"It is highly improbable," said Mr. Spock.
"Can you be more specific Mr. Spock. Like how improbable are we talking about here?" asked Captain Kirk not really knowing how improbable he was talking about.
"The probability of of any ship randomly finding a point in a galaxy is the size of that point divided by the size of the galaxy times 100 if you want the percentage," said Mr. Spock in a usual monotone unexcited way.
"Why can't you just say it is impossible Mr. Spock. Why do you always throw these numbers as it is not impossible?" asked Mr. McCoy always frustrated by Mr. Spocks analytical responses.
"It is not impossible. Just extremely improbable," said Mr. Spock.
"So you think it's not by accident they are here," said Captain Kirk.
"According to Mr. Spock it is possible that they are here by accident," said Dr. McCoy sarcastically.
"No. It is logical to conclude that they are here by choice," said Spock.
"You never know Mr. Spock. I won a jack pot playing lottery in my younger days. In fact, every lottery has a winner soon or later despite highly improbable odds," said Dr. McCoy semi-serious.
"You are correct Dr. McCoy. That is why I did not exclude the possibility, although it is immensely improbable," said Spock.
"You keep changing the adjective Mr. Spock. Are you feeling insecure with your assessment?" asked McCoy thinking Mr. Spock must be unsure how to describe the probability.
"Did I? I suppose I did. Highly, extremely, immensely. Does one make you think more of its improbable nature than another?" asked Spock.
"Are you trying to imply there is a difference?" asked McCoy feeling this Vulcan was up to something.
"No. English is fascinating language where there is such redundancy in vocabulary describing same thing. I thought maybe you would grasp the improbability of their arrival by accident much better with different adjective since you keep questioning my first assessment Dr. McCoy," said Spock staring at the doctor who wasn't impressed.
"I'm not impressed," said Dr. McCoy. "Why don't you try another one?"
"Stop it gentlemen," said Captain Kirk who's seen this bickering between his first officer and doctor too many times.
"You keep changing the adjective Mr. Spock. Are you feeling insecure with your assessment?" asked McCoy thinking Mr. Spock must be unsure how to describe the probability.
"Did I? I suppose I did. Highly, extremely, immensely. Does one make you think more of its improbable nature than another?" asked Spock.
"Are you trying to imply there is a difference?" asked McCoy feeling this Vulcan was up to something.
"No. English is fascinating language where there is such redundancy in vocabulary describing same thing. I thought maybe you would grasp the improbability of their arrival by accident much better with different adjective since you keep questioning my first assessment Dr. McCoy," said Spock staring at the doctor who wasn't impressed.
"I'm not impressed," said Dr. McCoy. "Why don't you try another one?"
"Stop it gentlemen," said Captain Kirk who's seen this bickering between his first officer and doctor too many times.
"We have to assume that this was no accident," said Jim and with all seriousness asked, "Then why do you think they are here?"
"We do not know at this time," said Spock.
"Speak for yourself Mr. Spock. I know why they are here. They are fugitives of some sort who are in search of a sanctuary and we gave it to them," said Dr. McCoy half jokingly.
"Come on Bones. It's serious. We have to figure out why they are here. The fact that they didn't disclose their real intentions tells me either they don't trust us or don't want to give us an advantage against them," said Jim
"We are monitoring them closely and soon their intentions will come to light," said Mr. Spock.
They were silent for a moment pondering the possible motives behind their journey until knock on the door brought them back.
"Come in," said Captain Kirk.
It was the chief engineer Scott and Chekov who were assigned to examine the Millenium Falcon inside and out. They were jovial as usual as they entered and sat down on the couch. Scotty has been a chief engineer as long as Jim can remember setting out on the five year voyage. He was the best there was in terms of space ships and figuring out how they run. He was given multiple opportunities for promotion to get out of the frontline but he insisted in being the chief of engineer overseeing all the activities. Kirk could not appreciate him more and understood his position as he himself could not give up commanding the starship.
Chekov on the other hand was not sure where he stands in his career or what he aspired for. He was a genius in his own right being able to calculate equations in his head and probably could do it as well as if not better than Mr. Spock if it wasn't for his ongoing battle with attention deficit disorder. Even with all the advancement in medicine his disorder was quite unique and no one could quite pinpoint the exact cause. Some said it was psychological from childhood trauma while others said it's genetic in etiology. Chekov didn't care what the cause was and didn't much care to fix his attention deficit as it prevented the captain from assigning him more than one task at a time. The only reason he maintained his position in the Star Fleet was his ability to do that one assigned job better than anyone else. Based on Captain Kirk's evaluation he was indispensable crew of the Enterprise.
