By Nathan Warner
Galileo makes a startling discovery through his telescope!
At the University of Padua in Italy, late one night in the autumn of 1609, Galileo stretched and yawned from his perch at his telescope. It had been a long evening already and he was just finishing a sketch of a few more craterous details to his moon studies in watercolor. He'd recently come from giving a lecture on the value of the telescope in observing heavenly bodies, and the vino had flowed rivers in the relaxed discussion afterwards among his peers. The libation was now clouding his mental acuity. He struggled to concentrate, tugging at his beard to wince himself awake. He had just finished the last feature of a crater on the edge of night when he glanced back at the celestial body and nearly startled from his seat.
"Oddio!" he muttered, squeezing his eye against the lens. Something was passing between his eye and the moon! Something dark and terrible! He pulled his eye away and glanced out his window at the Moon. He saw nothing but a few flickering insects. Quickly, he glanced back into the lens and began to sketch before his memory muddled what he was seeing. But suddenly, he saw that the mysterious apparition was pulling out of view and dissolving back into the dark sea around the celestial lamp.
"No, no, no!" he cried, sweeping the gaze of his scope across the dark night sky. Nothing. At last in defeat, he slumped back into his chair, lifting his paper up in the moonlight, staring at the fantastical shape he had drawn.
"Drago!" he whispered. Sitting suddenly upright, he upset his lamp, but hardly noticed. Could it be? He thought. He hadn’t ever put much stock in the stories of dragons, but there were still reported sightings across the country and several prominent professors maintained that the elusive creatures existed – even studying the taxonomy of the breed. Yes, yes! If anyone knew what this creature was, surely the greatest of western scholars could shed some light! Quickly, Galileo shuffled out from his room and scuttled down the stone stairs, out the heavy wooden door, and sprinted across the courtyard. Alessandro would know! He thought. Arriving at the door of the good Professor’s dormitory, Galileo pounded on the heavy wood.
“Alessandro?” he cried, “Alessandro?” He continued pounding until he heard feet scuffing on the stone floor inside. At long last, the door opened and a short man with long disheveled hair surrounding a prominent balding spot stumbled forward, looking like the product of several empty wine bottles.
“Galileo?” he stuttered, wiping his bleary eyes awake, “Como?...” Galileo stumbled inside and frantically showed him the sketch, explaining exactly what he had seen through his new telescope contraption. Alessandro took the page, lit a lamp, and settled into his favorite chair by the fireplace. He peered at the drawing long and hard, before shaking his head and straightening a little like he was about to deliver a lecture to a gathering of zoologists. In no uncertain terms, he carefully explained that only an amateur would have mistaken this “thing” for a dragon.
“While in some respects it could be said to resemble Thyrus, the Wyvern of Terni, which still resided on the town’s crest, it lacks any discernible tail, and the wings are clearly too short,” he concluded with a patronizing shake of his head. “No, it was more likely some sort of insect, perhaps a dragonfly – yes! – A dragonfly that wandered in front of mio amico, Galileo’s lens!” he smiled. “In fact that insect has a closer pedigree to a dragon than this illustration you have brought me, mio amico!”
Now that Alessandro had dismissed the apparition to the ordinary, he explained away in great detail every objection the astronomer had. Clearly, with the translucent wings obliterated in the moon glare, the dragonfly might appear to the untrained eye as a mighty beast of legend. Galileo snatched his sketch back with dismay, and tugged at his beard, but the more he looked at it, the more he saw in it the tale Alessandro spun. It only took a few more minutes of explanation before Galileo held up his hands.
“Abastanza!” he declared, “Enough!” And with a sigh, he tossed his velum into the fire, watching it curl into ash, which then rose up the chimney as little sparks dancing towards the heavens to join the stars. Alessandro nodded his approval at the act, even as he opened a fresh bottle of vino. In a few minutes more, Galileo had let the memory wash away, and in years later they would share a good laugh over Galileo’s midnight call concerning the “Dragon over Padua.”
