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"Star. Flower." Darwin squeed into the air again and the vocoder repeated, "Star. Flower."
Lucas Wolenczak sighed and hung his head over the dolphin's tank. "Yes, we know. Star flower, but what does that mean, Darwin? You're not making any sense."
"Star. Flower," repeated Darwin. "Lucas come see. Star. Flower."
"Anything new?" Captain Bridger asked as he came into the moon pool room.
"No, Captain," sighed Lucas. "It's just the same thing, over and over again. Star. Flower."
"Bridger!" announced the dolphin. "Come see!"
"He's making it pretty clear he wants someone to come out with him," Lucas added with a helpless shrug. "Should I get a suit on?"
"Not Lucas," said Darwin. "Bridger. Tim."
"Tim?" Lucas and Bridger exchanged a glance in surprise. This was new. "Why Tim?" asked Bridger.
"Speak," replied Darwin. "Star. Flower. Tim smart."
"And what am I, chopped liver?" asked Lucas indignantly and Darwin slapped the water impatiently.
"Bridger smart. Tim smart. Lucas not hear."
Lucas sighed and looked at the captain. "He is the comms officer. I suppose it would make sense."
Bridger wasn't listening, though and leaned into the tank to rub Darwin's chin. "What are you saying, my friend? How does Lucas not listen? He listens to you all the time." When Darwin didn't answer, he sighed and shook his head. "Better call O'Neill down here and tell him to bring his waders."
"O'Neill, there's a call for you."
Lieutenant Tim O'Neill looked up from his cards in frustration. "This sucks."
Tony Piccolo smirked and flicked one of the press-paper chips they were using for tokens at Tim's head. "Run along, little sailor boy. Leave this game to the men."
Tim glared at him. "Don't even start, Piccolo." When he saw Miguel Ortiz hiding a laugh behind his hand, he looked injured. "Et tu, Brute?"
Ortiz shrugged with a grin. "¿Qué digo? El tiene razón."
"Si te molestaras en listar español con tus idiomas fluidos, no me necesitarían tanto," Tim shot back as he folded his cards and set them facedown by his spot. "You're a pain in my ass, Miguel."
"Hey, they didn't call for a Spanish-speaker," laughed Ortiz. "They called for you."
Tim shook his head as he walked to the communicator set beside the door in the rec room. "O'Neill, here."
"Captain wants you down at Darwin's pool," Lucas's voice replied. "And said 'bring your waders?'"
"Just what I needed," Tim sighed. "A deep dunk in five-degree water. Tell him I'll be right there, Lucas." Once Lucas acknowledged, Tim headed for his quarters, trying not to grumble audibly. He briefly tangoed with Dagwood in the corridor, stepping right just as the big Gelf stepped left, then back again. They repeated the step once more before Tim finally flatted himself against the wall. "Go, Dagwood."
"Sorry, Tim," Dagwood said in a low voice and lumbered past to continue his cleaning rounds.
Tim watched his friend stalk past and continued to his quarters, thinking a little clearer than he had been a minute before. It wasn't common for the captain to call him for water-related work unless it was directly related to Darwin or external communications arrays. The former was usually covered by Lucas and the latter fell squarely into Lonnie's domain as chief of engineering. So what could this possibly be about?
"Periménete ton pio sofó apó ólous tous symvoúlous, óra," he sighed to himself, then stopped as he was opening the door to his quarters. Greek philosophy wasn't one of his strong suits, so why was it coming to mind now? "I didn't even like Greek," he muttered and went to find his wetsuit.
When Tim got to the moon pool bay, he found Lucas and Bridger both trying to calm down the dolphin, who kept repeating, "Star. Flower. Come see!"
"He won't say anything else," Lucas told him as he approached.
"And it's getting on my nerves," added Bridger from the water. Much to Tim's surprise, the captain was also dressed in a wetsuit with a scuba tank and mask already around his neck. "You ready to go, Lieutenant?"
"Are we going outside, sir?"
"Since Darwin is looking keen to drag me out there without my permission, I should say so." Bridger jerked a thumb toward the prepped tanks and masks. "Hurry up."
"Star! Flower!" shouted Darwin. "Tim! Come see!"
Puzzled, Tim geared up and joined Bridger in the tank. With comms in place and tanks engaged, they followed the agitated dolphin toward the ship's exit. "You have any idea what's going on, Captain?" Tim asked.
"Your guess is as good as mine, Tim," Bridger responded. "It's been a long time since I saw Darwin this excited about anything. And the star flower thing has been going on for hours, according to Lucas." He looked over his shoulder. "Does that mean anything to you?"
"No, sir."
Darwin swam a looping circle around them, then headed away from the seaQuest at a speed that was hard for the flippered humans to keep up with. It didn't take him long to loop back to them, though, keeping track of them and making sure they didn't lose him. "Should have stretched first," Tim panted.
"You didn't?" Tim swallowed an embarrassed answer, but Bridger chuckled. "I'm teasing, O'Neill. I thought he was going to be sticking closer to the boat, too." They followed until they found Darwin hovering and waiting for them. "Now what?"
