TITLE:        The Dig at Site 16-Alpha
AUTHOR:       David Stoddard-Hunt
CATEGORY:     S, A
KEYWORDS:     Post-col
RATING:       PG
SUMMARY:      In the resistance struggle, salvation may come 
              from a great distance.        
SPOILERS:     Mytharc/Colonization         
ARCHIVE:      Fic "take-out." You order; I'll bicycle it over.
DISCLAIMER:   No infringement is intended, even with the 
              slightest of mentions.     
FEEDBACK:     dmstoddardhunt@yahoo.com
NOTE:         A response to IWTB's "Memorial Day" Challenge, with
              inspiration provided by the authors Mimic 117 and 
              the late (later than you think) Fritz Lieber.


In his career, he's never carried out a brief with more riding 
on it. The decision to name him mission commander had been a 
unanimous decision by the Resistance Council, now an 
international, if ex-officio, body.  It's a mission that, even 
now, as it nears its completion, he feels utterly unqualified 
for.

He'd protested, of course. He had none of the appropriate 
background or training for space flight. He'd had no flight 
training. In fact, he didn't even like to fly. He'd likely get 
space-sick. For heavens' sake, before the invasion he'd really 
been nothing more than a cop with a desk job, albeit a 
prestigious, titled one. He was no astronaut, and it had been 
years since he'd been in the field with a military command. His 
main objection, however, stated and restated before the council, 
was that the endeavor was too important to bear the dead-weight 
and waste the space he'd take up. 

But, all of his objections had been summarily brushed aside by 
the council. Others chosen for this extraordinary service, he 
was assured, had the requisite flight skills, scientific or 
crypto-linguistic acumen. The team the council had assembled for 
him was as qualified as any in the world. The fact that no one 
in the world was qualified for this precise duty was something 
best forgotten. The mission had to be undertaken. There was no 
other option.

He'd been part of the team that had assaulted and brought down 
one of the alien ships during the first hours of colonization. 
It had been his decision to remove only the ship's computer core,
over the vocal objections of others who wanted to cannibalize 
weapons or find ways with which to turn the ship itself against 
its builders. His had been the right decision. The ship they'd 
created was proof.

It had taken Resistance scientists days to understand even the 
rudiments of the aliens' fluidic computing process, and a week 
or more in which to surmount the challenges of decrypting data 
files that were part solid state, part biologic memory engrams. 
It was sheer luck that the maintenance files and plans for the 
ship and its hyper-light drive were kept in the least encrypted 
forty percent of the data. They'd been able to construct an 
approximation of the alien propulsion system, what his engineer 
had taken to calling the Lux drive, and fit it within a booster 
rocket bought years before out of the bankruptcy of a commercial 
space venture.

A junior officer enters and salutes. He returns the salute, 
even though his military service was decades past, and though 
the junior officer would have outranked him, back then. The 
officer hands over a report from one of the dig sites, turns 
on heel and leaves, smartly. He scans the report quickly and 
feels the soft flush of satisfaction. Twenty days in, the digs 
are finally producing results.

The initial scans of the planet would have augured otherwise. 
Probe telemetry simply confirmed what they could see from the 
on-board telescopes during final approach. It was an arid world, 
with an atmosphere too methane-rich and oxygen-poor to sustain 
life. There were traces of water, probably in the form of ice, 
at both poles. The present state of this world's affairs was not 
why they'd come, however.

When the first probe data had come back, the crew had very nearly
rioted. It had little to do with the working conditions ahead of 
them, which have proven to be just as unbearable as advertised. 
Nor did it have anything to do with the lack of compensation for 
such hazardous duty. Every single one of the crew members had 
accepted these conditions before signing on. At the same time, 
they'd acknowledged and accepted even harsher realities than 
those more mundane complaints.  

Each moment spent in the wastes of interstellar space kept them 
away from the defense of their homes and families. Each hour 
devoted to this mission was liable to result in the deaths of 
countless numbers of innocent lives, their friends and loved 
ones. Every day spent out here would be one which each member of 
the crew could have spent in the vital, active defense of the 
planet. A living, green planet with blue seas and crystal clear 
air. Not at all like the one in front of them, an ochre yellow 
ball within a sickly white shroud.

