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Eve’s Ribwas the name of the ship. Eve was such an overused name on Eden, that many of us tended to drop it whenever we could. I usually just called the shipRib, but it felt wrong to just call herRibwhen I was giving Chef such a serious warning.
“Yeah,” she said, “you’re right. I should be more careful. Um, Co-Pilot just told me the aliens are bringing the ship around for docking. We’ll be able to see their ship through the port-side windows. Want to come check it out?”
It went without saying that I wanted to see this thing with my own eyes. I didn’t want to see the Khetar or their alien dingdongs, but I did want to see their ship. Co-Pilot had said that you couldn’t see any visible weapons or thrusters, but I still thought that maybe I’d be able to spot something that others wouldn’t. Maybe getting my eyes on their ship would be the difference that led to us reverse engineering some of their weapons.
Thinking back through history, people had gunpowder hundreds—maybe thousands—of years before they started using cannons. If a general from ancient China had simplyseena cannon, maybe it could have occurred to him to use the same stuff they used in fireworks to make a weapon.
I was hoping there would be something like that on the Khetar ship. Even though I had no idea what I was looking for, I was still hoping I could find it.
Chef Hypatia and I walked into the bridge just as the ship was rotating in for docking maneuvers. Everyone but Co-Pilot, Pilot, and the two women of High Command were crowding around the window. I joined them, trying to get a good spot where no one’s head or ponytail would be in my way.
I didn’t even see the Khetar ship at first. It was almost as black as space, but as we drew closer, I could make out its shape. It was long and cylindrical. The front—or what I assumed to be the front—was tapered, probably to help it be more aerodynamic when traveling at high speeds through the interstellar dust.
It was truly featureless though. I couldn’t see a single window, weapon bay, or the slightest hint of exhaust from any propulsion system.
I felt almost disappointed, at least until we came close enough that the scale of the ship finally hit me.
The most advanced ship Eden couldtheoreticallybuild was a ramscoop. We knew how to do it, but didn’t, because we had no real use for crossing between the stars. The pirates which attacked us every few decades came in ramscoops. It took them a century or two to get here. A fully-crewed ramscoop could hold close to 1,000 crew members, but only a few hundred could comfortably be awake at a time, while the rest were frozen for the long journey.
This Khetar ship, by the sheer size of it, looked like it could holdthousands, maybe tens of thousands, of wome—of Khetar. Assuming that Khetar were roughly the same size as humans.
When we finally got close enough that our floodlights hit the surface of the ship, it was still pitch black. If anything, the light hitting made it even more black, as if its dark hull absorbed every last photon we threw at it. No wonder we hadn’t detected it until it was already in orbit around Eden.
Everyone started gasping, and that’s when I realized something was coming out of the Khetar ship.
I pressed further forward, not caring that I was shoving my crew mates out of the way to selfishly get a better view. I wasn’t the only one shoving either.
The thing coming out of the Khetar ship was a long, black, cylindrical protrusion. It grew and grew, but it moved like a kind of goo, like a column of thick liquid. This is what I had wanted to see. Their ship was hard, but it could become soft. Could it reshape itself entirely? When it needed weapons, would it simply form whatever weapon it needed out of this black goop?
The goop got harder though, I could tell because the illumination from our flood lights stopped shimmering on it. The protrusion became a rock-hard column sticking out of their ship, pointed directly toward where I knew our airlock was.
“It keeps getting longer,” someone said.
“It’s just thick enough for our airlock. It’s going to make an airtight plug.” Airlock Eve said. “Their ship looks like solid metal, but it can reform itself as if it were liquid.”
Airlock was an engineer, and I was glad to hear that she’d interpreted the Khetar ship’s capabilities the same way I had.
“It’s still hard though,” Life Support Athena said.
I leaned in so close to the window that my breath condensed on it. “It has to be hard. To penetrate the airlock.”
Everyone got quiet. I doubted it was lost on any of us that the airlock was like a kitty, and the thing coming out of the Khetar ship was like a dingdong. Now the thing that looked like a dingdong was going to stick itself into the hole of our ship, which was like a kitty.
I glanced over at Chef Hypatia, who was smiling. Goddess, that woman probably thought she was right still. Did shewantto get tainted?
The protrusion got even harder, I could tell by how our floodlights got more and more absorbed by it. The shimmering was gone now, and the big dingdong poking our airlock was again just as pitch-black as the rest of the ship.
I put a hand on Airlock Eve’s shoulder. She was already fully suited up in a vacuum suit, only her helmet was open. She was staring out transfixed in the same way we all were, but she needed to snap out of it and open the airlock.
“You should go,” I said to her.
When she left, the gossip started in full force again.
I’d have walked away to avoid it, but no force in the galaxy was strong enough to peel me off that window.
“Do you think that’s what a dick looks like?” someone asked.
“Do you think they’re black like their ship?”
