Spaceship captain uses experience fly-fishing to recognize a trap
Fly fishing is the art of fooling fish. A "fly" is a small hook with any number of materials attached so that it looks like an insect to the fish. Trout are notoriously suspicious. Often they will rise to a fly and detect something wrong when they get close.
If humans compare the fly with the insect, the two often look quite different; the fly is designed to look like the impression of that insect on the surface of the water when viewed from below. It must only appear like an insect to the fish.
This story is about first contact between humans and another species in the future. An alien ship is detected and the admiral of the space fleet is summoned to the scene. Unfortunately, he is on vacation, out of communication, fly fishing in the wilderness. The action begins when an officer arrives to notify the admiral that he is needed.
The admiral complies, of course, but his mind remains half on vacation. As they approach the alien ship, he continues tying flies and thinking about fishing.
As they get closer to the alien vessel, the crew starts collecting more and more information: mass, velocity, spectral analyses, etc. As the data pile up, the admiral's hind-brain becomes uneasy. The evidence is not self-consistent, the picture implausible.
He concludes that the ship is a decoy, but he does not know its purpose. Is it a distraction, designed to lure the fleet away from home to leave it defenseless? Or perhaps, like a fishing lure, it is simply designed to harvest food.
He pauses the fleet and dispatches automated drones to investigate, but the ship disappears, never to be seen again.
Stories
No stories yet.
Is this somewhat more than a prompt?
If I knew what a prompt was, I could answer that... It's not a story; at best it's an outline. And it lacks a conclusion.
Hardly. I belive the ship dissapearing is a sufficient conclusion. Unless we can figure out how to continue it form there.
WAIT they could leave an alien on earth and the alien could cause trouble or something.