There was one condition, however, that was absolutely 
unacceptable. This mission had to succeed. It could not be a 
fool's errand.

It came down to this. The Resistance scientists who had looted 
the alien database had also produced a peculiar star-chart, 
listing every one of the planetary systems invaded and, 
inevitably it seemed, conquered by the alien colonists. And now, 
that juggernaut was headed their way. But, as daunting as the 
roster of fallen worlds might have made it seem, the linguists 
and the astrophysicists persisted in deciphering it all. And 
they were rewarded.

Apart from the legion of the vanquished, there was one world 
which the aliens had designated as forbidden territory. It was 
a world to be avoided, one that had resisted the inexorable 
progress of the colonists and, according to the sketchy records, 
had resisted ferociously. This poor, sickly yellow ball. The 
Resistance Council had wasted no time in marshaling  personnel 
it could hardly spare for the mission, shanghaiing its commander, 
and pushing up the completion of the ship by a matter of months. 
Such was the priority placed on finding the one dot among all 
the stars in the heavens that had repelled the conquerors.

The mutinous sentiments came as no surprise to the mission 
commander. The worst thing for a combat unit and, make no 
mistake, that's what this was, is inaction. The mission 
commander knew this from his days in the jungle, leading a 
special forces squad. While the ship was en route, the crew had 
nothing to occupy them except for uncertain thoughts of what lay 
ahead, and certain knowledge of the struggle they'd left behind. 
Once they'd landed, just as the commander had known, action had 
galvanized the crew and made them resolute in their purpose. 
They dispersed to two dozen different sites spaced across the 
planet, establishing a network of archeological digs and 
beginning their vital exploration.

Still, anxiety lingers on in every member of the crew, across 
the whole wasted expanse. The mission commander himself is no 
exception. But, in front of the crew, he betrays not the 
slightest doubt, nor failure of nerve.  When a subordinate 
mouths off about the dim prospects of discovering anything of 
use here while back home his hands and strong arms would be of 
great help, the commander neither yells, nor rebukes. Only 
points to the ochre sands and says, "This was a world that not 
only fought back; this was a world that resisted them, and won."

"Care to let your hair down, Sir?" It has been a running joke 
between them, almost since the day mission assignments were 
handed down. She is the only person he trusts enough to actually 
do so. 

"Sure, X.O. I might just be tempted to do that. If I had 
any hair," the commander growls. His executive officer never 
fails to smile at the punch line, though she waits dutifully to 
be invited in before crossing through the hatch into his cabin.

"Seen the dailies, Sir?" She has a stack of faxed reports in 
hand.

"Yeah," he replies, putting a kettle of water on an electric 
ring heater. "All but two or three."

"Pretty encouraging stuff." The tone of the X.O.'s voice is 
anything but enthused.

The commander adjusts his glasses atop his nose, and looks 
skeptically at her. 

"But?"

He lifts the steaming kettle off the ring and pours boiling 
water into each of two cups, set out on his desk. He hates the 
freeze dried stuff, and so does she. But fresh food and drink 
require refrigeration and extra storage, unnecessary luxuries on 
a ship as starved for space as a fleet submarine, the infamous 
'steel coffin,' of the last world war.  So, freeze dried it is.

"But," she draws out the word for as long as it takes to accept 
the proffered mug and warm her hands on its surface. "We still 
haven't found the physical remains of any of the beings who 
lived here. We're not even sure whether they called this rock 
home, whether they were just using it to draw the colonists away 
from another world, or whether this is simply the place they 
chose to make their last stand."

"Are these doubts I'm hearing, X.O.?" He gestures for her to 
stand easy, then sit. "Doubts about our mission? Or doubts about 
our current location?"

"Call them," she hesitates a moment, then says, "insecurities 
about our location, Sir. You and I both know that this miraculous
"Lux" drive the Chief is so proud of probably won't have enough 
juice to get us home again, let alone ferry us to another 
planetary system and then home. Even if we did have the time to 
waste. No, it's here or nothing, Sir."

