22/01/2020 - Exploring the Ship (3)

Desperate Measures

Cyrus examines his console and presses the button he pressed that caused the ball to activate. The ball deactivates and begins to descend back towards the floor. However, the ceiling is still open and the atmosphere of the Gas Giant continues to press down towards them.

Grant decides not to touch the controls of his console. Del heads over to the console where Cyrus is, assuming that is the key to solving their problem.

Drent contacts Zen on his comms and Zen begins to report to him, but he tells him to shut up and send a teleport probe to their current position. He then runs over to the doors and they open.

Crushing Atmosphere

The atmosphere of the Gas Giant has now hit their room and it begins pouring in through the ceiling and the door. Cyrus sees that two buttons are still lit on his console, the one he just pressed and another one. He risks pressing the other one and it causes the roof of the room to slowly close.

As the ceiling closes, the atmosphere of the Gas Giant continues to pour in through the door, which does not close when Drent moves away from it. There is a control beside the door and Del begins to walk towards it, fighting the pressure of the Gas Giant that is pushing him away, trying to press it. He gets very close, but the pressure coming in is too strong. However, Orac activates the control and the doors close.

The pressure in the room stabilises and they are sealed in against the crushing atmosphere. They realise they have survived. The auto systems in the room begin to pump out the hydrogen atmosphere.

What is Wrong with this Ship?

Orac tells them he was able to work out how to operate the doors. He also speculates that the automatic self-sustained systems on the ship are working but the central computer system appears to be mostly dormant, although he is now detecting increased activity.

He tells them the force field has not yet re-established itself. It could be that the force field system is damaged and will not restore itself, or fail to complete the task as they witnessed on the lower deck. Alternatively the system could be on automatic and simply running slowly or low on power.

He assures them that the room they are in has strong enough walls to withstand the pressure of the Gas Giant. The molecular density of the walls is significantly higher than they appear to be.

He also suggests that they receive a report from the Zen computer on the Liberator, but no one does so.

Force Field Re-established

Del says that the Map Room must be the main control of the ship, but Orac tells him his analysis of the systems in that room suggests they are purely for display of Star Map information. He suspects that the bridge or control room is on the underdeck of the Ship and that the Ship is modular, with a number of different systems and rooms on the lower section of the Ship. They will need to use the teleport room to reach the rooms on the underside.

They wait and Orac reports that the force field has re-established itself. The atmospheric auto-systems begin to pump out the high-pressure hydrogen and slowly restore the nitrogen / oxygen atmosphere that was there before. This process will take an hour or so, but the pressure will be low enough for their pressure suits to tolerate in only a few minutes.

Return to the Liberator

When the pressure is low enough they open the doors and head back to the Liberator. As they approach, they see something bizarre. The surface of the Ancient Ship has reached up small tentacles up to the hull of the Liberator and appears to be “feeding” on the Liberator’s hull.

Del examines them and determines that with some motion they can be induced to let go.

They use their grav belts to climb up to the Airlock and enter the Liberator. Once on board, they remove their suits and relax.

Breaking Free

Del tries to get Zen to make Liberator vibrate and shift in such a way as to cause the tentacles from the Ancient Ship to dislodge and the Liberator can detach itself from the hull. Zen apologies that such an operation is beyond the capability of the Navigation computers. Manual crew intervention is required.

Drent and Del between them work out how to operate the controls manually and achieve this. They managed to shake Liberator free from the hull of the Ancient Ship and set it hovering a few metres away from the hull of the Ship.

Zen then reports that the previous efforts of the Automatic Repair system were being undermined by external forces in all those places where Liberator was in touch with the hull of the Ancient Ship.

Further damage has been sustained along the exterior of the hull and in Nacelle 2 in those areas where there is no hull integrity, internal damage occurred when the atmosphere of the Gas Giant crushed down for a period. Now Liberator is free of the Ancient Ship auto repair can resume.

Zen also reports that the firing crystals of Neutron Blaster 2 in Nacelle 2 have been destroyed and they cannot be replaced by auto-repair. New crystals will need to be synthesised industrially.

Plans for Safer Exploration

They decide not to worry about that now and focus on how to explore the Ancient Ship. Dirk says he was spooked by how dangerous things were out there and he now wants to remain on the Liberator. He is keen to explore the Ancient Ship, but he really thought he was going to die and would rather not explore any further.

When it is suggested Orac could be carried by a robot, Orac has them instead manufacture a Relay, using the ship’s internal replication system. The Reply can be carried by a robot and will allow him to remain on the Liberator and still communicate and explore the Ancient Ship with them.

