Beep…beep…beep…beep.
"What?" Lisa mumbled without opening her eyes.
"It will be dawn soon, Commander," Sims said. "You requested a wakeup call for this time."
She pushed herself up on one elbow. "Is anyone else awake?"
"Mr. Braxton White and Doctor Dixon are on the bridge. Miss Sandra Suarez is currently in the galley."
"Okay, I'm up." This was a slight exaggeration, although she did have both eyes open, which allowed her to see that Sims had considerately raised the illumination in her tiny sleeping cubicle only about halfway.
"Have you analyzed that component we removed last night?"
"Yes."
"Elaborate. What's it do? Can we fix it?"
She pushed herself to a sitting position and combed some of her disarrayed shoulder-length hair away from her face with her fingers.
"The purpose of the KK transition modulator remains uncertain, but the analysis of its physical construction and how it fits in the larger assembly provide sufficient information to conceivably repair it at a confidence level of eighty-three percent."
"Good," she said. It wasn't great, but it was better than she expected, and then she recalled how the AI phrased its response.
"Conceivably?"
"The damaged part of the assembly is made of palladium. No other item on the ship uses it, and there is none in the ship's stores."
"Can't we recover the material from the old one?"
This was standard procedure. Whenever a spaceship crew replaced a part, it recycled the failed component back into raw stock for future repairs.
"No. The failure caused most of it to be vaporized."
"That's just great," she said in a tone of voice that even the most obtuse artificial intelligence would recognize as signifying she meant the opposite.
She slid open the accordion doors of her sleeping compartment, grateful for the gravity. It would make her morning hygiene routine easier.
Grabbing her spare jumpsuit and some clean underwear, she went to what they euphemistically called the 'fresher' and got as clean as the limited facilities would allow. Since the ship had no way to wash laundry, this would also be the last day she would be able to wear truly clean clothes for the foreseeable future. She hadn't packed for an extended voyage. The mission profile said they were only supposed to be away from the station for a couple days.
She finished washing and dressing quickly and then ran a brush through her hair in front of the fresher's small mirror. Her eyes still looked tired, but she could do little about that. It had taken longer than she would have liked last night to find the failed component of the BS device. The thing had not been designed for easy maintenance, and she silently cursed the unknown engineers responsible.
When she judged herself as presentable as she was likely to get, she stepped out of the fresher and went back to her cubicle. She retrieved her personal data-pad and looked up 'palladium'. The word 'rare' in the second line of the description jumped out at her. On the plus side, it was a naturally occurring metal, so they might be able to find some here.
Brax, Doc, and Sandra were all on the bridge by the time she got there. The main screen occupied their attention. It currently displayed a slowly panning image of the top of the crenellated city wall and a staggered line of helmets glinting in the morning sun. The faces beneath the helmets were watching the ship.
"We seem to be drawing a good number of viewers," Sandra said. "It must be a pretty dull town."
"And we're watching them watching us," Brax commented. "So I guess it's pretty dull here too, right?"
"Actually, I was watching you watching them watching us because I couldn't believe you found it so entertaining."
"Right, but I was watching you watching me watching them—"
"Please," Lisa interrupted. "Not before I've had some coffee."
The pilot and the communications officer seemed to enjoy teasing one another with juvenile banter. They probably did it to relieve stress, but Lisa was not in the mood for it now.
"Good morning, Commander," Doc said. "There are some reasonably edible pancakes and bean-sausages in the galley."
"Maybe later. Just some coffee now. I should have grabbed a cup on the way here."
"I'll get you some," Sandra said.
Doc looked at the commander in a hesitant way that suggested that he didn't want to bother her but thought he must.
"What is it, Doc?" she prompted.
"I have some unfortunate news regarding the contents of our larder," he told her.
She sighed. She knew what was coming. Their mission was only supposed to last a few days, and they had provisioned accordingly.
"How long?"
"We can probably make the food we have stretch for two weeks without dipping into the emergency rations. I am not overly concerned given that there should be things we can eat available either in the city or elsewhere on the planet, but I thought you would want to know."
"More 'need' than 'want', but yeah, thanks. I also have news. We located the damaged part of the BS device, and Sims thinks we can repair it, but we don't have the palladium we need to do it."
"What's palladium?" Brax said.
"A metal, kind of like platinum but lighter. And before you ask, I don't think we should try to substitute something else because Sims can't figure out what the thing does, and I certainly don't know."
"Maybe those guys staring down at us from the wall have some," Sandra said, returning with a steaming cup of coffee for her.
Lisa took a grateful sip and then another before saying anything else.
"It's possible, I suppose, but I'm sure we can't just knock on that big door and ask if we can borrow a cup of palladium. What do you suppose would be the best way to approach them?"
"They're probably afraid of us," Brax said. "If their worldview matches their technology, and assuming this place parallels Earth, of course, they're pretty superstitious. They'll see us as magical or supernatural, maybe as messengers from their gods or something like that. We might be able to play on that. You know, go in there all sorts of pompous, and demand some palladium as tribute."
"They may be technologically unsophisticated, but I doubt they'll believe we're angels or demons or whatever just because we tell them we are. No one is that credulous."
"They might believe it. The appearance is what's important. Medieval societies on Earth didn't have much use for empirical evidence. The people in that city saw our ship fly, and they saw our landing lights, and we chased away the orcs. That should have impressed them. They'd interpret all that in a way that fits their beliefs, which boils down to, 'Big magic. Don't mess with these guys.'"
She knew that a multitude of assumptions lay behind what he just said, and she wasn't ready to risk their lives on the unproven hypothesis that this world paralleled either the fact or fantasy of Earth as closely as it might first seem.
"And if they don't? It's not like we can do magic tricks on demand to keep them in awe of us. I'm no historian, but wouldn't they be even more likely to burn us at the stake if they thought they had a chance?"
"Um, well, yeah, there is that possibility, too," the pilot admitted.
"Maybe we can trade something," Sandra said.
"Maybe, but right now we don't know if they have any palladium or even if they know what it is. We need to come up with a plan for safely communicating with—"
"Commander," Doc interrupted. "The front gate of the city is opening."