"Then, what is it?" 

He sits casually, propping his feet up on the desk. The exec 
follows suit, but only to a point. She sits on the couch along 
the wall, turned a quarter to face her superior officer, cup 
held primly in her lap. Her posture is ramrod straight even when 
sitting, betraying a family history of military bearing. Legs 
crossed at the ankles are the only clue that she sits easy.

"I'd feel at lot more confident if I had some of idea of what 
we're supposed to be looking for."

"What are you trying to say? You've seen the same laundry list I 
have." His eyes narrow. He knows from experience that she's not 
one to express reservations unless there's actually something to 
them. "The tech geeks back home were pretty specific about what 
our likely search targets should be, and where and how deep we 
should go to look for them."

"Yes, Sir. I know." She stares into the steam rising from her 
cup, then looks up to meet his eyes. "But, that's just it. It's 
a list. I wouldn't call it a laundry list, though. More like a 
shopping list. Look for this but, if you can't find it, look for 
that. If you can't find that..." 

She looks as if she's got something else to say, but isn't sure 
whether she should.  

Obviously, the X.O.'s frustration merely echoes that of the crew. 
He's learned to trust that.

"Go on."

"Sir! We need to cut the list and focus on a single priority." 
She stops, but only to take in breath for the rush to come. "If 
we think it's a weapon we're after, then tell the teams to be on 
the lookout for odd looking gun barrels. If we think it's most 
likely a vaccine, then tell them to look for test tubes and, I 
don't know, microscopes. But, if it turns out that the beings 
who lived here simply had a natural immunity? Well, then we'd 
better start digging up some bones and hair pretty damned quick, 
or else we're fucked. Sir."

He grunts. This is just the type of pessimistic, destructive 
talk he will not abide from the crew. But it's precisely what he 
needs and expects from his second-in-command.

She's uncomfortable with the silence that follows, however. "My 
personal opinion?" 

He nods.

"We should be looking for remains. I think the species 
that lived here must have had a natural immunity. That's the 
only rational explanation. From what we've found so far, it 
doesn't appear as if these beings were advanced enough 
scientifically to have developed a complex vaccine, or 
militarily to field a weapon capable of beating back the colony 
ships. Sir, there isn't even any evidence that these beings had 
reached the point of developing space travel. So, it must have 
been a natural immunity. They were just too primitive a species 
to have escaped colonization any other way. "

The commander's features have tightened, his eyes becoming slits. 
The X.O. recognizes these as warning signs, but she's gone too 
far to stop now. Her conclusion voices the deepest fear of every 
man and woman on this mission.

"Even if we do find remains, and are able to extract enough 
genetic material to find the markers that gave them immunity - 
and that, in itself, is no sure thing - who's to say that we'll 
be able to adopt that immunity to our physiology? And, if we 
can't?"

They're fucked. And so is everyone back home. He knows this. But,
even though the opinion is expressed in the privacy of his 
quarters, by an officer whose discretion is reliable to a fault, 
this is a heresy he doesn't want considered. Not even in the 
depths of their fears.

Even with the X.O., there is a line.

"I get the point, Major."

And addressing her by rank is the clear signal that she's 
crossed over it.

"As for the people who lived on this planet? We don't know how 
primitive they were. Space travel? Until one year ago, when we 
stole alien technology, that monstrosity the chief is so proud 
of, and jury rigged it to fit this ship, we hadn't have gone any 
further out into space than the moon. Does that make us 
primitive?"

He hasn't raised his voice, but she hangs her head as if she'd 
just received the dressing-down of her career. When he continues,
his tone is more subdued, respectful of her anxiety, but 
unwilling to let it guide them.

"Look, we don't know much about these people, true. We don't 
have the luxury of taking our time to find out about them, 
either. But, from what little we've learned, they had an evolved 
society. There's evidence of high culture, technological 
innovation, even means of mass communication. Were they as 
advanced a civilization as we are? We may never know the answer 
to that. But, what we know for sure is that they were successful. 
They beat back a colonization attempt by the Grays. So, however 
primitive these people might seem, X.O.? They're still one up 
on us."

