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habits, preferred
foods, or sustaining social interactions, all of which would be
needed to adequately maintain this species on board the Outward
Voyager. Nevertheless, and with little concern about the wellbeing
of the Cathians, the probe was instructed to capture as many of the
beings as it could hold, collect whatever food was readily
available, then return within an unprecedented twenty days upon the
planet’s surface.
    That bright, nearly white sky, the
twin suns, and long pleasant seasons had become bitter memories for
the captives that had been brought within the Outward Voyager. Dim
corridors, narrow hallways, and small plain rooms were a harsh
contrast to the expansive homeland of the twenty-four aliens. For
them, life became a struggle for survival at a basic level. The
Cathians had maintained a vibrant, clever, industrious society, but
in the Outward that had already degraded badly.
    The Cathians had an unusual single
gender society that was both compartmentalized and hierarchical.
Everyone had her place and wanted to stay in it. This thoroughly
organized social structure might have given an advantage to the
captives. Firm authority and organized interactions could help
manage the challenges in this wholly new world, but all of their
highly placed people had fled soon after the Outward’s landing
craft arrived. As a result the captives were all lower cast
individuals who were now, for the first time in their lives,
leaderless and without direction.
    The Cathians had been on the
Outward for some two hundred and twenty days. They wandered through
their plain, boxy, featureless enclosure without purpose. They were
fed a bland gray mush that was barely edible to the refined
Cathians who required a rich and varied diet to maintain their
wellbeing. The survivors had all lost weight, strength, and
will.
    Without thinking, or perhaps
caring, the ObLaDas used a twelve-hour light/dark cycle and dim
lighting within the Cathian habitat. It was the same as the ObLaDas
known on their home planet, but in the habitable regions of Cathia
the day had thirty-two hours of intense light and four hours of
partially lit night. The darkest dark of a Cathian night was
brighter than the meager lighting within their habitat. They could
not adjust.
     
     
    Note: Units of Time
    The ObLaDa day was divided into
twelve hours of light and twelve hours of dark. This record will
use the same ObLaDa ’hour’ (~75 minutes Earth time) and ‘day’ (~30
hours) that were used on the Outward Voyager. For convenience, we
will refer to a twenty-four day period as a ‘month’ (~30 Earth
days) and a 288 day unit as a ‘year’ (~ 360 Earth days). These are
close enough to familiar durations to be useful without being
overly complicated. Relativistic factors would make gibberish of
any attempt at exact comparisons to Earth time.
    - MDK
     
     
    The Cathian language relied
heavily on gestures, body language, and facial expressions, which
provided the context and subjective weight to the few simple words
that they expressed vocally. Unfortunately, the Cathians small
protuberant eyes could not adjust to the low light levels, dark
corners, and long nights of the habitat in which they were made to
live and their ability to communicate was severely limited. This
added to the generally depressed state of the captives and
contributed to their poor performance in the intelligence tests
that the ObLaDas employed. In the beginning, the ObLaDas doubted
that the new aliens had any useful language at all. Their
disordered behavior and acquiescent demeanor conspired to diminish
the few favorable impressions that the ObLaDas had formed.
Ironically, the Cathians were the most intelligent society that had
yet been discovered, but the ObLaDas were convinced that they were
baseline dullards and resented the cost, time, and effort that they
had expended on bringing them aboard.
     
     
    Note:
    The ObLaDas did not decipher the
Cathian language until well after the