the world like a jellyfish floating in an ocean. It was almost completely transparent, except for what appeared to be some fine structures within the walls of its bowl and at its crown. The display indicated that it was six to eight feet across. "Holy Toledo," said M.L., in amazement. "Yes," nodded Charlotte. "It is almost certainly alive, and it is a source of E.M. radiation. Telemetry shows about 100 of them within visual scanning range of the probe." "What are the signals like?" I asked. Moira cocked her head, as if listening. "They are very low frequency," she said. "Side band modulated in two frequency ranges. One is around 27 megahertz and the other even lower and very weak, at 447 hertz. I only hear the latter frequency when the life forms are in close proximity to each other and all of them are on the identical frequency. At 27 megs, there are many separate voices ranging several dozen hertz up and down from the center of the range." "Ten to one they're communicating at some level," said Charlotte. "Woops," said M.L., and the view screen switched to a different scene. One of the jellyfish was very close to the probe, spectacular in its detail. It had reached out a tendril and was repeatedly caressing the probe.
"We're too far away to scan their DNA with any accuracy," said Charlotte at a briefing the next day. "We have identified a population of several thousand, as well as some other biological forms that are smaller. There are indications that the layer of the atmosphere we are scrutinizing may also contain the equivalent of plankton."
"There are many close parallels to an oceanic biosphere," added Moira, "supported by the various density layers and sustained winds." "Many of the life forms appear to generate their own buoyancy through internal gas reservoirs," added Charlotte. "Ma'am," began Samantha. "A key question seems to be their level of intelligence." "Obviously," nodded Charlotte, "and it is too early to tell. We see purposeful behavior and indications of social organization, but…a day isn't much time for observation." "Have you tried feeding the radio signals into the Universal Translator?" I asked. "If there is intelligence present, the UT might eventually be able to build up enough of a database to translate." "It's worth a try," said Charlotte, making a note on her PADD. "In the meantime, it appears to be even more important for us to get that probe out of there," I said. "The probe, itself, is resting on some sort of buoyant structure, possibly vegetable matter or a colony of plankton," said Charlotte. "Either way, it has bladders with some lighter than air gas we haven't identified. We are calling the structure 'the raft.'" “There is some slight contamination leaking out of the probe,” added Moira. “Not much yet, but high resolution sensors are picking up a very faint plume of heavy metal atoms and complex molecules downwind of the raft. It’s good that we’re here, because it will only get worse.” "The position of the raft changes continually," said Samantha. "But we can predict it accurately with standard xenometerology algorithms. I've plotted a course that approaches from downwind. When we get close enough, we should have enough signal-to-noise to beam the probe and all surrounding contaminants into the runabout. We've set up a containment chamber in the back of the ship that we'll beam it right into so that we don't have problems with residual methane, or anything like that." "So, who goes on the away team," I asked. As first officer, Moira made away team assignments. "It is a Runabout sortie," observed Moira, "so Sam, as commander of the Gunnison will also command the away team. I'll assign Williams from Engineering to deal with the probe. I believe the science officer may like to go herself..." "You're darn right," threw in my wife. "...and of course one of my selves will be running the ship's computer," Moira concluded. "That would appear to leave one seat on the runabout that could be used by an…unofficial observer," I said speculatively. "None that I would mention in a log," Moira replied rolling her eyes. It was the compromise worked out between the Captain and the First Officer almost five years earlier. Captains don't go on away team sorties, as a matter of course. I sometimes did anyway, in an unofficial capacity. I had gotten fairly good at letting the formal team leader run the show, only stepping in when the team would have checked back to the Crazy Horse anyway.
We timed our departure so that we would arrive in the temperate layers of the Sigma Bellenté VII atmosphere just as the star was peaking above the local horizon, as seen from where the probe lay. Our fiery plunge into the atmosphere, safe, of course, inside our shields, took almost 20 minutes from start until we could navigate the layers of atmosphere.
As our scans had shown, the surface cloud layer was only about 50 kilometers deep, with a thin hazy layer on top and a thick, turbulent deck below that, largely icy. Sam was harried, guiding the Gunnison as it traversed the hurricane-force storms. We skirted one storm that was about the diameter of the Earth, a swirling red maelstrom that had probably sustained itself for decades, but we eventually broke out of the ice clouds down into a warmer layer filled with what, for all the world, looked like cumulous clouds. They were, more or less, comprised of water vapor, stirred by heat rising from the planet's core. We kept descending, closer and closer to the thermocline below which was frigid liquid hydrogen. "We're about 300 klicks from the probe," reported Sam presently, "approaching from downwind." "The life form frequencies at 4-47 hertz are active," reported the Moira in the Gunnison computer. “They’ve noticed us.” “Let’s hear it,” I suggested, and the speakers soon filled with a deep signal that alternately pulsed, rumbled, clicked and crooned. There seemed to be different “voices,” or at least different sources that came in with different patterns and and volumes. They appeared to react to each other. “I wish we had a Betazoid on board,” murmured Sam. “I’d surely like to know what they’re thinking.” “They’re not coming too close,” noted Charlotte. “At least they seem to be cautious.” “I see no reason to believe that the Prime Directive does not apply in this case,” said Sam, making a command decision. “Minimum contact possible. We get the probe and get out of here with minimum disruption.” Nobody objected, so Sam nosed the runabout forward, toward the probe, and added, “Proceeding as planned.” “The jellyfish seem to fuel their bodies by combining hydrogen and tiny traces of carbon dioxide into methane and water vapor,” reported Charlotte from the science console. “Hydrogen bubbles up from the liquid hydrogen below, but CO2’s rare down there, so they probably have to keep swimming, like a shark, to keep finding what they need. The first bacteria on Earth did the same thing, which was why there was so much methane until plants invented photosynthesis.” “Signal-to-noise is getting better,” reported Williams at the engineering station, “but we’ll still have to be right on top of the probe to ensure perfect transport with no residual contaminant atoms left behind.” “Understood,” nodded Sam. “We should have it in sight shortly.” Sam slowed the runabout as we approached the raft, hardly more than drifting for the last few kilometers. The radio chatter from the life forms grew as we approached, and we discovered that there was a swarm (herd, flock, pod?) of them surrounding the probe, in a sphere about a hundred meters in diameter, with the probe at the center. Sam paused the approach at two kilometers while we pondered our next move.