The exec rises, but stands looking at her feet, the starch 
beaten out of her bearing by the undeniable truth of his reproof.

"Sir," she says quietly, "I meant no disrespect. To you, or to 
them."

"Well, on behalf of an entire race, none of whom I ever had the 
pleasure of meeting, X.O.?" He looks up and graces her with a 
rare smile. "No offense taken." He rises then, as well, and 
rounds the desk, hand extended. 

It's a curiously civilian gesture, and she looks at his hand 
curiously for a moment before reaching out and shaking it.

"I don't often get the opportunity to tell you just how much I 
appreciate your candor."

The X.O. is surprised at this very personal admission on the 
commander's behalf, but keeps her embarrassment at bay. Her 
blush will wait until sometime later, when she's in the privacy 
of her own quarters, and her own thoughts.

"There is one more observation I ought to make, Sir. Uh," she 
allows herself the briefest of smiles, "seeing as how you 
appreciate my candor."

He comes to parade rest in front of her, chin held high, 
awaiting stoically whatever else she has to say.

"Right." The exec looks to the very walls of the hull for 
support. "There's one other thing we know for sure about these 
people and their planet. In the end, they were obliterated from 
the universe. Even though these people apparently found some way 
to resist colonization, Sir, look around you. It obviously 
didn't last."

He takes a long breath, making her wait for his response.

"Nothing lasts, Major. Time itself winds down eventually."

"Yes, Sir." It's a whisper, barely audible.

"You'll need to ride herd over the excavation teams, X.O. Chief 
says that, at the rate the Lux drive is being drained, we lift 
off in seventy-two hours or we don't lift off at all. So. I want 
all the digs wrapped up within two solar days, no matter what 
they have or have not found, am I clear?"

The exec snaps to attention and salutes, a confident smile firmly
back in place. "Yes, Sir!"

He returns the salute, with a feeling of great pride in his 
young officer. "Oh, and Major?" 

She sticks her head back through the opening in the bulkhead. 
"Sir?"

"Find those three missing daily site reports and get them to me 
on the double, will you?"

The X.O. nods curtly, and disappears down the corridor. He hears 
her yell the cry familiar to any personnel sharing cramped 
spaces. "Make a hole!" And they do, those crew who remain on 
board, allowing her quick and unimpeded passage aft. 

He stands, staring after her for several minutes, steeping in 
regret. He hasn't been entirely honest with his exec. There is a 
better than even chance that they're going to end up with only 
enough power for one last transmission back home, telling of 
their success or failure. If that's the case, then they won't be 
lifting off in seventy-two hours. They won't be lifting off at 
all.

He pulls up the images of the dailies from the sites that had 
reported in as scheduled. There are hundreds of artifacts that 
have been discovered so far, and they're fascinating. The 
deserts covering this planet hide a rich history, of that he's 
certain. It's too bad that they won't have the time to delve 
deeper and explore it more fully, for it's a rare opportunity.

The aliens' fluidic database catalogues their rampages across 
almost incomprehensibly vast reaches of the cosmos. When they'd 
finally deciphered the last of the database, the astrophysicists 
in the Resistance tech division had been dumbfounded to learn 
just how few worlds in all that vastness held intelligent life. 
Though, to be fair, this assessment was based upon the aliens' 
own characterization of intelligence. 

"If they've been observing our governments back home for as many 
years as we think, then I'm not sure they'd classify us as 
intelligent, either," he says aloud to the empty room.

It's a shame, therefore, that, with so few out there among the 
stars, they won't have the chance to uncover and learn about 
this one, which had flourished once and now lay under the sands 
just beneath their feet.

From behind him, someone clears her throat. He turns, surprised 
to find the exec standing just outside his cabin, bouncing on her
toes with barely contained excitement. He wonders just how long 
she's been standing there and whether she heard him mumbling to 
himself.

"Sir? May I?"

"Yes, yes," he says, waving her in. "What is it, X.O.?" His 
voice holds more irritation than he truly feels.

"The field reports from the last three sites, Sir." She walks 
straight over to the data port, and slips in a disc. Images 
appeared immediately on the liquid crystal display. 

