The Voyage of the Joyous Venture

Part 7

Take the Long Way Home; Derelictus in Caelum 
 
The very, very private diary of Dr Robert Mbutu: November 22nd
 
We had a very pleasant trip back from the Holy City. I think Ms Jones is quite happy with how things have gone so far. The paintings were stunning although it's a shame that they are copies and we can't get a date. Still they certainly support theories that suggest the Ancients exist.
 
Everyone else seems more interested in souvenir hunting than everything else. It's quite infectious. We only have a certain amount of spare mass available so there has had to be some negotiation. They've let me have a 3-string Hand Twanger. Wait till they hear one of these babies really rip! It's probably a good job our cabins are fairly soundproof. We also copied out a lot of religious texts as a gift for my Aunt - I think she'll be quite surprised. I'm sure she'd rather have something hi-tech from Earth but we don't have anything suitable.
 
The trip up to the OTC was pretty uneventful. It's strange to be leaving Bheekhu again after all these years. Oddly, Maria Telstar was there to meet us and handed me a letter. It must be a trick since it says that they have evidence that Auntie killed my parents. Why would they say such a thing? At least they haven't tried to stop us jumping out of system. I imagine they'll try and nab us when we are out of sight of the Bheekhu. DM+19 here we come.
 
November 23rd
I like space travel. It's always very relaxing when I'm in hyperspace. Dr Takamura has stopped throwing up and has set me to translating all the various books she downloaded. It's interesting stuff but I'm itching to have a look at some of the tissue sample we took off planet. I've got several Bheekhu and one or two samples of native wildlife. I think I'll start with the blood sample we got off Antonio's opponent. I'd better make sure I've got a copy of Antonio's genome too so I can spot any contamination.
 
Ms Moran is up and about again. The lower gravity suits her much better anyway and the AutoDoc has been working on her leg. Violence always leads to this sort of unpleasantness.
 
November 24th
It's all getting quite tense though. We've just arrived at DM+19 and are waiting around on passive sensors but so far there doesn't seem to be anyone here. I bet there won't be anyone until we reach Haifeng. Then the Gantz slurry aerosol will really get pumped into the vac suits. Nothing to do but hang around till we can jump off to DM+6.
 
November 26th
There's definitely something odd about these Bheekhu sequences. Unless I have a major contamination problem there are similarities that just cannot be down to chance. They turn up in odd places but I've found several now including that link between Clarence and Canis familiaris. I need to see where else these turn up among Earth species. And of course it would be nice to find out what they do. I really need access to a bigger data set and some serious computer power but that will need to wait until we get back to friendly space.
 
November 28th
Another empty system. At least there's a really good planet for dumping gravitons. Wait, Ms Jones says she's found something. 
 
About 8 hours later: now that was interesting. We've just been onboard - well Ms Moran and I have - a derelict spaceship. It's the Cortez owned by Astra-Rivera, and it's obviously been here a good while. The power is almost gone and that doesn't happen very quickly. In fact it's odd because I wouldn't expect all the power to have gone like that whatever. Still one of the life support pods seems to be OK although it's very nearly out of energy. Otherwise the ship has no sign of external damage although it was obviously set to head out of system before they all got inside the life-pods... Maybe there was a fault with the hyperdrive and they thought they could get somewhere under impulse. If so they obviously didn't choose their direction very well and anyway I'd have thought they would be much better off staying in system if they had any sort of choice. People don't come here often but it would be quicker than trying to get anywhere under impulse. I suspect something went wrong. Maybe they got the jump wrong and ended up miles away from the system on the other side and set up the ship to head towards DM+6. They could easily have travelled through the system without anyone noticing and they were pretty lucky that we spotted them at all. Anyway getting synced was quite tricky but Ms Moran managed it using some external thrusters and Antonio lined us up for the umbilical.
 

There's some fascinating stuff on the ship. Before we were ordered back there were signs that something had actually been eating the ceramic just like the biorobots that Felix Holsten described. I've got a sample that I can look at to see whether there are any tooth marks or if there is some other mechanism behind the erosion. Everyone else seems to be getting very jumpy about it so I'll check out the sample before I let them know that I have it. It's sealed up so there shouldn't be any quarantine issues. If there are biorobotic organisms on board we have to get a sample. They would provide much better evidence than anything we've encountered so far.