Darwin squeaked and clicked a few times, then circled around them. He swam forward again and seemed to be watching an empty area of the ocean. Nothing happened for a long, uncomfortable minute and then Darwin slammed himself forward with an air of impatience. Both men recoiled in surprise when the dolphin clearly impacted with an invisible force that bounced him away. He repeated the lead up run, circling the humans and then rushing forward again, but the water in front of him rippled in shades of black and brown before resolving into a monstrous creature.
Easily ten feet long and fifteen feet wide, the creature extended human-like arms to Darwin in a surprisingly familiar stopping motion. It reared back to face Bridger and Tim, hanging upright in the water with a massive, ray-like wingspan slowly moving to maintain its position. It had a dolphin-like tail that descended below the span of its wings and it watched them with large, blue-green eyes set into an almost human face. Its head was strangely elongated, bulbous at the front like a dolphin's and with another more tapered bulge toward the back.
"What am I even looking at?" Bridger asked rhetorically, stunned.
"I think the best answer is 'star flower,' sir." Tim looked toward where Darwin was bobbing excitedly in the water. "I wonder why he wanted us."
"Sir, are you alright?" Commander Ford asked over the intercom.
"Yeah, I think so," Bridger replied. "It doesn't seem to be aggressive. Just... big."
They all watched each other warily for a few more moments before Ford commented, "We couldn't even pick it up on Whiskers until Darwin rushed it."
"How does it scan now?"
"Like any other life form, Captain."
Something brushed past him with a sensation like a hair trapped inside his shirt and Tim shook his head sharply. "What was that?"
"You felt it, too?" Bridger asked quickly and Tim nodded.
The creature moved forward with a careful movement of its wide fins, ducked its head to study them. "Do you think it communicates para-psychically?" Tim wondered. He jumped when the creature turned toward Darwin and let out a clear stream of clicks and whistles. "Or like that. That works."
Darwin circled them again and then nudged the creature at its shoulder, moving them all toward the seaQuest. "I feel like I'm talking to Lassie without the vocoder," Bridger sighed in annoyance. "Darwin, we can't take it aboard. We don't know if it's dangerous or not."
The creature turned to look at Tim and he recoiled in surprise when it moved closer to him. It touched its own bulbous forehead, then gestured slowly toward Tim with the flat of its hand. When he didn't move, it repeated the gesture, first to itself, then toward Tim. "Sir, I think it's trying to communicate."
"Brilliant deduction, Lieutenant," Bridger said dryly.
Tim squirmed, then looked toward the captain. "I have an idea. Permission to make contact, sir?"
"What kind of contact?"
"It seems like it wants to touch me."
Bridger was quiet for a second, then said, "Do what you think you have to, O'Neill. Be careful."
"Yes, sir." Tim steeled himself and sent up a silent prayer before he peddled his feet, moving closer. He held up his hand toward the creature, palm flat the same way it had. The strange face seemed to light up with an expression that would have looked like excitement on a human but he wasn't sure the emotion translated exactly. It did seem to smile, though, close-lipped and without showing teeth. It swam toward him, placed its hand--five fingers, he noted absently, and an opposable thumb--against his.
Immediately, a flood of images and emotions battered his mind. He gasped and started to pull away, but the creature's hand closed slightly, fingers interlacing with his. It--no, she held him there with incredible gentleness, steadying him as he got his bearings in the intense sensation of her sending. After an embarrassingly long time, he opened his eyes and met her gaze, surprised by how much more feminine she looked now that he had that frame of reference.
She sent him an image of a flower, round and smooth-petalled, purple with a yellow center. It seemed familiar and he found the name his mother had attributed to it years ago. "Aster." She nodded and placed her hand on her chest. Something else clicked and Tim blinked in surprise. "Astéri."
"Talk to me, O'Neill," said Bridger behind him.
"It's Greek for star," Tim explained. "It's also a genus of purple flowers that are kind of star-shaped."
"Star flower."
"Yes, sir." Tim looked back. "I think it's her name."
Bridger's eyebrows jumped upward, visible even behind his mask. "Her?"
Tim didn't answer, instead studying the face of the creature in front of him. "Are you why I was thinking in Greek earlier?" he murmured. He was surprised when she inclined her head, an obvious nod. "Why?"
With her hand still intertwined with his, Tim was surprised at the clarity of her thoughts. "Greek is the last language I vocalized to one of your kind. I assumed you would all speak it." She smiled and tilted her head. "I'm glad you do, at least."
Still reeling from the contact, Tim looked back toward the captain. "Sir, she speaks Greek. I think she can pick up any language we speak by scanning our minds, though."
"That would explain why she spoke to Darwin in clicks," Bridger said with a thoughtful nod. "I wonder what's native to her."
"Sonar," Tim replied, "and empathy." The dead silence that answered him made Tim wonder if maybe things were getting a little too weird for words. "Sir, I think we should let her on board. I don't think she'll hurt anyone."
"I'm not sure where we'll put her," Bridger said skeptically. "Have you seen her, Lieutenant? She's huge!"
