The Longest Detour

No Space for Family [Chapter 10]

“It’s going to be a long detour for us,” Mom admitted.

“But necessary,” Dad added. “We can’t risk it again with the Greenmire systems and its pair of stars awaiting us. And we’ll need to make a stop in a decently civilized place. The systems purge put us low on refrigerant. And we can’t risk running out if we want to keep Grandma’s body on ice.”

“If all that cold makes my hair brittle and fall out, I’ll never be able to go out in public again,” Grandma complained.

“One worry at a time, Mom.”

I glanced over the star charts. The systems in the direction of our heading were kind of sparse compared to the systems we had been in before. “You don’t think there are any really good doctors out this way?”

Terren nodded pensively. “If there were, who knows if they’d be able to understand our physiology.”

“Indeed. Unfortunately, this area is on the border of our incorporated star systems,” Dad said, leaning over at my controls. “We’ll be lucky if folks accept any of our credits. We may have to get creative and see what we have available for trade.”

---

We gave the Greenmire system a wide berth. Out the way my dad had chosen, there wasn’t a whole lot. Well, actually, there was a big asteroid field. That’s where we met the Froungles, but you already know that story.

Grandma got her first taste of interacting with the translation matrix to understand their language. A good deal of people we had come across in our travels spoke Alpha Galactic standard, or at least fragments of it. In addition, some commonly spoken languages in our galactic vicinity could be translated through the ship’s built-in dictionaries, no artificial intelligence needed. However, Getting through unknown ones took some processing power, which we definitely had, albeit at Grandma’s whims. I’m beginning to understand why she settled on a mostly human-inhabited planet.

Well, while we were able to help the Froungles fix their engine and get them on their way, all they had to offer in trade were some unrefined minerals from their mining expedition, slightly radioactive ones at that. We gracefully turned those down. At the very least, they pointed us in the direction of an inhabited planet as thanks for our deed.

It was another two days before the light of Anuar glowed in our windshield. Its fourth planet shone with a little collection of artificial lights in a few meager groupings. In our approach, we came across a few other ships departing and arriving from its atmosphere.

“Good thing we put off painting the hull,” my dad teased. “Nobody will look twice at an old rust-bucket-looking freighter like ours.”

“And what about when we land?” Grandma asked.

“What about it, mom?” Asked my mom.

“Well, what if those nasty people from that space prison have put out an APB for our capture? A warrant, a bounty? And we’ll be the only human folk among these other freaks on this edge of the galaxy.”

“We’re actually closer to the galactic core than Chandra is, Grandma,” I mentioned. “The edge is the opposite direction.”

“You know what I mean, dear.”

“Don’t worry yourself Aida,” Dad responded. “I won’t be going to any town square and trying to loudly haggle. Anyone who spends their time traveling knows to stay off the main streets and get in with the locals.”

“Off in the alleys, then, where the miscreants hide away.”

“What if…” I suggested. “Grandma hacks the city’s communication network and sees if there are any people talking about us or the Ora or the AI.”

Terren scoffed playfully. “Little sis got through one single locked door and now she thinks she can take down a whole city.”

“It’s just an idea, you jerk!” I hissed back at him across the cockpit.

Dad chuckled. “Okay, you two. Sola, thank you for the idea, and the laugh, but I don’t think that will be necessary. I mean, we haven’t even gotten an approaching hale, not even an automated one. I think this is one of those places where you set down wherever you can. I doubt they have any sort of high-tech network. But I’d appreciate it if you joined me down there.”

“Jeff?” Mom asked loudly. “Bring Sola?”

My dad nodded across the cockpit at her. “Hear me out. We still need an adult responsible for the ship. And having two big gents wandering about in a shady manner would draw too much attention.”

“Granted,” Terren interjected.

“Sola would be by my side the entire time. And only using the communicator to connect back here and have Aida interpret for us using the translator. We’ll be all incognito and covered up anyways, it’s -40° on the surface down there.”

Terren jerked up and craned his neck over the back of the pilot’s seat. “Are you kidding me? Is that in Celsius or Fahrenheit?”

“Actually -40° is where both of them line up,” I informed him. “It could be either.”

Mom pursed her lips. “Fine. But I need to hear back every ten minutes.”

My dad piloted us down to a free spot about a half kilometer away from any buildings behind a rocky mound. The Ora sat down its landing gear with a crunch. Frost immediately began to form on the windshield, creating intricate designs. I could have looked at them all day if my dad didn’t immediately call for me.

“Be ready in five,” he said, pushing himself out of the pilot’s seat. “Get a snack and a bathroom break in. We’ll have to get dressed up nice and tight before heading outside.”

I did as my dad asked. Before joining him, I pulled out a communicator from the cockpit, fiddling with it the whole way back to the cargo bay where I had heard my dad working.

He was pulling on a thick, heavy jumpsuit beside the AI core. The synthesizer on the wall was busy extruding a nicely folded one for me as well. He nodded at me. “Almost ready.”

“Same here,” I said, holding the puck-shaped device in my hand. I stared at the lens of the micro holo-projector until it flashed the right glyphs. “Grandma, I’m sending out a synchronization code. It has eight digits.”

“I already see it, hun,” she said. Halfway through, her voice began coming through the communicator’s speaker.

“Do you hear me?” I said, speaking back into it.

“Of course,” She said, voice echoing. “Twice, even! How strange. 3 milliseconds apart, specifically.”

“It’ll be less annoying once we’re no longer here in the ship,” I said.