"Our hosts," she says, awe shimmering in her voice.

"Holy shit."

"Yes, Sir." 

Their hosts. The original inhabitants. Holy shit, indeed.

The X.O. stands just behind him so as not to obstruct his view. 
She smiles over his shoulder as he pores through images after 
image from two of the far-flung digs. She'd had precisely the 
same reaction, just minutes before. 

"The team leader from the first site believes they may have 
uncovered a museum or, if the natives here weren't as keen on 
art as we are, then maybe a memorial sculpture garden. Less 
likely, a government site."

"Oh?" The commander breaks the thrall of the pictures of relics 
for just a moment. "Why's that?" 

"Because," the X.O. snickers in spite of herself, "the 
renderings are too realistic. The lieutenant leading the 
recovery team said that, if the statues had been commissioned 
by politicians for the politicians themselves, the renderings 
would have been flawless. I think his exact words were, "They'd 
have made themselves look prettier."

The commander snorts in amusement. "He's got that right." He 
moves to one side and guides the exec toward the display. "Look 
at them, X.O. Amazing, isn't it? I mean, they're odd looking, 
yes. But, on the whole, it's the similarities between us and 
them that I find so striking. Don't you agree?"

"Actually, Sir, what strikes me most prominently is how frail 
this species looks. Their arms and legs look, uh, well, kind of 
spindly, don't they?"

Something in her voice snaps his attention around, and he stares 
at her before replying.

"You're worried that these people were somehow close genetic 
relatives of the Grays, X.O.?" 

Meekly, she shakes her head in assent.

"And, if that's the case, it's that relationship that enabled 
them to avert colonization, leaving us... non-relatives shit 
outta luck?"

She nods again, and he knows that a whole host of follow-on 
objections are about to come pouring out. He holds up a hand, 
forestalling all of her 'what-ifs.'

"I'm no anthropologist, but, not for nothing, I'd point out 
to you that their body proportion is all wrong for that. Just 
look at the heads on those statues. No where near as outsized as 
the balloon-heads on those gray skinned bastards. And look at 
their limbs, X.O.! Those look like arms that do real work, and 
hands that can sculpt these beautiful statues." Instinctively, 
his voice assumes a more fatherly tone with his exec than is 
militarily proper. But, it has the desired effect. "See? They 
were more like us than you think."

The exec stares at the images for a long time, while the 
commander's words transform them before her eyes, from consorts 
of the enemy into distant cousins and allies. She exhales a long 
sigh, and smiles.

"X.O.?"

"Sir?"

"You said you had the reports from all three remaining sites?" 
When the younger officer still looks befuddled, he points to the 
view screen. "These are the results from two of the sites. There 
was also a third."

"Oh!" She nearly jumps as the recollection returns. "Oh, my God! 
Yes, Sir! Right away!"

She retrieves a small cellular set from a pants pocket, and keys 
'talk.' 

"Ensign?"

"Sir!" 

The voice on the other end of the transmission crackles so loudly 
that both officers on this end of it wince. The mission commander 
smiles at the irony of a species, his, harnessing a faster-than-
light drive when it isn't yet able to figure out a way to 
communicate person to person over long distances with reliable 
clarity.

"Bring the package to the mission commander's cabin. On the double, 
ensign!"

The exec clicks off before they are forced to endure the crackling 
affirmative they know is coming anyway.

In short order, a crewman, covered top to bottom in ochre dust, 
appears in the doorway outside the cabin. He raises the goggles 
from his face, the color of the exposed skin and the crewman's 
brown eyes stark against the wan yellow everywhere else on him. 
He deposits a large, peaked specimen container on the floor of 
the corridor and snaps to attention. "Sir!"

The X.O. returns his salute, and waits.

"Well, come on, Ensign. Don't just stand there."

The junior officer surveys the spotless interior of the 
commander's cabin and says, sheepishly, "Uh, Sir? Maybe I ought 
to open the container out here, and let you take the specimen 
box inside? Save the dust from getting everywhere."

At a nod from the X.O., he unlatches and pulls back the sides of 
the peaked lid. Inside, the white plastic is dust free. 