Aster glared at Bridger, an expression that seemed comically exaggerated on her wide face but Tim could feel the mild amusement and humor flooding from her. "I... think she doesn't have to be," he said. She swung her gaze to focus on him and he felt a projected image of her morphing into a humanoid figure. "I think she can change her shape."
"And turn invisible, I suppose." Bridger threw his hands up and started to swim back for the seaQuest. "Okay, fine. Let's bring her aboard and see what we can learn."
It felt strange swimming into the seaQuest as it sounded General Quarters he hadn't announced himself. Tim watched the flashing lights through the water, then glanced back over his shoulder. Aster had vanished the second they passed through the first wet-lock, then reappeared as a human woman wearing a wetsuit almost identical to the ones he and Bridger were wearing. The only major difference he could see was a perfect lack of rank and insignia. There was even a name patch which identified her as "Astéri" in Latin characters. Her face remained bare and it almost looked like she was breathing through gills like Piccolo.
She was very pretty.
Tim turned quickly away from the thought and heaved himself out of the water. Captain Bridger pulled himself up beside him and they both took off their masks. "Definitely the weirdest outing I've had in a while," Tim said. He wiped his face dry and hunted through his wetsuit's pockets for his glasses.
"Tell me about it," agreed Bridger. He paused, then looked seriously at Tim. "You're sure she's a her?"
Tim could feel himself blushing and gestured quickly toward Astéri where she stood in the tank, scratching Darwin under the chin. "She looks female to me, sir."
"If she can change her shape that freely, she could look like anything," the captain pointed out. "Maybe you suggested a gender to her."
Tim shook his head. "No, sir. She started using female pronouns the moment she started speaking in my mind. At the very least, she identifies herself as female."
"My people use neutral genders in most cases." They both looked up in surprise as Astéri waded toward them. "From my understanding of gender in humans, you identify those who bear children internally as female, yes?"
Tim and Bridger exchanged a quick glance, then Bridger said, "Yes, usually. There are some exceptions."
"As is right," she said with a smile. "I have the natural capacity to incubate a child internally. As such, I identify myself in your languages as female. Thilykós in Greek."
"Why Greek?" asked Bridger.
"As I told gios tou Nil, Greek is the last language I vocalized to one of your kind."
Tim chewed his lip to keep from smiling too widely. "Tim," he said. "You can call me Tim."
Astéri stopped and gazed at him for a long, increasingly uncomfortable moment, like she was memorizing his face. "Tim," she repeated. He felt that same tickling feeling against his mind and she added, "O'Neill."
"It means the same thing," he explained. "Son of Neil. Just in Irish."
"You never struck me as Irish."
Tim and Captain Bridger looked over as Commander Ford and a few of the other bridge crew came down the stairs. "Dad's side," Tim said. "I'm Jewish on my mom's side. Double-whammy for guilt-based faith."
"She doesn't look nearly as big as what you were describing, Captain," said Ford. Astéri gave him a dazzling smile.
"Well, she shrunk a little in the wash," replied the captain. He swung his legs back over the edge of the pool and shed his scuba gear. "I'm going to get changed."
"Ah." Bridger stopped to look back at Astéri as she waded to the side of the tank. She looked almost embarrassed as she asked politely, "Permission to come aboard, Captain Bridger." Tim watched her, suspicious that she had lifted the formal phrase directly from his mind. She tilted her head just enough to meet his eyes, then slowly blinked, giving him the impression of an apology.
The captain crossed his arms across his chest. "This is a restricted access government vehicle," he said. "I don't know your reasons for being here, nor your capabilities, Astéri. I hope you can understand my reluctance."
"Perfectly, Captain," she replied. "If you require assurances beyond my solemn word that I will not investigate your boat without supervision or permission and will not read the minds of any member of your crew without both their and your permission, I'm not sure what more I can offer."
"Is it just me or is her English getting better?" murmured Ford.
"You've already read my mind," thought Tim, "and without Captain Bridger's permission, too."
"You are... a special case," her thoughts whispered back and Tim felt his cheeks heating. The phrase didn't seem to translate directly into English or Greek and was colored with half a dozen emotions he couldn't quite identify. She seemed to flush, too then recovered quickly to add, "You asked his permission to make contact with me. I accepted this as consent."
"We may need to discuss the finer points of consent among humans, then."
"Permission granted," Captain Bridger said, "with the stipulation that you honor your word." He turned to Ortiz and added, "Can you get her settled in the guest quarters with some clothes, Ortiz?"
"Yes, sir," he replied.
Tim felt a small pang of jealousy at that, but pushed it away and swung himself down from the ledge of the tank. He wasn't sure why he felt so immediately possessive--other than the fact that she was embarrassingly beautiful with gentle blue-green eyes and a smile that could stop traffic--but he had a feeling that she wouldn't look at him again once she'd spent ten minutes with Miguel.
Ortiz helped Astéri climb out of the tank and step down to the deck, then escorted her toward the corridor. Tim applied himself to removing and stowing his scuba gear, resigned to being the translator and as exciting as a telephone.
Before she stepped out of sight, though, he felt her brush his mind again and whisper, "A very special case." He jerked up in surprise, caught the edge of her smile as she met his eyes and then she was gone.