" The Facts Of Ice "
(Previous Post: " Operational Choices ")
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Stardate: 60298.1426
Setting: USS ANUBIS, Bridge
The Shillian woman had been certain that she had not been dreaming when she had seen the large metallic structure appear on her monitor when the scientist had performed a routine scan of the surface of the planet. The Chief Engineering Officer had not shared in the certainty of the Chief Science Officer, which had been why he had decided to have his people do a complete check of anything and everything that had anything to do with the extensive sensor array found on the USS ANUBIS.
While David was preoccupied with his work, the Chief Science Officer had begun to explore a myriad of possibilities that might be used to explain the disappearance of what she had seen and reported to the Captain.
All of the most basic explanations had already been explored and dismissed by the Shillian, leaving the scientist to look into the more extravagant possibilities. The sensors had not reported any natural phenomenon, such as a high intensity solar flare of an ion storm that could have polarized the atmosphere of the planet, or anything that could have been held accountable for the disappearance of the metallic structure from their instruments. To some this lack of findings would have been a source of disappointment or even frustration, but to the Shillian scientist that fact that she had not found anything within the realm of natural phenomenon to explain what had happened had been the sort of scientific mystery that she dreamt of. All that the Chief Science Officer of the USS ANUBIS had left to do was to figure out what had happened, to confirm that this had indeed been what had caused the metallic structure to vanish and report her findings to the Captain in a way that he would not find them to be long-windedly boring or lacking in important details.
“Lieutenant Dawson,” the Shillian scientist said from station to the man who was visibly busy with a large number of tasks that he had given to himself, “can I ask you a ‘mechanical’ question?”
The Chief Engineering Officer paused for an instant, wondering if he had heard the words of the Shillian woman correctly, and when his memory of the recent events confirmed that he had he had not been dreaming, David pivoted his head and turned his gaze onto the Chief Science Officer. A large array of questions seemed to be represented through the knitted brows that the scientist could see on the face of the engineer, but instead of waiting for him to ask any of them, the scientist decided to not waste any time and ask her question. “How would you go about hiding a ship that was approximately the size of a small cargo freighter and that landed on a planet? For the sake of this question, let assume that the ship was landed on purpose and not crashed and that you would have the necessary equipment to perform this little disappearing act. Of course by that I mean that the equipment required would have been onboard the cargo freighter in question and not already in place on the planet surface since if such equipment had already been there we should have detected it at the same time as when that metallic signature appeared on our sensors. Unless of course that equipment had some sort of built-in camouflage system that would make it invisible to our sensors, at which point it would mean that TALOR IV would not be as uninhabited as our Intel has led us to believe so far.”
“Maya!” The massive engineering said, leaning back in his chair and shooting an unkind glare at the woman sharing the back of the bridge with him, “If you want me to answer your question, you need to stop talking.”
The cheeks of the Shillian scientist began to glow of a faint crimson colour, reflecting the embarrassment that she was in the midst of experiencing. “I’m sorry David,” the Chief Science Officer said looking exceptionally remorseful for what she had done, “I just wanted to make sure that your answer would take into consideration all of the variables that I have thus far been considering, well I don’t mean *all* of the variables since some of them wouldn’t apply to this scenario, but I just wanted to be sure that I was not asking you to give me your idea without having the correct parameters to accurately formulate you answer.”
The Shillian felt the gaze of the Chief of Security, Chief of Operations and Commanding Officer fall onto her making the scientist realise that she had continued with her aimless rambling to such an extent that the no one had been able to continued with their work.
“Well Lieutenant?” Captain Simmons asked, intrigued by what the Chief Engineer would offer as a solution to the problem presented by the Shillian woman.
“I would call upon the ancient spirit of the Great Copperfield,” David replied without hesitation and in all seriousness, “and I would ask him to make both the ship and the pain in my ears vanish.”
Not having understood that the fictitious pain in his ears had been a indirect reference to the endless ramblings of the Chief Science Officer, the Shillian woman looked back at the engineer with puzzlement. “Who is this Copperfield and why would you need him to make your earache vanish? I am sure that our Chief Medical Officer would be able to handle that with ease.”
“Copperfield was a magician back on EARTH in the twentieth Century who was said to have made the largest statue of the time vanished in front of millions of spectators,” Rawyvin said, doing his best not to spoil the rest of the punch line as intended by the Chief Engineer.
“How would calling upon a dead man who used to perform visual trickery help to make the ship vanish from our sensors and remove the pain from your ears?” The Chief Science Officer asked, not having the slightest clue as to what David had truly meant by his reply.
“He would be able to make them both *vanish*!” David replied, his patience running low as judged by the snappiness of his words.
“He was just joking, Maya,” the Chief of Operations said, intervening before David said something that she hybrid knew would likely hurt the feelings of the Shillian woman who might not understand the subtleties of what the Chief Engineer had meant.
After having glared at the woman with whom he had gone through the Advanced Command Training program with for a few moments, the Chief Engineer of the USS ANUBIS sighed and rolled his eyes. “The easiest and most efficient way to hide a ship would be to use some sort of cloaking device. Anything else would leave too much distortion or be too unstable to be used while on a planet.”
“But our sensors would have picked up the low level distortions if such a device had been used,” the Captain said, “especially if the ship was on the surface. At least in space those distortions are almost impossible to be visually detected .”
“What if the distortions were being masked by the snow and ice found on TOLAR IV?” The Chief Science Officer innocently asked, making everyone on the bridge reconsider their situation.
“Lieutenant Seth?”
“Already working on it sir,” the Chief of Security replied, working to adapt the sensors to compensate for the dispersion of such distortion by the surrounding ice that was all too common on the planet below.
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Jessica Solarik { maya_992003@yahoo.com }
Lieutenant Maya
Chief Science Officer
USS ANUBIS
"To see the world in a grain of sand,
and a heaven in a wild flower.
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
and eternity in an hour."
- William Blake (British, 1757-1827)
