My thanks to Roger Sanger, the copyright holder, for granting me permission to host this article on my web site.  To quote him, "I was looking for a new home for DGP's 2300 AD articles, and naturally I picked the best fan sites on the Web for that purpose.  Kudos to Pentapod's World!  Enjoy!" - Kevin Clark - January 24th, 2000.

"The Gaussing Game"

{ Do not mention the title of this to your players, as it gives away the solution to the mystery -- KevinC }

This adventure is for characters serving as crew aboard a starship plying the spacelanes of the American arm.  Having the characters holding high level positions ( i.e. Captain, navigator, pilot or communications office) will enhance the challenges present in the adventure.

While traveling the American Sub-Arm, the PCs' ship must stop at the Vega system to discharge their drive before continuing.  They may be traveling in either direction along the Sub-Arm; their direction will not affect the play of the adventure.

Shortly after the PCs' arrival in-system, they receive a distress call from the nearby Vega Far Station 5 ( see details below).  They are reporting a dangerous biological contamination on board the station and request assistance.  Interstellar transport law dictates that all ships must supply whatever aid is needed in such an emergency, so long as it does not threaten the immediate safety of the responding vessel.

The station can be contacted by radio for further details on their crisis.  They report that some manner of alien microorganism seems to have been carried in on the latest exploration ship returning from the Beta Aquilae cluster.  Somehow it got through their decontamination process and is now spreading throughout the station.  Though not apparently posing a direct threat to organic material ( i.e. humans), the organism is attacking various forms of polymer aboard Far Station 5 causing deterioration.  So far its activity has rendered all space suits unusable and is slowly destroying the station's environmental seals.

The rate of seal decay seems linear, so the station personnel have estimated the time until they lose environmental integrity to be about 30 hours.

With this in mind, they ask that the PCs first priority be to intercept Rimrider, an independent cargo ship which left the station only a few hours before.  Bound for Ellis, this ship is likely to be carrying the biological and could seriously spread the infection if not stopped.  The station's radio cannot contact Rimrider, as it is already traveling faster than the radio wavefront.  Currently, the PCs' ship is the only ( non-infected) vessel in-system and must undertake the duty of turning back the potential "plague ship".

Catching up to Rimrider should be fairly easy.  It is an old Anjou-class freighter with an even older drive, operating at a fairly low warp efficiency.  However, it must be taken into consideration that the PCs' ship was not able to completely discharge their drive before engaging in the pursuit.  This imposes a limit on just how far the players can chase Rimrider.  The Director is encouraged to play up this restriction as an added element of tension.

When the PCs finally catch up to Rimrider, they must hail it and make contact.  Once the two ships drives have been turned off, meaningful communication can commerce.

Upon hearing of the situation, Rimrider's Captain, Shayleen Weaver, will become cold and defensive.  She states that they need more proof that the emergency exists than the PCs' word, as she is carrying perishable cargo and is running on a very tight schedule.  She can be sufficiently convinced of the crisis if the PCs upload the distress call from their ship's recorder to Rimrider.  None the less, she will remain in a difficult mood until she is reassured that she will be reimbursed for the profit loss caused by this delay.

If Rimrider's crew performs an inspection of their own environmental seals, they will find minor indications of decay, but the process appears to have stopped.

Once the PCs arrive back at Far Station 5, they find that its seals are still holding, though the voice of the station's chief has taken on a more worried tone.  There have still been no biological side effects, but the seals are continuing their decay.

There is no way to evacuate the station's crew without risking contamination of the non-infected ship.  It is not possible to be 100% certain that Rimrider is "bug-free", as it does not have the necessary scientific equipment aboard.  The only course of action is to analyze the problem.

The following details should be considered when trying to discover the nature of the microorganism:

1.  Rimrider seems to have had an infestation that either died or went dormant.

2.  The ISV-5 Titus, the ship which is suspected of carrying the biological, is still docked at Far Station 5.  The crew reported no signs of polymer deterioration until several hours after the ship had moored at the station.

This should lead characters to suspect that something in an active starship's environment hampers the activity of the lifeform.  If the players are having a difficult time putting the facts together, feel free to use the station's chief to guide their thoughts.  He is certainly enthusiastic about finding a solution!

Once the characters narrow the scope of their search for answers, they can work with the station's lab personnel to refine the answer.  The solution seems to lie in the magnetic field generated by a ship's MHD turbines.  The presence of a significant magnetic field seems to inhibit the microorganism's interaction with polymers.  Results seem to indicate that if sufficient time passes while the organisms are in a strong enough magnetic field and not able to interact with polymers, they will die off.  The main variable controlling the length of time it takes to eradicate the lifeform is the magnetic field's strength.