The exec leans through the hatch and lifts a brushed metal 
container gingerly out of the box. It is about the size of a 
shoebox, with various labels pasted about its surface. Whether 
these are identifiers, instructions or warnings isn't immediately 
clear, because they're written in an ancient and alien language.

"Be careful when opening that, Sir," the ensign says quickly. "The 
Geek, sorry, tech officer says that it's a portable refrigeration 
unit and the refrigerant still works!"

"Still works?" The mission commander has come up behind his X.O. 
and is spotted by the ensign for the first time. The ensign snaps 
to attention and silence.

"Yes, Sir," the ensign says stiffly. 

"Apparently," the exec picks up for the cowed junior officer, "it 
was stored in a larger, hermetically sealed container, from which 
the air had been siphoned." 

"This container," he says, touching its metal skin for the first 
time, "was stored in a vacuum?"

"Yes, Sir," the exec replies, then seems to remember that they're 
not alone. "Don't worry, ensign. I've been fully briefed. You're 
dismissed." She closes the hatch behind her and starts to take 
the container from her superior's outstretched hands, but bursts 
into laughter.

"Something strike you as funny? Major?"

She manages to control the giggles, and apologizes. "It's just 
that you were holding that box like I've seen a man hold a 
newborn child. Like he doesn't know quite what it is or what he 
should do with it, but he's stuck with it, all the same."

"Very amusing, X.O." he replies in a voice that seems clear of 
amusement. "Now, can you explain to me what this thing is, and 
what I should do with it?" 

Excitement overcomes her response, and she begins speaking about 
the object in rapid-fire.

"This is from the dig at site 16-Alpha, Sir. They discovered it 
at a geological level just below one showing signs of radioactive 
decay. This indicates that the area where the box was found was,  
at some point in the future - whether a year or one hundred years,
it's difficult to tell - subjected to bombardment with nuclear 
weapons."

"Nukes?" Reflexively, the commander steps away from the metal case.

"Yes, Sir. The facility the dig uncovered was a hardened bunker and, 
apparently, electronically shielded."

"Really? How primitive."

The exec responds to her superior's sarcasm only with a raised 
eyebrow.

"Do you know what's inside?" he asks, fighting off his irrational 
fear and moving in for a closer look. 

She looks up at him, eyes gleaming. "I have some idea, yes." 

Her hands hover above the box, poised to tackle the ancient 
locking mechanisms. As soon as she can gather her nerve.

"What do those labels say?" 

He apologizes profusely when his interruption makes her jump. 
They're both nervous, and with good reason.

She takes a deep breath and holds it, letting it go through puffed 
cheeks and pursed lips. She does this once more, just to make sure
her nerves are as calm as can be.

"They're handling instructions, I've been told. Not even The Geek 
knows what they say, word for word. The linguistic translation 
software had a devil of a time with them." She finds that talking 
about the minutiae of the box and its contents helps to calm her 
down as successfully as deep breathing. As a bonus, talking will 
keep the commander's questions at bay until she's finished.

He grunts. "Carry on, then."

"Okay. The translation of the stuff on the outside isn't as 
important as with what's inside, anyway. That's what delayed this 
shipment, Sir. The Geek, the tech officer, had trouble getting 
the software to make sense of these printed characters. It took 
him awhile to gather a text sample broad enough to establish 
a decent translation matrix."

"But, he did? Find a text sample large enough?"

She stands straight and looks at him fiercely. "You bet your ass 
he did. Um, Sir." 

"You," he points to the glyphs on the box, but intends the 
translation program instead, "you understand all that tech stuff?"

"Not really. The program compares the patterns in text samples of 
an unknown language against all known communication patterns, and 
uses the most similar of those to create an approximate 
translation matrix. The second stage of the program tries to 
smooth out the rough-draft matrix into a comprehensible language. 
If that doesn't work, the program starts over, using the two most 
similar known communication patterns to rough out a matrix, and so 
on, until it finds the right combination to produce a workable 
final matrix."

The commander gives his second-in-command a wry stare. "Not 
really?" he mimics.

