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Hyperspace
July 3rd, 2037
Terry watched in amazement tinged with horror as the orca was born. Dr. Jaehnig, in a wetsuit and using an alien rebreather, assisted the birth. Terry knew in the wild, orca podmates helped in the birthing process. The problem was, none of the orcas were in any position to help.
Just over 36 hours ago Pegasus had gone through Sol’s stargate and into hyperspace. The sensation was a nightmare given birth; you were ripped apart only to be reassembled a heartbeat later. He’d read that philosophers called it a transcendent moment of un-creation/creation. He just thought it sucked. He went through it in his cabin, with his mom. He didn’t want to ever do it again. The crew was unimpressed. Everyone in their group—they now thought of themselves as refugees—felt the same way. Except Doc, of course. He seemed to think it was interesting.
Less than an hour after entering hyperspace, Terry found his way to Teddy Roosevelt’s bridge to stare at the white nothingness of hyperspace. The opposite of normal space, it was the omnipresence of light. It didn’t hurt to stare at it; there was really nothing there.
In school, he’d learned scientists believed the brain was incapable of understanding hyperspace, so it made the white you saw. It was curious, but he didn’t have long to ponder it.
The orcas were becoming restless. He’d gone to Kavul Ato to see. The orcas were swimming around and around their tank, sometimes bumping into the walls, sometimes the glass, sometimes each other.
“Beyond, beyond, beyond!” they were saying repeatedly. They wouldn’t respond to the Humans.
“Shool!” they also said intermittently.
“What do you think?” his mom asked Dr. Orsage, the only one of their number who specialized in cetacean psychology.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe an energy field generated by the ship in hyperspace? It appears to be cumulative.” Moloko, the pregnant female, slammed into the glass divider hard enough to make it vibrate. “We’re going to have to sedate them!”
“That’ll endanger her pregnancy,” Dr. Jaehnig warned.
“If the glass breaks,” one Kavul Ato’s engineers warned, “the surge of water may shatter the bulkhead. A couple million liters of water crashing around...”
“What about the Shore Pod?” his mom asked.
“Same thing!” Doc said, floating in. “But the dolphins are fine. They’re acting like they’re meditating, but otherwise they’re fine.”
His mom turned to Dr. Jaehnig. “Do it. Fast.”
There were two Selroth aboard Pegasus. The Humanoid aliens were aquatic, able to breathe underwater. They looked Human, but with shiny skin, similar to a dolphin, and their heads were hairless, with gills and big eyes. Colonel Kosmalski had agreed to loan them to the institute refugees to help with the cetaceans. They went into the tanks with straps, and with the supervision of Dr. Jaehnig, the process began to sedate the orcas.
The other three were easy; their weight was known precisely, and the correct amount of sedative was administered by the Selroth with a quick jab of a spear-like syringe. Every time they pocked an orca, the huge predator would spin around and try to bite them. Terry gasped, afraid the orcas were about to kill the aliens. However, the Selroth dodged the attacks with ease.
“Much easier to avoid than the Oohobo on our home world,” one said after climbing out of the tank. They were just about to give Moloko her anesthetic when she arched her back and discharged some strange-colored fluid from her genitals.
“Oh, no,” Dr. Jaehnig said. “She’s giving birth.”
The actual birth only took a few minutes. The baby’s flukes came out, and before long, half the body was protruding. The Selroth both jumped into the tank and were joined by four big, strong researchers. The other three members of the Shore Pod were sedated and lolling around in the tank, their rebreathers keeping them safe. Together with the Selroth, the Humans struggled to secure Moloko by hooking dozens of fabric cargo straps around her flukes and midriff.
They managed to restrain her, though only just. The baby burst out in a cloud of blood and amniotic fluids. Terry was unable to stop gawking even as the researchers corralled the baby and slipped one of the dome rebreathers on it.
“It’s a shame,” his mother said, shaking her head. “Just a shame.”
“What?” Terry asked. “The baby looks okay.”
“It does,” she agreed. “Dr. Jaehnig says it’s only a couple weeks premature. But with Moloko crazy like the rest of the orcas, there’s no way the baby can nurse.”
“What does that mean?”
“We might have to euthanize it.”
“Wait,” Terry said, louder than he intended. “You’re going to kill it?”
“It’s going to die, Terry.”
“Can’t you feed it?”
“If we didn’t have nine insane orcas to tend to for another five days, maybe. It’s never been done, though.”
“I’ll do it,” Terry said. He surprised himself; he had no idea what it meant.
“Oh, son...”
“I said I’ll do it.”
“Terry,” Doc said, floating over, “I don’t know much about these whales, but you really don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. There’s no surface, you’ll have to feed it underwater.”
“I know how to dive; you know that. Damnit, don’t let the baby die!” Terry floated over to the tank. The baby looked a lot like its mom, only smaller and chubbier. One of the Selroth was swimming alongside the baby as it tried to nurse. Moloko was spasmodically pumping her flukes, now drugged and unaware of her surroundings. The baby was pushed away without feeding.
Doc looked at his mom, who was exhausted and looked sad. “Could it survive?”
“No orca has ever lived without being able to nurse.”
“Then there’s nothing to lose,” Doc said. Terry’s mom looked surprised at Doc’s approval. In the end, she relented.
“It’s your responsibility,” she said. “The assistants can make the milk—I checked—but they can’t help you feed the baby.”
“I understand,” Terry said, nodding. “I can do it.”
“Okay,” she said, “let’s try.”
* * * * *