Yet, at the moment when Galileo cast his vellum into the flames, high above his head – indeed higher than the breathable air of the heavens – the KDF, Vor’cha class battlecruiser, Kladdagh was in rough shape coasting above the earth in low orbit. The last thing Commander Char’Tok remembered was his science officer reporting an anomaly appearing directly in their path. What happened next could only be described as what might transpire if he’d ridden a wild Targ into a duranium wall. Char’Tok woke on the floor of his bridge beneath the main viewer. The magnitude of his headache clearly meant he’d collided with it. Yes, he’d been thrown from his chair into the screen and collapsed unconscious at its feet. A Dominion mine, no doubt!
“Report!” he barked, climbing up from the metal grating.
“We have sustained ship-wide injuries,” His Science Officer, Mod’ch, reported, limping from one console to another. “Engines are down, but Life Support is functioning.”
“And what of our Cloak and Weapons? What of Shields?" Char’Tok demanded nursing the blood from his forehead. Mod’ch shook his head.
“All down,” he replied. Char’Tok slammed his head back into his chair with a grunt. This was bad news considering that moments before, they had been operating under cloak deep inside enemy territory. Any moment now, he expected to feel the impact of energy weapons on the unprotected hull of his ship.
“Get them back up!” he cried, settling into his chair. A Klingon without weapons was a Klingon without honor. “What is our position?” he asked his helmsman who had resumed her post despite a broken arm.
“We are in the Alpha Quadrant, Sol star system, in orbit of…Earth, Sir.”
“Earth?” Char’Tok asked in disbelief. How could this be? Their last position had been inside the Cardassian front, stalking a Dominion supply convoy. But more importantly at this juncture was the realization that they were orbiting the heart of the Federation at a time when the Klingon/Federation relationship wasn’t in the greatest shape. The Battle of Deep Space Nine was only a few weeks old. Char’Tok peered down on the planet. Had they spotted the Kladdagh, yet? How could they not this close to Earth?
“Hail them,” he ordered, standing to his full height – an impressive 6ft, 8 inches. The Comms officer, Blatuk worked his hands across the console. “Well?” Char’Tok asked impatiently.
“We are not receiving anything back, Sir,” he reported. Char’Tok stared at the land mass before him. He recognized it as the European continent. He could see the faint shimmer of the waters around it – oceans whose names he didn’t remember.
“Try again,” he barked, “and run a diagnostic on your sensors!” A few second later, the report came in.
“There is no evidence that anyone is receiving us, Sir,” Blatuk answered, “and our sensors are working within parameters.” Char’Tok stared at Earth. Something had struck him as odd about what he was seeing from the moment the viewer popped on. He was no runtling novice in the fleet - he’d seen thousands of planets in his time serving the KDF, and this Earth looked more natural, organic, and agrarian than what he remembered when he’d visited it several years ago.
“Scan the immediate area for any warp signatures!” he ordered.
“None,” Mod’ch replied. That was odd, but was it impossible?
“What about neutron radiation?” he asked, and then followed up, “alpha, beta, or gamma radiation?”
“None present beyond the system’s star output and natural occurring radioactive isotopes in the planet’s interior,” Mod’ch answered. Char’Tok stared at his Science Officer. How could the sensors be working if they couldn’t detect basic antimatter, fusion, or fission reactors? He turned and strode to the console and slammed up the diagnostics himself. They all checked out.
“What is the stardate?” he demanded. The answer flashed up on the screen and he stepped back in surprise. “Seven hundred and sixty years into our past!” he whispered and then returned to stand next to his chair. “We have traveled through time and space, my friends!” He remembered the anomaly. “What did we encounter moments before this happened?” he asked, disbelieving in his own mind that the Dominion could have developed some sort of time-travel weapon to deposit its enemies too far away in space or time to ever be a threat again.
“At 1900 hours, we encountered a spatial and temporal anomaly 1 degree from port,” Mod’ch reported. “It was on a trajectory towards the Dominion convoy, originating from outside the Galaxy in deep space. According to logged sensors, it was composed of a densely packed cloud of chroniton particles carried along by a soliton wave. Precisely 2.5 seconds later after we detected it, our ship made contact and passed to this time and location.” Char’Tok shrugged to himself. That sounded kind of natural.
