| Ga: |
And tomorrow night, you must let me take you to the theater.
|
| Ja: |
Oh, my. I have lost all track of time. My crew has gone.
And I'm the last one here.
|
| Ga: |
I hope that's because you're enjoying yourself.
|
| Ja: |
I am.
|
| Ha: |
Captain! Excuse me for interruping, but I've just found out about
something incredible.
|
| Ja: |
Calm down, Ensign. What is it?
|
| Ha: |
That platform. It's a tranportation device, extremely sophisticated.
It operates in the principle of folding space.
|
| Ja: |
That's something that's been theorized. But no one's ever been
able to develop the technology.
|
| Ha: |
Well, these people have. I've just been to Alastria and back.
Alastria is 40,000 light years away.
|
| Ga: |
We call it the spacial trajector. We're able to travel to
all the planets in this quadrant.
|
| Ja: |
How far can it take you?
|
| Ga: |
Alastria is at the outermost limits of its range.
|
| Ha: |
Apparantly it's never been used to move anything as large as
Voyager. But as I understand the principle space folding, the size
of the object is irrelevant.
|
| Ja: |
What do you think? Would it possible to modify your technology so
we could use it?
|
| Eu: |
I tried to tell him.
|
| Ja: |
What is it?
|
| Ga: |
We cannot share our technology. Once it's out of our control, it
might fall into the hands of those who would abuse it. And our canon
of laws strictly forbids that.
|
| Ha: |
But we wouldn't abuse it? Don't you see what it would mean to us?
|
| Ga: |
Please, don't make it more difficult for me. I don't enjoy denying
you this. But our canon of laws has determined our entire system
of values. To break one of its principles would undermine everything
we believe in. I'm sorry. But there can be no exceptions to the law.
|
| Ha: |
I can't believe they aren't gonna help us. Some kind of hospitality.
|
| B: |
40,000 light years, even if that's as far as we could go, it would still
knock about 4 decades of our trip.
|
| Ch: |
And the posibility exists that we could re-configure the matrix at
that point to take us another 30,000 light years right into
federation space.
|
| Tu: |
Since they've already said no, this kind of thinking is only going to
make you feel worse.
|
| Ja: |
It's the first time we've been on the other side of the fence.
|
| Ha: |
What fence?
|
| Ja: |
The one that's made of binding principles. We have our own set of
rules which includes the Prime Directive. How many times have we been
in the position of refusing to interfere when some kind of disaster
threatened an alien culture? It's all very well to say we do it
on the basis of an enlightened principle. But how does that feel
to the aliens? I'm sure many of them think the Prime Directive is
a lousy idea.
|
| Pa: |
Even we think so sometimes.
|
| Ch: |
I know that many times when Starfleet personel had decided on
strong ethical grounds to ignore it.
|
| Ha: |
Still, there is a reason why it's starfleet's general order number one.
On the whole, it does a lot more good than harm.
|
| Tu: |
Captain, it occurs to me that we know little about the Sicarians.
We cannot assume that their first refusal is unalterable. It may be
that "no" is simply a prelude to negotiation.
|
| B: |
He is right. Maybe they can reason with.
|
| Ch: |
Maybe they want something. Maybe they'll bargain.
|
| Pa: |
What do we have to offer? They seem to have everything they need.
|
| Ha: |
Stories. Stories are an important part of their culture. They seem to
provide more than entertainment. They're a kind of measuring rod of
values and beliefs. We have a huge library in our data banks.
We could offer them the whole thing, all the great literature, dozens
of cultures.
|
| Ch: |
What do you think, Captain? Would they be interested?
|
| Ja: |
They just might be. From what we've seen of them, they are a remarkably
pleasure-oriented people. They might appriciate a gift of literature.
I'll arrange to meet with Gath. As magistrate, he has the authority to
make this decision.
|
| B: |
In the meantime, I'm going to take a look at that trajector platform.
Maybe I can figure out how it works.
|
| Ja: |
You'll do nothing of the sort, Lieutenant. If I find this law is
negotiable, I'll make every attempt to get the technology. But until
then, we won't do anything which might violate their canon of laws
as we understand it. That's all.
|
| Ha: |
What's wrong?
|
| B: |
I just hope she gets it.
|
| Ha: |
She will.
|