Chekov on the other hand was not sure where he stands in his career or what he aspired for. He was a genius in his own right being able to calculate equations in his head and probably could do it as well as if not better than Mr. Spock if it wasn't for his ongoing battle with attention deficit disorder. Even with all the advancement in medicine his disorder was quite unique and no one could quite pinpoint the exact cause. Some said it was psychological from childhood trauma while others said it's genetic in etiology. Chekov didn't care what the cause was and didn't much care to fix his attention deficit as it prevented the captain from assigning him more than one task at a time. The only reason he maintained his position in the Star Fleet was his ability to do that one assigned job better than anyone else. Based on Captain Kirk's evaluation he was indispensable crew of the Enterprise.
"So what did you find Mr. Scott?" asked Jim.
"The ship is primitive sir. I don't know how they made it through the wormhole in one piece. It is really poorly put together," said Mr. Scot shaking his head.
"Their propulsion system is unknown sir," chimed in Mr. Chekov. "And their weapons is a joke. They have these machine gun looking devices that shoots bursts of laser."
"I don't believe it's a battle ship Mr. Chekov," said Spock.
"It is more like a cargo ship then," said Dr. McCoy "It could be a stolen ship."
"Anything unusual about the ship?" asked Kirk.
"Besides cramped quarters and archaic weaponry, no sir," said Mr. Scott. "I still have to figure out how the ship runs. What it uses to generate power. It's definitely not based on dilithium crystals I can tell you that."
"What about the gravitational system?" asked Kirk wondering whether it was available on the alien ship.
"Yes. They figured out how to generate artificial gravity," said Mr. Scott. "That formula is universal constant so there is no mystery there. It doesn't matter even if you came from parallel universe there is no other way to generate artificial gravity except one."
"And what is that Mr. Scott?" asked Dr. McCoy curious to find out. He did get some basic introduction in Star Fleet training but medical school really didn't explain much beyond the fact that it was possible to generate artificial gravity artificially.
"Oh, well doctor, gravity is nothing more than constant acceleration.....or should I say deceleration? If it wasn't for this floor we are sitting on we would all be falling down to the ground at 9.807m/s-sq as you well know." Scotty looked around to make sure everyone agreed. "So gravity is nothing more than an object, in our case the floor, in the floor's case the building, in the building's case the ground...you get my point doctor...it's nothing more that that object that prevents us from accelerating."
"Indeed" agreed Mr. Spock.
"So how do you generate the gravity?" asked Dr. McCoy "Isn't that what I asked?"
"I just told you doctor. In order to generate gravity, or the effects of it, one has to first create acceleration state thereby being able to place an object in its path to cause deceleration," explained Mr. Scott with all honesty.
"It's hard to explain beyond that sir,"said Mr. Chekov. "Only few of us in the Federation actually understand the concept of generating the artificial gravitational field."
"You mean the state where something is accelerated?" asked Dr. McCoy still clueless as to how that is generated and quite sure none of these guys have any clue either.
"So you do understand doctor," said Mr. Spock.
"No. In fact, I don't think any of you understand for that matter," said Dr. McCoy a little distressed.
"You are correct Dr. McCoy," said Chekov. "We only know how to generate the artificial gravity. No one really knows why it works. It was discovered by accident according to Vulcan academy of science"
"It was no accident Mr. Checkov," said Mr. Spock "the Vulcan engineer who succeeded in first generating the artificial gravity meditated for 3 weeks in deep thought before finally putting together the machine that generated the artificial gravity. He must have known the equation that logically explains how gravity is generated."
"Yes, but he died of exhaustion before he could record the findings. All we have is instructions on how to build it. No one has yet to come up with the gravity equation to explain the phenomenon," said Mr. Scott.
"So all this is just a theory," said Dr. Mccoy "about acceleration and deceleration stuff."
"Yes doctor. But quite plausible one", said Mr. Spock. "There cannot be acceleration without deceleration. As there cannot be gravity without anti-gravity."
"It must be frustrating Mr. Spock. Not knowing why things work the way it does," said the doctor.
"Life if full of unknown mysteries doctor. Being frustrated by not knowing something is illogical since not everything can be known," said Mr. Spock then added "all at once," remembering he once said nothing is impossible.
Jim watched these guys discuss the subject of gravity with amusement but had to press on for more important agenda on his mind.
"Mr. Scott. What do you know about this wormhole? When did the Federation first discover it?"
