Eve On Station

Chapter Sixteen

Eve decided to start with the Rathians since of the three alien intelligent species encountered so far by humans, they had proved to be the most problematical. All three species were humanoid and oxygen breathers which gave them some important things in common with humanity, but all had followed slightly different evolutionary paths.

The Abarsi came from a home world that was 90% water and were amphibians who retained functioning gills that allowed them to exist quite easily still in the water. The partial movement onto land, however, had been necessary for the development of basic and advanced technology. It was after all, rather hard to do something as simple as building a fire and smelting ores underwater. The Abarsi home world was far enough away from Earth that it was only with the development of the "philosopher" chain of colonies that any real danger of conflict with them had emerged. Earth had built out Aristotle, Socrates, Plato and Descartes when the fifth colony in the string, Voltaire, had brought them quite close to what the Abarsi considered their sphere of influence. Things had got a little tense then, but the problems had been worked out. Largely because the Abarsi preferred worlds similar to their own with more water coverage of the surface than humans did. This had resulted in a little "horse trading" of worlds and things had settled down.

The Zindar were closer in human evolutionary terms to reptiles than mammals and preferred worlds that were hotter and drier than what humans found acceptable. This had reduced the possibility of conflict as had the location of the Zindar home world, which lay well out beyond the end of the "Artist" chain of colonies, yet to be developed in this time. That chain was destined to contain Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Dali and Picasso before running into a gap too large for the FTL jump technology to cross, with the Zindar home world on the other side of that gap.

The reason the Rathians had become a problem for humanity was not their technology, or their expansive empire as they had the lowest tech base of the four species and were confined to a single planet because of this. In fact, the Rathian's technology was barely sufficient to get ships to Grand Central. The problem lay in the fact that the Rathian's home world was in the process of dying and becoming uninhabitable. Some of the damage had been self-inflicted due to the buildup of greenhouse gases from industrialization and partly from tectonic activity producing some massive volcanoes. This turned the Rathians into a planet of refugees and Earth via Grand Central was the closest destination for them, in fact the only one within reach of their technology. Over the next few decades, Earth would absorb some ten millions of Rathian refugees, but the Rathians wanted to send billions.

This created a certain amount of tension that ebbed and flowed as circumstances and policies changed with the election of new Earth governments. Sometimes the reasons for refusing more Rathian refugees had been based on economics, mainly that the economy simply couldn't withstand such a large influx to more racist and xenophobic reasons. The really radical Isolationists had always been a small minority, but they had been very vocal and at times they had more influence with government policies than their numbers would seem to warrant.

Eve had seen a few Rathians since her arrival on various jaunts to the ring. They were the closest of the alien races in terms of evolution to humans as they were mammals whose young were born alive and were nursed by the females when they were young. That didn't mean they looked just like humans though. Rathians were humanoid, but slightly larger and stockier than humans on average and covered in a pale yellow fur over their entire bodies. They had two eyes, though these were about twenty percent larger than human eyes, a nose and mouth, but their ears were totally recessed in their skulls.

"How many Rathians are there on the station and where would I find them?" Eve asked Jasleen, walking into the main Security office.

"The last numbers I heard were just over five hundred," replied the clerk. "Officially, they are banned from all the hub levels, but they still keep showing up in some of the lower ones now and then. I know Captain Demery was less than thrilled when he was order to roust them out of the hub."