One of the first things that soon became apparent is the Helvetians' ability to sight themselves beyond the normal field of perception remains. T'Roc and Jarrod had both been oblivious to Troy's presence on the bridge and crew members continue to express alarm when introduced to him, expressing the sort of surprise one does when a seven foot tall, black, bipedal dinosaur-like creature suddenly springs up before your eyes. Only Midas, Al, Rutter, Luke and I seem to be immune to the effect. I suspect that is due to our familiarity with him. Nevertheless, this has caused some tension among the officers of the USS Nebularis, the starship with which we had first contact after our reappearance into our home realm.
They are not the only ones with concerns either. Troy asked us to scan his home world to assess its status. The results were surprising. To all intents and purposes, it is a pre-industrial civilisation. How could such a race have developed space stations without industry? The answer was simple. They didn't, but none of their artificial energy sources worked in our plane of existence, so none of their technology functioned.
If that wasn't enough, as far as the Helvetians were concerned, their sky was now speckled with little white dots that they didn't understand. How would you feel if the solid blackness of your night sky was suddenly spotted with inexplicable lights? Might you think that the sky was disintegrating or something?
Troy desperately wanted to reassure his people as soon as possible. He had to return to the surface of his world, but the crew of the Earhart weren't in a position to do that. Our crew are suffering from the after-effects of diplohyozone doping: severe fatigue and difficulty thinking coherently. The severity seems to vary enormously from crewmember to crewmember with no correlation to species. Our captain, though, seems to be the most severely affected and although no longer behaving drunkenly, she is very much a bear with a sore head.
With this in mind, Admiral Brass (the guy who had called me captain), undertook that assignment. But when he met the Helvetian monarch, King Garda, and his Highness heard that it was not the crew of the USS Nebularis that had saved his people, but rather the crew of the USS Earhart, he had dismissed him asking that the true saviours of his world be presented to him.
So with that new directive, I am going to see T'Roc as her Cultural Advisor. I have no idea what I can tell her outside of my report, and I am rather dreading it bearing in mind her current temperament.
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