"We only discovered it couple years ago captain. We picked up this distress call from a ship that must have entered into the wormhole and ended up in our galaxy. Federation sent an investigation team who found nothing but an empty ship half blown up" said Mr. Scott.
"It was strange sir. I was there myself on board that ship and there were no sign of any crew," said Chekov.
"What happened to the ship?"asked Kirk.
"We hauled it back to earth and in storage at the moment captain," said Mr. Scott. "There's so much back log in the space junk yard we haven't got to that ship yet for evaluation. Admiral Jenkins classified it as low priority."
"I see. We need to investigate that wormhole further Mr. Scot. Have you tried to send a probe through it?" asked Jim. He was a little skeptical about the whole handling of prior stray ship. Why Admiral Jenkins was even involved with this matter was bizarre as he was overseeing the delta quadrant. Only two years since that space anomaly was discovered....god knows how many uninvited aliens have passed through it from an unknown galaxy he thought.
"We tried captain. Multiple times. No success," declared Mr. Scott.
"What do you mean no success?" asked McCoy.
"According to the report none of the probes were able to enter the worm hole," clarified Mr. Scott.
"It was like the thing was not there. In fact, our ship can travel right past it and nothing will happen," said Chekov.
"Fascinating." said Mr. Spock. "It's a one-way wormhole. It is a rare phenomenon captain. However, it is limited with having only one entry and exit point. In this case Far Far Away Galaxy and ours."
"No wonder we didn't discover it with our sensors," said the captain."That means there is a separate wormhole that leads back to the other galaxy Mr. Spock?"
"Correct captain."
"Do we know the location of that one? Obviously not. If we knew then their galaxy would be recorded in our system would it not?" said captain Kirk.
"Not necessarily captain. There are more than 1025 wormholes discovered in our galaxy that we can enter and at least 40 of them are one-way wormholes. Out of that only half of them are mapped to their destination. The rest is unknown as to where it ends up," said Spock hardly showing any excitement. "Any one of those in our record may end up back in Far Far Away Galaxy but there is no way to prove that since we have yet to receive the mapping signal from our probes. Even if we did, there is no way to prove that that is the Far Far Away Galaxy."
"What about the one like our guests emerged from? How many of those exit sites have we on record?" asked captain Kirk.
"That is the only one sir," said Chekov. "The thing is sir. There is no way to detect the exit location of oneway wormholes unless the ship is actually exiting such wormhole. The fact that we almost collided with the alien ship....now that is purely by chance captain. A pure coincidence."
Kirk felt a little uneasy with the thought of not being able to detect the exit points of one way wormholes. It was a security bridge to allow aliens to enter into this galaxy unknown. How may aliens from other galaxies must have used it to travel....
"Assuming the law of physics behaves the same way in other galaxies it is most certain that no one would venture into oneway wormholes unless they already know the entry point that will lead them back to their own galaxy, " said Spock who doesn't like to assume most things but often finding no other solution to continue his thought.
"So they came here on purpose and knows how to get back?" asked the doctor.
"That would be a logical conclusion unless they had no intention of ever returning to their own galaxy...their home," said Spock.
"Then the more reason we must find out why they are here," said the captain in a firm commanding voice. "Mr. Chekov and Scotty, I want you to take the ship out into space and test out their hyperdrive and find out what makes it tick," said Kirk. "And have 24-7 surveillance on our guests. I want to know what their real intentions are."
"What about the gravitational system?" asked Kirk wondering whether it was available on the alien ship.
"Yes. They figured out how to generate artificial gravity," said Mr. Scott. "That formula is universal constant so there is no mystery there. It doesn't matter even if you came from parallel universe there is no other way to generate artificial gravity except one."
"And what is that Mr. Scott?" asked Dr. McCoy curious to find out. He did get some basic introduction in Star Fleet training but medical school really didn't explain much beyond the fact that it was possible to generate artificial gravity artificially.
"Oh, well doctor, gravity is nothing more than constant acceleration.....or should I say deceleration? If it wasn't for this floor we are sitting on we would all be falling down to the ground at 9.807m/s-sq as you well know." Scotty looked around to make sure everyone agreed. "So gravity is nothing more than an object, in our case the floor, in the floor's case the building, in the building's case the ground...you get my point doctor...it's nothing more that that object that prevents us from accelerating."
"Indeed" agreed Mr. Spock.
"So how do you generate the gravity?" asked Dr. McCoy "Isn't that what I asked?"