Cyrus wonders if they could use the sex robot from Bay’s ship to carry the Reply, but Orac states he will not co-operate with such an arrangement.

They also replicate some more floating probes, so that they can safely explore the settings of the Teleportal room.

Resuming their Investigation

Orac also discusses the behaviour of the Ancient Ship and speculates that trapped in a hydrogen atmosphere, the Ship is unable to obtain the complex elements it needs to repair itself. Liberator must have looked like a great source of new resources. Any complex elements left in contact with the Ship’s hull for too long are likely to be absorbed.

When they are ready, they put back on their protective suits and have Zen move the Liberator to hover over the Teleportal room. Del instructs Zen to have Liberator follow them and stay over them, so long as they stay together and do not move to the lower section of the Ancient Ship.

Grant, Cyrus, Del and Drent move down to the Teleportal room using Grav-belts, taking with them the probes they replicated, a Liberator Teleport Probe on an anti-grav floater and the robot carrying Orac’s Relay. They are now also wearing teleport bracelets. Dirk remains in contact from the ship and follows their camera feed.

Exploring the Teleportal

They decide to methodically go through the settings of the teleport device. They being going through the settings in a binary order. They are able to establish that:

00000 – Displays an error and does not work.

00001 – Probe enters impenetrable darkness and is quickly disabled / destroyed.

00010 – Does nothing / does not seem to work.

00011 – Probe emerges in a damaged spherical room, with a section of the wall missing and a small force field keeping out the atmosphere of the Gas Giant. The room is empty and its atmosphere is mostly hydrogen.

00100 - Probe enters impenetrable darkness and is quickly disabled / destroyed.

00101 – Another damaged spherical room with a force field.

00110 – A large damaged room.

Computer Interference

While the probe is in room 00110, the buttons suddenly change their settings, spinning round until settling on setting 11101. They lose contact with the probe in room 00110 and decide to send another probe through to this new room.

11101 – A complete spherical room, containing a raised dais and machines around the outer wall, including a control console.

While the probe is in room 11101, Orac reports that there is increased activity from the Ships’ central computer, which may have been the cause of the teleport control change. He attempts to communicate further with the Ships’ computer and after initially reporting success, suddenly begins to demand that he is disconnected. He continues to urgently demand this, sending messages to all the possible places the crew can receive them.

Orac then suddenly goes silent and Dirk, who is watching and listening from the Liberator, reports that he has taken out Orac’s key.

The Travellers speculate that room 11101 is possibly a computer centre and the Ancient Ship’s computer is now aware of them and wants to get rid of them.

Experiments with the Controls

They withdraw the probe from room 11101 and close the connection, causing its surface to return to a misty state. With the connection closed, Del tells Dirk to reconnect Orac, but the super computer immediately resumes his urgent demand to be disconnected and Dirk again removes his key.

Instead, Del checks what the three buttons below the main teleportal controls do. He presses button 1 and it changes to orange colour. At the same time the teleport changes from mist to a text based display, but in the undecipherable Ancient language. Pressing button 1 again causes the button to turn black and the teleportal to turn clear. Pressing it again returns it to a yellow colour and the teleportal turns misty.

He cycles through the yellow, orange and black settings of buttons 2 and 3, but they do not appear to do anything. He returns them all to the yellow settings.

Nexus Point

They reset the main buttons to 00110 and connect to that room. The remote connection to the probe in the room is restored and they are able to explore further. The room has a damaged section that is covered by a force field on one side.

The other three sides appear to have irises in them, suggesting they are doorways leading to other locations on the Ship. They use to probe to look through the force field and vague make out another spherical room on the other side of one of the irises. That room has a more distinctive series of symbols above the iris.

Robot Attack!

Suddenly the Teleportal goes misty. Then a few seconds later it turns silver and a small, floating robot carrying some sort of energy pistol emerges. It is not a human shape and appears to have wings. It fires the pistol at Del, who dives out of the way and the beam leaves a large serious scar in the wall of the room. Recalling what Orac said about the strong molecular density of the Ship’s walls, the gun must be very powerful.

A fight then ensues with Drent and Grant shooting at the robot, while Cyrus dials up room 00001 – a deadly destination and then he tries to push the robot through the Teleportal.

Grants gets a lucky shot in the face of the robot and destroys its visual circuits. It begins to shoot wildly for a moment missing everyone, then pauses, as though trying to detect where its enemies are with other senses.

Cyrus and Del, with help from Drent, are together able to push the robot through the Teleportal and then close the connection.

Del then uses Button 1 to make the portal go clear, which looks like the teleportal off switch.

End of Episode Three