The exec laughs, dipping her chin to her chest. "I talk a good 
game, but all I really understand is that you feed gobbledygook 
in one end, and it spits words and phrases out the other."

She turns back to the box, then looks up at him. "Ready?" 

He nods, mutely.

She grasps a latch in each hand and recites The Geek's mantra. 
"Left latch to the left. Right round to the right." She twists 
them until, as one, they click. 

A gas of some sort hisses from the broken seal. They both step 
back, surprised. The gas rises slowly, like the steady exhalation 
of breath on a cold day. 

"Phew. Come to think of it, they told me to expect that," she 
says as matter-of-factly as she's able. "The refrigeration unit 
reinitiates every time the case is opened, and resets every time 
its closed. Rather ingenious, really." Gently, almost reverently, 
she splits the case into halves.

On one side, set into a specially fitted cushion and clamped top 
and bottom by metallic restraining strips, sit a row of clear, 
glass vials. Each contains a fluid of some sort, and they are 
arranged by color gradation, darkest on the left, to nearly clear 
on the right.

In the vial on the far left, the fluid has a globular viscosity 
and a lustrous surface. It is almost perfectly black.

"Is that...?" 

For the first time in their acquaintance, the exec hears alarm 
creeping into the mission commander's voice.

"The Black Oil, yes, Sir. But don't worry. The tech officer at 
16-Alpha assures me it's in some sort of stasis."

"It's dormant? I thought that wasn't possible."

"Apparently not, at least for these, er, primitives, Sir," the 
exec says with a gracious nod. She knows, as does the entire 
ship's complement, that he has witnessed the horrors of this 
black plague first hand. She waits while he faces his nemesis 
head-on.

"And these other vials, what are they?"

"Well, roughly," she says, pointing to small labels underneath 
each of the middle three vials, "this translates into "sample," 
or, maybe, "batch." The program can't really differentiate, and 
the congruence of these two possibilities makes them the most 
likely."

He leans in to stare at the labels. They are inked neatly, but 
there is a handwritten quality to them. "And this single symbol 
on the end of each one?"

"The individual glyphs are, in all likelihood, numbers. We don't 
know which, but that doesn't really matter. Basically, these are 
batches 1, 2 and 3. What's even more remarkable, though, is this 
last one, here." 

He shifts his focus to the vial on the right, the one with the
clear fluid. He stares hard at the row of glyphs beneath it, as
if he could translate them through sheer force of will.

"It translates as "against" and "sickness." Or close enough, 
anyway. She waits for him to process this, but loses patience. 
"It's an antigen."

He looks up sharply. "A vaccine?"

His X.O. nods, tears in her eyes. "And, believe it or not, that 
isn't even the most amazing thing."

"Can they," he begins, his eyes darting madly. "Will the techs 
be able to distil it, figure out its composition? Is there enough 
of it left so that they can do that?"

"Sir. Sir! You're not listening to me. I said, that's not even 
the most amazing part. The techs won't have to figure out the 
chemical composition. It's already been done."

He looks from the X.O. to the vial, and back.

"What?"

"It's already done," she says, withdrawing a thin, silver disc 
from a pocket on the other side of the box. "The primitives. 
They had computers. Silicon based. Just like ours." He's 
searching for his voice when she takes the disc and slides it 
into the data port. "Hey! What the hell are you doing?"

"Getting to the amazing thing," she says, her smile deflecting 
tears off to the sides of her face.

Later, curiosity will catch up with him, and he will find out 
that the techs had used the same conversion process on the 
ancients' disc as they had with their own systems, synching them 
with the alien fluidic system. A marvelous technological 
achievement, by any standard. He will watch, in the weeks to come, 
as the techs retrieve the ancients' data from the fluidic system 
and reload it onto their own silicon based systems. "Effective, 
if circuitous," the tech will say. "In more ways than one," will 
be his sardonic reply.

Now, he merely gapes as data from another age scrolls down his 
display. In the middle of the document, immediately identifiable 
in spite of the fact that it is written in an alien tongue, is 
the chemical formula for the vaccine to the Black Oil. He's sure 
that the surrounding text is scientific in nature and dry as dust, 
in any language.

