Crystalline Coil: Fatal Flaw
Dropping the 'ball' on first contact
"We'll do some serious negotiation before we sign anything, XO," the captian said. "This looks like a meaty meal if we stalk it right. Did you notice any weaponry? Any defense systems? Anything except ore, cargo and pops for the picking? I think we can chance it."
The XO ground his teeth quietly, but said nothing further; he knew the Captain would do what he wanted regardless.
Lapiz Lazuli had turned away, but her aural openings were aimed in their direction. She appeared to be scanning the interface device. Was she more than a projection, or could the crystal in the helix interpret any kind of energy? Rissan approached the crystal; the projection turned his way and approached.
"What sort of quarters will be appropriate for you?" He addressed the rock.
"A place that allows us to absorb energy across a wide spectrum would be very gracious," the projection said, "or you may place us in your quarters as is your custom, I believe, for diplomacy with prospective allies. We are very interested in the notion of zygotal reproduction."
He saw her flutter her nictating membranes, and her fragrance had deepened with her voice transmission. This would be a unique entry for his personal log.
"Yeoman, escort Chiliarch Lazuli to my quarters, and instruct her in the operation of environmental controls."
"Aye, sir." The yeoman reached for the helix, but it rose to the claws of the projection who then carried it, following the yeoman sedately. Rissan noticed a pattern of markings on the projection's tail, like a quilt pattern of rhomboids. He wondered if they were flaws in the crystal or just done for effect. They were effective.
***
Rissan woke in his quarters sore and depleted although the chronometer showed that the second watch was about to be relieved. He had overslept his usual hours by a third. In an alcove shielded by a screen, the helix stood bathed in brilliant, focused light. It did not give off sparks; rather the sparks spun into the black sapphire.
He hoped she felt, if a rock could be female and could have the feelings of a sauroid, as racked as he did. The Sibling Society could make a fortune in personal entertainment using the crystals, a palpable reality far beyond virtual. Any programming so incredibly detailed would answer for any kind of experience or training, from making omelets from roc's eggs to bringing moonbeams home in a jar.
The ancient laws required not only recreation with aliens, but procreation; however, holography would not substitute. He would wait a day or two to inform her, though, if he survived. He stretched and found the source of the pain in his left hip—a small, grey rock lay in his bedcoverings. It had bruised him where he lay on it in the night. It was as large across as his smallest claw, roughly spherical, with no discernible crystalline structure. Perhaps organics could not, as she said, focus the energy. Or was it an egg?
"Truly, O Captain," came the voice from the helix, "an egg that needs much brooding."
"You are telepathic, too?"
"Among ourselves, always, of course. With water-species, only after intimacy. It is a side effect of the substantiation of the hologram. We must decipher your neural paths to deliver the experience you desire."
"You do this all the time?" He wanted the crystals for himself, but he did not want them used against Thre'threth. He played with the small rock.
"No. It is the first time on foreign territory. Our early experiments with the nonsentient water-species on our world did not fare well, but eventually we learned."
The projection appeared again, quietly taking the rock from his claw. She curled up in the bright light, pushing the rock to the center of the light, much like his ancestors in their nests of rotting swamp vegetation incubated by sunlight. The image touched his heart until the words of the crystal penetrated his forebrain.
"There is no animal life on Sardonyx," he said, focusing his attention on the sapphire. Indeed, no life as he knew it existed on the barren planet below, only sand and rocks with no shielding atmosphere against the radiation of the home star.
“We wish to repair the damage we have done in making our world ideal for ourselves. Hence our proposal of partnership and study of you.”
“Do we have a choice?” The stories he had read of sentient ships and computers loomed as darkly in the future as they had in the bad video he had seen as a child.
“Certainly. We would force no one, as we ourselves were neither forced nor seduced by you. Our weapons, as you have already commented, are no match for yours even if we were to embark on such a foolish course.”
“We could merely say ‘Thanks but no, thanks’?”
“Another race will answer our siren call, just as you did.”
That was what Rissan feared.