Genma was lucky. While it was true that Pioneer had just engaged her FLT Engines, leaping forwards at several times the speed of light, she was on a shakedown cruise before starting her first ‘proper’ mission. In fact, she was on her first shakedown cruise, and that had been the first time her FTL systems had ever been started. Accordingly, they had only been at a bare fraction of even normal cruise power, and had been shut down as quickly as safely possible.
Her crew spent a day checking over the diagnostic data and conferring with Mission Control before starting the engines again, warping out from the rough vicinity of Saturn in the general direction of Barnard’s Star. Saturn had been chosen because there was already a small scientific station in orbit there in case of emergency, and it was about as close as the design team said Pioneer could safely stop.
The separation of the escape capsule had not gone unnoticed, but since a quick check indicated everyone in the crew was at their assigned station, it was two hours before they got around to physically checking. Even then it was pure chance that led a technician to find the young Japanese boy under a Planetary Rover Vehicle, and Ranma roused from his latest head injury in the sickbay.
Genma would not learn of this for quite some time.
The escape pod was a remarkably sophisticated device, but it did have some limitations. It was intended purely to preserve the life of its occupants: first by protecting them from whatever caused them to leave the main ship, second by transporting them to the nearest planetary body capable of supporting life, and thirdly by announcing it’s presence to a ten-light-year radius in hopes of calling someone else to come and pick them up. It would do these things, as far as possible, automatically, only asking for guidance when it was incapable of making critical decisions from the wide-ranging decision trees its programmers had provided it with.
The first was performed by getting the escape pod as far from the main ship as possible, as quickly as possible. The crew were trained to strap themselves in before hitting the release keys; Genma endured massive bruising across his face, chest, stomach, arms, legs… as befit a master martial artist, which is to say he howled as best he could as they were inflicted, and then thought to check if he was being observed before resuming his whimpering afterwards. It during this check that he noticed that Ranma hadn’t followed him aboard.
The second was performed by scanning for a nearby life-bearing planetary body, conferring with it’s occupants in the event that there either wasn’t such a body in close proximity or there was more than one choice (for instance a close, unpleasant world and a more distant vacation planet), and then employing the small but powerful thrusters to direct it towards that body. Since it was intended for use on an exploratory ship, it had never been considered that it might be employed in an inhabited system, so it wasn’t programmed to seek out evidence of nearby intelligent life. Thus, the little pod spun on its axis (to sweep its sensors across the space around it, incidentally bouncing its sole occupant off two armrests, a water spout and the hatch lock) and considered its choices. Which were, by the standards it had been programmed with, quite fortuitous. Why, that planet over there was all but indistinguishable from Earth – of course any human, or other intelligent lifeform resident on Earth, would have no problem at all heading there, even if it will take an extra three months over the transit time to that reddish planet…
By the time the crew of Pioneer understood that their stowaway had been abandoned aboard by his own father, the escape pod was committed to an efficient (but still fast) orbital transfer from Solar orbit near Saturn to direct re-entry to Earth, to begin with a little bit of aerobraking through the upper atmosphere of the gas giant…
For those who are wondering, Genma is now stuck in a ball about ten feet across for the next six months, with an electronic idiot savant who doesn’t speak Japanese for company. He is going to be very bored. He won’t think much of the emergency rations, either – not only are they made from second-rate cardboard (you do get desperate for food sometimes when you’re being trained by The Master), there’s nowhere near enough of them.
The news that a preteen kid stowed away on the Pioneer with his father, who then abandoned him, was pretty much common knowledge across Earth by the time the ship got back from its shakedown. This had several consequences: other kids insisted that they, too, should be permitted to join scientific exploration missions (a theme strengthened by the crew’s admission that Ranma, despite being a scientific and mechanical ignoramus when discovered, turned into a pretty much indispensable member of the crew), and more personally he received several offers of adoption within hours of returning to communication distance of Earth.
The space community watched intently for the return of the stolen escape capsule. There was even an element of competition among the many nations over whose territory it might arrive in: the major nations who had contributed significantly to the FTL program wanted to ‘speak’ to Mr Saotome; the lesser nations who approved of the program wanted to suck up to the greater nations; the lesser nations who didn’t approve of the program wanted to ‘rescue’ Mr Saotome from the Censored due to extreme propaganda content; and everyone neutral on the subject of the FTL program was less than happy with Ranma’s treatment, especially when it became clear that his fear of cats had been inflicted deliberately. There were places where not liking cats was almost a crime in itself, after all.
And so there came a day when a small object was detected by a powerful radar array, and that detection was verified by other radar arrays, and its trajectory was projected forwards, and many were the growls of frustration when it was announced that Mr Saotome would be presented to the international community without any foreign intervention on Chinese soil, thank you very much. The Japanese Prime Minister made a personal request that he be in a fit state to see trial under Japanese law, and the American Vice President commented (in earshot of a roomful of international reporters – the microphone wasn’t supposed to be turned on, honest) that it might be a good idea to try him under everyone’s laws at the same time, given the length of rap sheets the many nations were generating.
And a few days later, a man who wore the uniform of a Chinese Dangerous Sites Guide and who was nearly as badly informed about international affairs as Ranma looked up into the sky as a massive meteorite burned through the late evening air, and wondered if he should run away; and a man whose only physical and mental exercise for six months had been playing Tetris sagged into the seat and stared at the dull glow streaming past the windows; and the idiot savant driving the escape capsule detected several shallow pools nearly on the flight path, and adjusted course as much as it was able this late in re-entry as that would give a softer landing than the mountains around them.
And a few minutes later, there was a roar, and an almighty bang, and crash, and many other loud noises, and the Guide helped his wife and recently-born daughter from the wreckage of their hut before straightening his uniform and setting off to do his duty and inspect the Pools of Sorrow. When he arrived there, he found an obviously artificial object partially sunken in the soft ground of the valley floor, many of the pools having been amalgamated into a single crater from which wisps of steam arose. The object keeled over as he watched, falling so the sphere mounted at its nose snapped off and rolled erratically across the mud, snapping bamboo poles left and right as it made its way into the Spring of Drowned Panda.
Carefully as always (and more nervously than normal), he made his way around the valley to the nearest safe path to the side of that pool, making it to the bank just in time to see movement through the window set in the side of the craft. He had heard of the coming of the aliens, had even heard of a few visitors to the local tribes who were, supposedly, of otherworldly descent, and was aware that several nations on Earth had built vehicles to fly into space. It wasn’t a complete surprise to see an apparent human being – possibly Japanese – looking back at him.
The figure scrabbled at something inside, and pulled, and the hatch opened. With a gurgle, the waters of the pool flowed over the lip.
“Growf!”
(Posted Tue, 08 May 2007 15:06)
Questions? Problems? Suggestions?
Send a mail to addventure@bast-enterprises.de
or use the contact form.
らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
All other series and their characters are © by their respective creators or owners. No claims of ownership of these characters are implied by the authors of this Addventure, or should be inferred.
The Anime Addventure is a non-profit site.