“How could my little granddaughter ever be annoying?”

Dad snuck up behind me and placed his hands on my shoulders. “You’d be surprised, Aida.”

“Dad!”

“Hah, joking. It’s my duty as a dad to make bad jokes like that. Also, I want you to encrypt the signal for us. A little bit the opposite of your desire to hack everything, but necessary nonetheless. By then your suit should be ready.”

The thermal outerwear was so stiff and thick that I could barely put my foot down from the cargo hatch on the back of the ship. The rocky ground crunched beneath my feet. Dad held at my free hand to get us free. With his other hand, he waved back to my mom, standing in the doorway with arms crossed over her chest. I couldn’t tell if she was cold or angry, but it was probably both. She closed the hatch behind us.

“Your mom wants me to test if the communicator is working,” Grandma announced.

“It’s working,” Dad said, leaning down to the device attached to my collar. “Tell her to keep a hug ready and warm for us.”

“…She says to focus on what you need to do first. You dork.”

“Wait, is it you calling us dorks, or my lovely wife calling us dorks?”

“Don’t bring little Sola into this name-calling,” Grandma replied. “And if it were me doing the name-calling, yours would be much worse.”

“Understood. Over and out.”

I managed to gain my footing and march fairly easily beside my dad. “No snow,” I said wistfully.

Dad glanced up at the dreary sky, allowing puffs of frost to exit his mouth. “It may be too cold here for it to snow properly. Which I know sounds ridiculous.”

“Cause the water never has a chance to evaporate or transpire?”

I think Dad shrugged, but it was hard to see under all our layers. “I guess nothing sounds ridiculous once you apply proper science to it. I promise once we get Grandma back, we can go some place that will actually be fun.”

“I’m having plenty of fun,” I said, wanting to jump, but knowing the heavy outfit would probably make me fall over.

“Well I’m glad that’s one of us… joking!”

All the buildings within the town were made of thick blocks of stone and concrete. The number of proper windows was sparse, most being small slits with meager lights casting lows glows through their frosty panes. Deeper in towards the center of town were a few taller buildings, but not many were higher than two stories.

We ran across a few inhabitants of the town, peacefully waddling on by under their heavy layers, barely giving us a second look. My dad still held onto my hand tighter than usual.

“Let’s avoid the center of town.” He said down to me, guiding us away. “Any place stocking ship supplies would need more space, probably on the outskirts.”

“Yes, captain.”

Through my cold, runny nose, I could smell the constant sharp odor of thruster fuel and burning oil. We soon found ourselves in a busier area down an alley on the north edge of the town. Between their different shapes and sizes, not to mention the variety of outerwear, it was impossible to tell who was a local and who had come from elsewhere. It made me feel like we weren’t going to stand out as much as I thought. My dad and I still didn’t let go of each other’s hands.

My dad approached the first shop we came about. At least I think it was a shop. Under the frosty, stiff canopy was a collection of barrels, oily ship parts on tall, unorganized shelves and head-sized buckets of nuts and bolts, none of which seemed to go with each other. My dad caught the attention of the shop owner, a wrinkly little guy with one hand.

I held to the back of his outerwear, glancing about for any other things of interests. People were pulling sleds of parts across the mucky ground that had probably gathered a thousand footprints in that past hour. A huge fur-covered biped marched about shirtless, seemingly untouched by the cold. A restaurant or something like it hummed with conversations and the clatter of dishes.

My dad took my hand up again and we wandered off, his head shaking. I couldn’t help but want to listen to all the different languages and try to pick out any that sounded familiar. The next shop further down the alley had a female-sounding shopkeeper draped in dingy robes, her shape nearly completely hidden. She seemed to speak less Standard than the first.

“Refrigerant. Do you have any?” Asked my dad plainly.

“Why refrigerant?” The shopkeep hissed back, arms wide. “Cold here already.”

“Yes, here it… cold,” my dad snapped, trying to keep a hold of the conversation. “But there are other places people visit that are warmer. Much warmer. Too warm for our ship.”

“Not here.”

“I see. Well, thank you anyway.”

After a few fruitless stops, we found ourselves on the other side of the alley, making a loop back the way we came. I heard a few familiar words from the restaurant at the end of the way. I could barely hear over the sound of my dad trying to reason with the salesman.

“Refrigerant, yes. I need Difluoroethylene. No, I don’t know what you would call it in your language. Maybe… hey, maybe I can show you the structural formula to see if you recognize it. Hey, Sola, use the communicator, ask Grandma if she can send us an image of Difluoroethylene in its structural formula. What do you mean you don’t know what that is?”

I held one hand on the hem of my Dad’s jacket and one on the communicator still pinned to my front. “Grandma, are you listening?”

“Yes, dear. I think I can get that thing your dad was asking for, but it doesn’t seem like it would help.”

Dad leaned in closer to the salesperson and began describing the refrigerant the best he could. I shook my head and turned my ear to find the source of the conversation I had heard. “That’s fine, Grandma. Can you hear someone speaking Galactic Standard in the crowd nearby? Maybe you can isolate what they’re saying.”

“Ugh, let me guess, I have some extension to do that?”

“Go through and filter out some of the other voices first. I mean, that’s what I’d do.”

“What you’d do, huh?” she seemed to sigh. “I’d say there’s more things you… personally… can do than things you can’t do. Let’s see. Well, luckily it’s some loud oaf. Yeah, I hear it. Cycles Go ‘Round, they’re saying? Around? Where have I heard that before?”