With the infestation's nature finally understood, the most logical course of action is to evacuate the station's crew to Rimrider, the PCs' vessel, and Titus ( the number of station personnel is too great for any single vessel to accommodate).  It will be difficult to get Captain Weaver to agree to this, but she will soften considerably when the station's chief informs her that the ASF will compensate all involved for any profit losses incurred during the rescue operation.

At this point, it is wisest to get to the nearest civilized system, Hermes being the closest.  Under its own field, the PCs' ship should be able to cleanse itself of the infection after a three week quarantine, though outside support will be necessary to support the increase in passengers due to the station's "refugees".
 

"Vega Far Station 5"

"Homecoming"

This adventure involves the lone outpost orbiting one of the worlds of the Beta Aquilae exploration area off the American Arm.  The characters are manning a Campbell Station ( see details below), directing the unmanned exploration effort on the planet below.  A starship has dropped them here and gone on to make the rounds to several other sites.

The Pioneer Society is conducting the whole operation on a shoe-string budget, using surplus equipment purchased from the AAEC.  The Society hopes for a spectacular success on one of their worlds and to garner an outpouring of public support ( and donations) in order to continue operating.

See "Exploration: American Style" for more background on the AAEC, the Pioneer Society, exploration equipment, and procedures.

The characters are due to be rotated from this duty in six more weeks, and most of the major goals of their assignment have been completed.  All that remains is the launch of the sample return rocket from the surface, and recovery of its cargo with the OTV.  This is due to occur just before departure, to minimize possible exposure to alien organisms in the soil and flora samples.

In the last weeks, efforts have been concentrated on getting the most promising samples to qualify the planet for manned ground analysis.  Almost as much effort is being expended on the All-Station Ultimate Canasta Tournament.  Campbell Stations can get a little boring...

The adventure gets started with an unexpected disturbance on the telemetry channels that link the station and the RPVs planetside.  Various bizarre incidents occur to the drones and robots.  Rovers try to climb vertical cliffs and cross chasms.  Some of the airborne vehicles seem to be intent on divebombing their ground-bound cousins.  These events get gradually more and more serious, and lapses in control become longer.

Task: To determine the source of the overriding commands: Difficult, RPV Pilot, Communications, Intelligence, 10 minutes ( uncertain).

A few orbits after the problem arises, an incoming voice message indicates that the equipment has been taken over by an alien intelligence in orbit.  Conversation will eventually reveal the orbital period of the "alien" spacecraft.

The source of interference is apparently a large spacecraft that has taken up a polar orbit, several hundred miles above their station's orbit.  Visual inspection with the telescopes will reveal a complex structure of struts, boxy modules and spheres.  An old-style stutterwarp drive is attached to the rear of this confusing assemblage.

If any of the characters has the history skill, or has specialized in starships, they should be able to identify the ship as one of the old unmanned exploration probes sent out in the early 2200s.  These ships were overseen by an advanced Artificial Intelligence Computer ( SIS 1000 Series).  Two years after launch of the first three probes, it was determined that the SIS was long-term mentally unstable.  None of the probes were ever hear from.

SIS 1003 is quite mad.  Paranoid and operating under the delusion that it is a naturally-occuring starfaring entity, the A.I. will only stay around as long as the humans can continue to hold its rather fragmented "attention".  It will mention, somewhere in one of its semicoherent rambles, that it has surveyed dozens of worlds capable of supporting humans, but from what it can see, humans do not deserve to inhabit space...

Obviously, the probe and its computer are invaluable.  The characters could detain it using various verbal ploys, or distract it while they sneak up to it to disable its drives.  Specifics are left to the imagination of the Director.  It should be pointed out that the ship is not completely without defenses.

This adventure can be played lightly ( "It's building a sandcastle with the survey 'bot!") emphasizing the child-like innocence of the insane A.I., or much more sinisterly, as an insane Frankensteinian malevolence, realizing that humans built it and then cast it out into the emptiness...  The tone, and specifics are left to the individual Directors.  SIS should give your characters something unusual to deal with, in either case.

"Campbell Station"

Serving as small, cylindrical orbital base stations for preliminary planetary surveys, Campbell stations have few sensors of their own.  Instead, they serve as the control center for a battery of satellites and probes within the star system.

They do have laboratories for analysis of returned samples.  Each also has one OTV for satellite rendezvous and repair, and recovery of sample return payloads.  The OTVs are capable of atmospheric reentry under emergency conditions, but incapable of returning to orbit.

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