“Suggestions?” she asked.
“Ma’am,” offered Wilson, “I think that we’ll be able to beam the probe from 300 meters, based on how the signal to noise is improving as we approach.” “But with that many of the jellyfish as close as they are, beaming the contamination surrounding the probe could be risky,” added Charlotte. “If they are really intelligent, there could be a cultural impact, too, from seeing the probe disappear. They appear…attached to it.” Sam glanced at me and I was preparing to add my thoughts when Moira cleared her throat. “Um,” she injected. “The Universal Translator is starting to produce translations. Sort of. There’s not much syntax yet, but concepts have begun translating. Here it comes on audio, picking just the strongest signals.” The first voice from the UT was female, maybe mid-30s. “[Bemusement] [Concern] [Danger?] [Bemusement],” it said. “[Correlation] [Similarities] [Origin locus co-terminus, likely]”, said a second voice, male. “[Concern] [Danger?],” replied the first. “[This one, danger unchanged] [That one, danger obscure].” “Moira,” I said. “Send: We mean you no harm.” “[No danger],” I heard my voice say, as the UT translated it. The jelly fish flexed their bowls at that, possible an indication of surprise. “[Strange signal] [Yes danger!],” the female voice replied, emphatically. I was beginning to suspect that she was a leader, of sorts. “[Befoulment] [Taint] [Defilement] [That one, yes] [Your one, unknown, distance] [Becoming worse, and worse, and more worse] [We effort stop, unable to stop].” “They’re detecting the contaminants,” Charlotte said, “and they don’t like them.” “I am detecting biological material on the probe where the organism was touching it before,” said Moira. “It may have been trying to seal some of the cracks where the contamination is coming out, maybe secreting something.” “Send,” I said. “The Befoulment is unintentional. We are here to take it away.” “[Befoulment unintentional],” my voice said. “[We and this one, now both away.” “[Befoul another place?],” said the male voice, suggesting skepticism. “[This one from beyond world],” I replied via Moira. “[Made to come see you, go back away from world] [Broken] [Did not go away] [We take away from world].” “[From space?]” asked the female. [You come from beyond, where is no environment?]” “[Yes],” I answered, raising my eyebrows at Charlotte. I had not expected the jellyfish to comprehend space. “[From another environment far, far away].” “[We contemplate such places, mystery],” the female said. “[Some try to visit] [Some return, big learning] [Never before such evidence from other environment.] [This one is surprise, evidence, threat together].” “Notice that the Translator is starting to pick up verbs of being,” commented Charlotte. “We are slowly communicating better.” “[You take this one away, out of environment],” said the female. “[But signal again] [Now, near signal voice] [Future far signal voice].” “She just demonstrated the 27 Megahertz frequency,” said Moira. “We have been using the UHF channel.” “[Yes, future use near signal and far signal] [Signal bigger, longer ideas],” I promised.
So the jellyfish moved away and the Gunnison carefully beamed the probe into the containment unit we had prepared, capturing as many of the contaminant atoms as we could, both there and, as we departed, for several thousand kilometers downwind.
After returning to Crazy Horse, we stayed in communication for several days, building vocabulary and a cultural database about the Bellenteens. They were philosophers, we discovered, and had a sophisticated sense of science for a non-technological species. Observations of meteorology had led them into physics, and observations of their companion species had led to an understanding of biology and evolution. They had even developed an experimental approach to science, exhibited most obviously in biology. Eventually we bade our new friends farewell, but promised them (after authorization from Starfleet) that others of our kind would soon return to resume the dialog.
“Nobody in the Federation ever imagined that a non-technical species could have a space program,” commented Charlotte over breakfast, as Crazy Horse left the Bellenteen system, enroute to Deep Space 6. “Their biological science allowed them to develop the ability to secrete a shell that could protect them in near vacuum, at least for a certain period of time, and during reentry. They made the equivalent of ballistic suborbital flights that took their astronauts up out of the atmosphere without needing a spacecraft. Several survived and they have been trying to figure out how to compress enough gas to place one of their kind in orbit and decelerate back to landing.”
“Amazing,” I nodded. “It is no wonder that the Federation waived the contact prohibitions of the Prime Directive.” “There have been ecospheres found on gas giants before,” observed Charlotte. “Jupiter being the most obvious. But never sentience.” “Starfleet is already organizing science vessels to resurvey the gas giants with the most complex ecosystems,” I observed. “I know and I’m writing like crazy,” she said, giving me an exasperated look. “I definitely want to publish first on THIS discovery.” ### |