“I did and I’m sure he’s their spokesman for those reasons. However, the threats were just that—threats. They didn’t say something like ‘we’ll shoot your spaceship down with our impressive missiles’ or ‘we have superior firepower’ or anything along those lines. They went for the boogeyman approach, and that’s done when you don’t actually have a real form of offense and probably not a lot of defense, either.”
“Chuck’s right,” Jeff said, as he returned. “I wasn’t worried about what the kids were seeing. I was worried about what they might be feeling. Because I felt something, when that message came through.”
My throat tightened. What if Jamie had felt the Insane Joker’s emotions? I was a terrible mother, because this hadn’t occurred to me until now.
Jeff came over and kissed my cheek, hard to do with me in the helmet but he managed. “Baby, it’s fine. The kids did pick something up, and it was the same thing I did—fear. The people on the one planet where they saw us were terrified of us. So, Chuck’s right—that display was to scare us away. It’s just like what the Cradi have set up around their system. Not really effective, but the best they can do.”
“Well, it was effective for me. That system can dust as far as I’m concerned.”
“No,” Drax said slowly. “They are frightening because they are similar enough to humans that they’re familiar, but different enough to be off-putting. That doesn’t make them evil.”
“That’s pretty much the reasoning for why coulrophobia exists,” Chuckie said. “And Drax is right. We have this system marked now. We can send in a team who have no coulrophobia to make first contact—it doesn’t have to be us.”
“The Vrierst are extremely accepting,” Mossy said. “Ensure some are on that mission, along with some Turleens, and we should be fine. I could go down there right now, if needed. I don’t find them any odder than any other race I’ve encountered.”
“Maybe send some Juggalos. They might love this system.” Someone should. Wasn’t me.
While no one supported my Juggalos idea, the others started making noises about doing meet and greets. Steeled myself.
“No,” Tim said, before I could freak out. “I’m the Commander and that system isn’t in danger. They’ve threatened us, and while Chuck is probably right, there’s always a chance that this is a rare time when he isn’t. We have a mission, and it doesn’t involve getting to know the Clown Consortium.”
“Love that name.”
Tim grinned. “Good to know, Shealla. Mother, let’s get to the next system and check it out, sooner as opposed to later.”
“We will arrive in fifteen of our minutes.”
While we waited, I opened our hailing channel again and Mother insisted that Jeff take his position again. Joe grumbled but gave it up. While this was going on, wondered again why Mother was insisting on us keeping our initial assignments. Then again, if I’d been on Weapons, I’d have probably sent nukes into the Clown Consortium solar system, and Jeff wasn’t thrown until the last planet and, even then, wasn’t ready to push any buttons down. And he wouldn’t have even if Tim or I had ordered it, unless he’d felt that the threat was real and one we couldn’t escape from. So maybe that was why.
Was hella relieved that Tim had voted for focusing on the mission, versus facing our fears. I’d faced the giant sea serpents and that was, for the moment, more than enough for me to get my Bravery Badge. If the Clown Consortium joined the Galactic Council, they’d have a representative. I’d focus on getting to know and like him or her, or it, in case they were more like the Cradi, then branch out. Possibly I wouldn’t be afraid of these people then. Possibly.
But right now, any vacation glow I’d had was fully gone, so I was willing to call it a day in terms of my singing “Kumbaya” with scary aliens. At least until we reached the next system.
Which we did soon enough. And which was, all things considered, very interesting.
The system had eleven planets, most of them within the Goldilocks range of being close enough to their sun to be habitable, and habitable for humans. But there was no life in this system. At all.
We zoomed around each of the planets, but there was nothing and no one. Just a pretty set of beautiful worlds, hanging out with no one on them.
“I can’t even identify insects,” Walker said as we finished the fastest recon ever. “There’s plant life, somehow, and plant life without insects seems impossible, but these planets have everything other than life as we’d know it.”
“Could the plants be the higher life-forms?” Hey, we’d met two different kinds of tree people. Maybe there were rhododendron people and fern people. If we could have naturally born harlequins, why not sentient rosebushes?
“I’m not feeling anything,” Jeff said. “I’m focused and concentrating, and there’s nothing I’m getting.”
“Kitty,” Tito said, “see if you can feel any animal life.”
Did my best. “Nada. I mean, I haven’t really tried with insects other than those on Beta Eight, so maybe there are earthworms I’m not connecting with or something, but otherwise, I get nothing.”
“I find nothing in their sun to be different from the sun in the Clown Consortium system,” Mother said. “I am concerned, however, that I will not be able to determine what is or is not wrong with the sun where the Eknara is.”
“We’ll worry about that when we get there, Mother,” Jeff said reassuringly.
“Then we mark this system and move on,” Tim said. “This means that the third one is where Kreaving is. And if he isn’t there, then we’re going to have to expand our search.”
“Twenty minutes to the next system,” Mother said, as we headed off into the black.
“You know, I have a question. Why aren’t we picking anything up on our hailing channels? We heard Wheatles for a good amount of time when we picked his signal up before, and we were likely much farther away than we have been since coming out of warp. The Insane Joker could connect and threaten us, but we haven’t heard boo from Wheatles.”
“Maybe they’ve stopped broadcasting,” Jerry suggested.
“There’s probably a bad reason for why if that’s the case,” Joe said.
Refused to believe we’d be too late. “Maybe the Eknara ran out of power.”
“It’s possible,” Hughes said. “They’ve been stranded a while and the ship was damaged.”
“Though emergency beacons last the longest,” Walker added.
“But we never found out how long they’d been stranded,” Randy pointed out.
Reader nodded. “And if it’s been a lot longer than we’ve known about, then, yeah, they could be out of power to use even hailing frequencies.”
“We’ll find out when we get there,” Jeff said firmly.
We were all quiet for a couple of minutes. “The kids are okay?” I asked Jeff. “And everyone else?”
“Yeah. Those with no fear of clowns wanted to visit. Those who are like you wanted to get away. Otherwise, no issues. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, now that we’re far enough away for me to think rationally.”
“You do that?” Reader asked, as he came over and squeezed my shoulder gently.
“Occasionally.”