He turns to the X.O., who is now weeping openly.

"What do they think this is, here, at the top?" 

She leans in to peer through her tears. "Oh, that. Well, they're 
pretty sure that's the name of the native scientist who either 
lead the vaccine development effort, or developed it all on his 
or her own."

She watches as the mask of implacable strength crumbles from 
the commander's features, and a tear rolls down the cheek nearest 
to her.

"Sir?" He turns. "We're two days ahead of schedule now. I guess 
that means we won't have to decide between sending the transmission 
and lifting off for home, huh?" He gapes, wondering how she's found 
him out. Before he can ask, she winks at him. His proper, 
thoroughly by the book second-in-command winks at him. Then, in a 
breach of protocol he will never forget, and always be grateful 
for, she leans over and kisses him on the cheek.

"We're gonna win, Sir! We're going to win."

The realization is just beginning to sink in with him. Finally, 
he smiles broadly and straightens to full height.

"Call the excavation teams, X.O. Tell 'em to pack up everything 
and return to base, a.s.a.p. We're leaving for home in the 
morning."

"Aye, Sir!" She snaps a salute, swings herself through the low 
hanging hatch opening, and runs down the corridor.

"Tell them to pack all the relics they can! Make it a direct 
order," he yells after her retreating figure.

He moves back to the computer screen and just stares at it for 
many minutes. "We owe you a debt," he says to the long dead author 
of the formula in front of him. "We've had top people working on 
a vaccine, too, but with no results. For years! Our best and 
brightest. Many others have given their lives so that the effort 
to develop a vaccine might succeed. Some of my own people, in fact." 
Even though he's not a man of strong faith, he makes an habitual 
religious gesture in memory of one such person lost in the struggle. 
"People. Did you refer to yourselves as people?" he wonders. 
"Without your vaccine, my people would surely have been wiped out.
We owe you a debt we can't repay. But, my people are going to know
who you were."

He stares at his personal computer terminal on his desk, a 
mission report half complete on its screen and awaiting further 
input.

"Look," he says, "I don't know whether this was your custom, or 
whether you'd consider it sheer vanity. But when, in my report 
to the Resistance Council, I tell them about the formula for 
the vaccine, I intend to name it after you. I think it would 
be a fitting memorial."

He sits down at the terminal, scans the extant text, highlights 
and erases it all. He has a simpler, much more direct message in 
mind. He takes a glance at the other display, and begins to type.

        FLASH
        To:   Resistance Council
        From: Archeological Survey Mission, Ereth III

        Report from the dig at Site 16-Alpha, received 19:00 this 
        solar day, confirms existence of a vaccine to the Black 
        Oil, engineered by the ancient inhabitants of this planet. 
        Physical samples of the vaccine have been recovered from 
        the excavation site, and will be brought with us on our 
        return trip home, for examination and possible testing. 
        
        The formula for the vaccine has also been recovered and 
        is being sent ahead by sub-space carrier wave.

He doesn't understand how this is possible, that a radio beam 
will arrive ahead of a ship traveling faster than light. But, 
he's assured by his best people that it is so. And that's good 
enough for him. 

"You probably understood it, didn't you?" he says to the other 
screen, the formula and the name of its author glowing softly. 
He studies a flimsy of one of the statues that had been recovered. 
He feels an absurd fondness for these remarkable creatures and the 
miraculous connection they've established across light years and 
the ages.

"Bi-peds! Amazing. How ever did you balance against the pull of 
gravity, without the stabilizing benefit of a third leg? Aw, what 
do I know? Hell, maybe you were arborial?" 

But he knows this is unlikely, because the statues, at least, show 
no evidence of a prehensile tail on these beings. His own tail 
swishes in empathy for their loss. He refocuses on the screen 
before him.

        As mission commander, I have assumed the privilege of 
        naming the vaccine after the indigenous being we believe 
        to have been its creator. 

He picks up a stylus and tablet interface, and copies the strange 
glyphs by hand, affectionately and with great care.

        "Scully." 

        Formula follows:


-end-