“Is there any sign of this anomaly now?” Char’Tok asked. As much as he’d love to shave off a slim 800 years from his greying beard, he'd prefer to be back in his own time, in the thick of things bringing honor to the Empire. Mod’ch glanced up from his console.
“We are detecting a faint anomaly 100 million miles to port, headed out of the Sol System,” he reported.
“How fast is it traveling?” Char’Tok demanded.
“It is currently moving at…Warp 1.2,” Mod’ch replied. Char’Tok reacquainted his fist with his chair, bringing up the Kladdagh’s ship-wide comms.
“All work crews, this is your Commander speaking,” he barked, “divert your efforts to bringing our warp engines online. Cut energy to Shields, Cloak, Weapons, and Life-support if you must. Any Klingon dog found working anything else will be thrown out the aft hatch with the galley bilge!” He slammed the channel closed, and moments later the Engineering station began reporting improvements. There was nothing that couldn’t be repaired on a Klingon ship with a little Klingon motivation.
“We’re minutes away from having warp 1.5, Commander,” Mod’ch reported moments later. Char’Tok nodded his approval and regained his seat. He stared ahead at this young Earth. No one he’d ever met had traveled back in time, although he’d certainly read about it and he even knew people who knew people who had. This was a truly remarkable moment – historic! Suddenly, into his thoughts intruded visions of glory. What did they whisper? Stay and conquer Earth! Ensure a greater path for the Klingon Empire without the ball and chain of the Federation. He could even be Emperor of the Empire! But in a moment, the temptations were all washed away by the voice of his Grandfather Kamarag, the Ambassador to Earth during the Khitomer Accords, telling his stories of those days – stories told to him at night around the warming fires in the untamed forests of Kronos where they went to hunt wild Targ every summer when he was a child. He saw again, through his grandfather’s words, the moment when Captain James T. Kirk risked his life and his crew to stop a war that would have surely resulted in a Federation victory and the destruction of the Klingon way of life. That had been honorable!
As if that was not enough, Char'Tok had many friends among humans, and he did not foresee the current war with Earth as any lasting effort – it was nothing more than a spat between good friends. He shook the thought of personal glory from his mind. No, it was not honorable to even consider such a campaign against this virginal Earth, although it had tempted him for more than a few seconds. True honor was not found in mighty acts of self-aggrandizement, but in the duty, bravery, and sacrifice of the lowest of officers. Here was found the unsilenced, beating heart of the Klingon race.
“I can give you Warp 2, Sir,” Mod’ch intruded into his Commander’s thoughts. Char’Tok pulled himself taller in his chair.
“Lay in a pursuit course,” he ordered, and smiled at the effect his next, very "human," phrase would have on his Bridge crew. “Engage!”
The Kladdagh banked gracefully on its starboard nacelle, a vengeful dragon intent to rejoin the hunt. Its fearsome head hesitated only a moment before locating its mark – the way back to its quarry. The red glow of impulse engines pulsed the ship out of Earth’s view and then, in a blaze of light, the massive ship jumped to warp and leapt through the looking glass – that temporal window leading back to duty, honor, and personal glory.
At that moment, Galileo, back in his own accommodations at the University, was staring wistfully at the stars when he was startled by a sudden flash of light in the heavens. While it was a blaze as transitory and unrepeatable as his earlier observation, he smiled at the thought of the vast unknown - created realms that lay untouched by human hands. Would man ever venture out into those untamed seas – and how? They knew so little about the planets, let alone the stars!
Already, he was beginning to suspect that much of what he’d been taught about the movement of heavenly bodies did not adequately explain what he had seen with his own eyes. Some fellow academics and even some clergy friends, entrenched in established Aristotelian science had cautioned him on pursuing his thinking.
“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use,” he had replied, “for all truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” At his window, he lingered a moment longer, gazing at the moon, musing his mind above that mere terrestrial plane before surrendering his failing faculties to sleep. He wandered to his bedchamber, collapsing in the soft fabric folds, bathing his thoughts in the gentle dreams of that celestial body's light beaming through the window on his brow.
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