"I just told you doctor. In order to generate gravity, or the effects of it, one has to first create acceleration state thereby being able to place an object in its path to cause deceleration," explained Mr. Scott with all honesty.
"It's hard to explain beyond that sir,"said Mr. Chekov. "Only few of us in the Federation actually understand the concept of generating the artificial gravitational field."
"You mean the state where something is accelerated?" asked Dr. McCoy still clueless as to how that is generated and quite sure none of these guys have any clue either.
"So you do understand doctor," said Mr. Spock.
"No. In fact, I don't think any of you understand for that matter," said Dr. McCoy a little distressed.
"You are correct Dr. McCoy," said Chekov. "We only know how to generate the artificial gravity. No one really knows why it works. It was discovered by accident according to Vulcan academy of science"
"It was no accident Mr. Checkov," said Mr. Spock "the Vulcan engineer who succeeded in first generating the artificial gravity meditated for 3 weeks in deep thought before finally putting together the machine that generated the artificial gravity. He must have known the equation that logically explains how gravity is generated."
"Yes, but he died of exhaustion before he could record the findings. All we have is instructions on how to build it. No one has yet to come up with the gravity equation to explain the phenomenon," said Mr. Scott.
"So all this is just a theory," said Dr. Mccoy "about acceleration and deceleration stuff."
"Yes doctor. But quite plausible one", said Mr. Spock. "There cannot be acceleration without deceleration. As there cannot be gravity without anti-gravity."
"It must be frustrating Mr. Spock. Not knowing why things work the way it does," said the doctor.
"Life if full of unknown mysteries doctor. Being frustrated by not knowing something is illogical since not everything can be known," said Mr. Spock then added "all at once," remembering he once said nothing is impossible.
Jim watched these guys discuss the subject of gravity with amusement but had to press on for more important agenda on his mind.
"Mr. Scott. What do you know about this wormhole? When did the Federation first discover it?"
"We only discovered it couple years ago captain. We picked up this distress call from a ship that must have entered into the wormhole and ended up in our galaxy. Federation sent an investigation team who found nothing but an empty ship half blown up" said Mr. Scott.
"It was strange sir. I was there myself on board that ship and there were no sign of any crew," said Chekov.
"What happened to the ship?"asked Kirk.
"We hauled it back to earth and in storage at the moment captain," said Mr. Scott. "There's so much back log in the space junk yard we haven't got to that ship yet for evaluation. Admiral Jenkins classified it as low priority."
"I see. We need to investigate that wormhole further Mr. Scot. Have you tried to send a probe through it?" asked Jim. He was a little skeptical about the whole handling of prior stray ship. Why Admiral Jenkins was even involved with this matter was bizarre as he was overseeing the delta quadrant. Only two years since that space anomaly was discovered....god knows how many uninvited aliens have passed through it from an unknown galaxy he thought.
"We tried captain. Multiple times. No success," declared Mr. Scott.
"What do you mean no success?" asked McCoy.
"According to the report none of the probes were able to enter the worm hole," clarified Mr. Scott.
"It was like the thing was not there. In fact, our ship can travel right past it and nothing will happen," said Chekov.
"Fascinating." said Mr. Spock. "It's a one-way wormhole. It is a rare phenomenon captain. However, it is limited with having only one entry and exit point. In this case Far Far Away Galaxy and ours."
"No wonder we didn't discover it with our sensors," said the captain."That means there is a separate wormhole that leads back to the other galaxy Mr. Spock?"
"Correct captain."
"Do we know the location of that one? Obviously not. If we knew then their galaxy would be recorded in our system would it not?" said captain Kirk.
"Not necessarily captain. There are more than 1025 wormholes discovered in our galaxy that we can enter and at least 40 of them are one-way wormholes. Out of that only half of them are mapped to their destination. The rest is unknown as to where it ends up," said Spock hardly showing any excitement. "Any one of those in our record may end up back in Far Far Away Galaxy but there is no way to prove that since we have yet to receive the mapping signal from our probes. Even if we did, there is no way to prove that that is the Far Far Away Galaxy."
"What about the one like our guests emerged from? How many of those exit sites have we on record?" asked captain Kirk.
"That is the only one sir," said Chekov. "The thing is sir. There is no way to detect the exit location of oneway wormholes unless the ship is actually exiting such wormhole. The fact that we almost collided with the alien ship....now that is purely by chance captain. A pure coincidence."
Kirk felt a little uneasy with the thought of not being able to detect the exit points of one way wormholes. It was a security bridge to allow aliens to enter into this galaxy unknown. How may aliens from other galaxies must have used it to travel....
