Ship’s Notes: New Eden

C-224 is known by its inhabitants as ‘New Eden’, a name it shares with not one, but with two of the Linked Systems.  They have gotten their own translation software to work, and we have accepted their offer to dock on the larger of their two space elevators.

Mr. Gestler is wildly suspicious, and to be honest, I am a little worried as well.  The locals are friendly, seemingly honest, and very helpful.  Suspiciously so, even by my standards.  But they seem genuine, and, moreover, they seem completely unarmed.  If I bulled my way free of the docking scaffold, the worse they could shoot me with would be anti-debris lasers.  Every ship we have seen was completely unarmed (or have a cultural notion of hiding weapons, rather than ostentatious display, Mr. Gestler notes, fresh from his anthropology readings).  There was no identifiable patrol force, military, or anything of the sort.  They say that they are a peaceful people, and would never hurt us… and everything seems to fit.

And so we have docked, refueled, restocked, and otherwise have been treated quite well.  Mr. Gestler objected to their engineers looking me over, which is reasonable of him.  Interestingly, none of these actions came from some higher ruling body that is addressing the situation.  Apparently our earlier messages were from the traffic controller on the gas giant acting alone as well, trying to be helpful.

We are currently awaiting some interested parties that have asked to visit, a group of historians who should be able to shed some light on the nature of their colony.  I’ve also asked the local folks whether they had the technology to clone a new body for one of my crewmembers, and they said they that it probably was possible, and said they would ask around for help.

According to the crew, the space station here on top of the space elevator is both beautiful and well-stocked with amenities.  Perhaps their trick to capture us is to be so nice that we are unwilling to leave.  If so, that will work on most of the crew, but apparently not Mr. Gestler, who, after a few scouting trips, settled back into his books (anthropology now, as mentioned earlier).

The other thing that is somewhat annoying is that they seem not to believe in trade.  I have all of my data files, and they asked whether I wanted to share them, and while they were okay with me not sharing them, I sensed that they did not grasp the idea that there are other things in the world than just gifts.  However, a defacto trade is going on, since they are providing me with all kinds of free help, and I would feel bad if I didn’t give them what I could in return.  Still, I feel my data-files are worth more than the help I have received so far.

I await the historians.