“Wait a minute – he said what about how these crab things formed a natural cloaking device?”
It took a little while for the galactic consortium's mainstream news, after reporting on all the salacious details of what it was calling the “Crab Cracker Tragedy” in a particular parsec of space, to catch up with what a particular science officer had said about why no ship had seen those space crustaceans strong enough to crack freighters with their pincers coming until it was too late.
That science officer was first officer to the Amanirenas, Cmdr. Helmut Allemande, and my first officer in my first captaincy. By the time the news media caught up to what he had said upon seeing the tragedy play out in real time, his initial report had gone to me and then up to Adm. Benjamin Banneker, my uncle and chief science officer for the exploratory fleet the Amanirenas was a part of. He in turn had sent that up to Adm. Vlarian Triefield, fleet commander and the only full fleet admiral in the consortium's space fleet that had come up by the science track.
“Wait, what?” Adm. Banneker had said while he was reading the more detailed report from my first officer. “Those things hid in the folds of the curvature of space-time and the resulting gravitational lensing created by the region's largest star which in turn is slipping down a scope with all of the Milky Way because of what?”
My uncle's legs were fully bionic, so if he had to sit down and read a report, it had to be really something.
The picture above is a local rendering in gold and bronze of what Cmdr. Allemande had realized – that is a rendering of the supergalactic structures known as the Lanikea and Vela Superclusters, holding the Milky Way Galaxy and a few hundred thousand others in their thrall, with their common core of gravity being called – fittingly – the Great Attractor.
It just so happened that the parsec's largest star – a blue hypergiant, plenty large enough to bend the curvature of space enough so light in the vicinity would bend enough for a microlensing effect – that said star and portion of the galaxy was in that moment of stellar time in direct alignment with a massive galaxy that was in alignment with a line of other galaxies in turn in line with the Great Attractor.
While we were far too close to see the light effects in space of all this interacting gravity and resulting space-time curvature, we were too close for comfort to all the “cubby holes” in space-time that light was being bent around, cubby holes that creatures like the space crustaceans apparently knew of and were comfortable using.
“Wait, what? Space has gravitational cubby holes? What?” Adm. Triefield said about it as she sat down upon getting my first officer's report.
It turned out that one of the local civilizations to the region we were studying knew that … and that there were beings who lived in those spaces. We had, in their turn of phrase, come at low tide in mating season to one of the shores of the golden galactic gravitational whirlpool, and from the sloping sand, the local crustaceans had come up to defend themselves and their young as the freighter convoy's warp fields plowed the sand. But, ships passing through on impulse power were like mere footsteps, and elicited no such reaction.
Helmut Allemande had this to say about how he discovered all this when asked at Commodore Pelloton's birthday celebration that week.
“I just happened to zoom out to supergalactic scale as the creatures emerged,” he said, “and then I just saw what was there. It was the only logical explanation that fit the facts, since trans-dimensional emergence was not a possibility. A straight line can be drawn connecting that great blue star and the sixteen galaxies behind it to the Great Attractor, so at this moment in stellar time, all their aligned gravities along that radius are directly interacting and creating a mosaic of folds and slopes in space that are invisible because light is bending around them. It is likely that significant portions of this alignment outside the Milky Way may be tidally locked, but further study is necessary.”
“Wait, what?” Commodore Pelloton said. “Remember, Commander; it's my birthday and I have tipped back a little bit. You'll need to explain that to me like I am five years old!”
Cmdr. Allemande, that great and humble man, said, “Sir, I'm not sure I understand it yet well enough to do that, but if you will give me until tomorrow, I will.”
And because he had tipped back quite a bit, the older officer smiled the biggest, sloppiest smile and embraced the younger officer like he was his son. The commodore literally walked off with my first officer and talked with him for an hour, and then walked him right back and said, way too loud for comfort, “Captain Biles-Dixon, I know that there are people in high places mad at this fine young officer for bursting their trans-warp bubble dreams and won't let him be a captain now, but I've got friends too, so, we're going to get him promoted like he deserves, and I'm going to take him from you and put him and his ship in every flotilla I command, because the fleet needs to experience this mind on a higher level!”
Cmdr. Allemande kept on smiling while he turned bright red, and only said, “Sir, in that day, it will be a honor to serve in your flotilla.”
The commodore cracked up laughing.
“He's loyal, Captain Biles-Dixon!” he shouted. “This man knows he would have been a captain today but for the circumstances that have brought us all into this exploratory fleet mission – but I still can't dangle that promotion in front of him and move him, so hang onto him as hard as you can until I come get him, because you will never have another young man like Helmut Allemande under your command! They don't make this model any more, this late in the 23rd century!”
“Thank you, sir,” my first officer said as he reached the color of a deep, flavorful tomato sauce.
I got my first officer out his predicament by ordering him to go get that model of the Great Attractor that we had been sent in gold and bronze to show the commodore, and his back said “Thank you!” to me as he marched off double-time to follow my orders.
“Just another strange yet beautiful moment at low tide on the shores of the golden galactic gravitational whirlpool,” my uncle opined with a smile.