"Assuming the law of physics behaves the same way in other galaxies it is most certain that no one would venture into oneway wormholes unless they already know the entry point that will lead them back to their own galaxy, " said Spock who doesn't like to assume most things but often finding no other solution to continue his thought.
"So they came here on purpose and knows how to get back?" asked the doctor.
"That would be a logical conclusion unless they had no intention of ever returning to their own galaxy...their home," said Spock.
"Then the more reason we must find out why they are here," said the captain in a firm commanding voice. "Mr. Chekov and Scotty, I want you to take the ship out into space and test out their hyperdrive and find out what makes it tick," said Kirk. "And have 24-7 surveillance on our guests. I want to know what their real intentions are."
"My pleasure sir," said Mr. Chekov and Scotty excited for the given assignment.
"One more thing sir," said Scotty. "I found this device that looks like a 20th century flash light in their cargo storage room." He handed Kirk the light saber with silver casing but neither of them knew it was out of power. Kirk examined it and pushed one button on the side but nothing happened. He handed it over to Spock who after a brief silence said, "Intriguing. This is the light saber I saw in their documentaries. It seems to be out of power or locked to be functional only by its owner."
"It is remarkable how their technology seems so advanced for space travel but yet carry this primitive type of weapon," said the doctor failing to understand the jedi weapon.
"I want you to examine this also Scotty. Take it apart and see what creates this standing column of energy beam," said Kirk turning his head to the doctor adding "with all our advanced technology we cannot make this doctor, standing column of pure energy."
"It's advanced technology but used in a primitive way," said the doctor shaking his head.
"Good luck gentlemen," said captain to Scotty and Chekov as they were heading to the door.
"Thank you sir," said Chekov and entered the elevator.
"So what are your plans for this weekend? Anything exciting you guys are going to do this weekend?" asked the captain.
"Mr. Spock and I we are going to play a round of golf at the Great Wall Mountain Links," said Dr. McCoy. "I'm going to teach this Vulcan that no logic can explain the beauty of the game."
"Indeed. I fail to see any logic in such exercise where hitting a ball with a club, walking after it, hitting it again, and walking after it again can be called a sport let alone beautiful," said Spock with both eyebrows raised. "But I decided to give it a try to understand the nature of the game as that would be logical to best understand it."
"I'm sure you'll love it Spock. Wish I can join you. I heard it's one of the most exquisite golf courses overlooking Great Wall," said captain Kirk wishing he could reschedule his meetings. "We'll reconvene next week to go over the new findings about our guests if any. For now there is no reason for us to let them know that we don't believe them," said Jim reminding his officers the subject matter at hand.
"It is remarkable how their technology seems so advanced for space travel but yet carry this primitive type of weapon," said the doctor failing to understand the jedi weapon.
"I want you to examine this also Scotty. Take it apart and see what creates this standing column of energy beam," said Kirk turning his head to the doctor adding "with all our advanced technology we cannot make this doctor, standing column of pure energy."
"It's advanced technology but used in a primitive way," said the doctor shaking his head.
"Good luck gentlemen," said captain to Scotty and Chekov as they were heading to the door.
"Thank you sir," said Chekov and entered the elevator.
"So what are your plans for this weekend? Anything exciting you guys are going to do this weekend?" asked the captain.
"Mr. Spock and I we are going to play a round of golf at the Great Wall Mountain Links," said Dr. McCoy. "I'm going to teach this Vulcan that no logic can explain the beauty of the game."
"Indeed. I fail to see any logic in such exercise where hitting a ball with a club, walking after it, hitting it again, and walking after it again can be called a sport let alone beautiful," said Spock with both eyebrows raised. "But I decided to give it a try to understand the nature of the game as that would be logical to best understand it."
"I'm sure you'll love it Spock. Wish I can join you. I heard it's one of the most exquisite golf courses overlooking Great Wall," said captain Kirk wishing he could reschedule his meetings. "We'll reconvene next week to go over the new findings about our guests if any. For now there is no reason for us to let them know that we don't believe them," said Jim reminding his officers the subject matter at hand.
"Agreed", said Mr. Spock, "We will closely monitor their activities and should find more information soon."
"Have fun gentlemen," said Captain Kirk.
"I'll keep you posted Jim," said the doctor with a smile referring to impending Spock's golf score.
"Have fun gentlemen," said Captain Kirk.
"I'll keep you posted Jim," said the doctor with a smile referring to impending Spock's golf score.
