There were so many documents that Solena was getting dizzy.

Linda was always by her side, but various experts came to give summaries. What to present, what to hide, and how to answer the biological exam when arriving at the Galactic Council station.

She was joined by Kevin, the head of the translation team. A computer AI did a lot of work, but things were still imprecise. Perhaps cultural elements needed clarifications. Questions could be relayed via the Mars ship and answered in English, but even that proved problematic. How do you trade measurements with only audio conversation?

Fortunately, both sides have physicists, and the speed of light is constant all around. The Siluvors also could observe the Jovian system directly, and the humans knew from previous probes many of the measurements for the moons of Jupiter.

It was a very slow process compared to the conversations in the council language, since it was pre-recorded by the Siluvors and transmitted non-stop on a secondary channel. There were hours of speech that linguists and xeno-culture specialists were analyzing.

The last translated block was a briefing about the major races of the Council. Those that controlled a vast number of colonies, either through federation with a minor race, direct colonization of an empty planet, or outright conquest of a planet that wasn't under Council protection.

The Denebian crystalline beings appeared to be the most fascinating as they possess four genders, but little information was available about them. Even the word "Denebian" was a translation based on their declared capital planet, which isn't even their original homeworld itself clouded in mystery.

A scientist with a white lab coat interrupted a conversation about how the Denebians can settle on almost any planet, requiring very little nutrients in the way humans saw them.

"We just received the embolism-suppression agent. Shall we inject the ambassador and start her on the pure oxygen?"

But Linda reacted. "Didn't they say that it's only about an hour to take effect? So it's far too early, and we have 3 other people en route. Plus, she needs to be able to speak to us to ask questions."

"It's not an hour total. It's an hour before it fully works and another hour with pure oxygen to eliminate the nitrogen. We need to start them on the oxygen at the time of injection for maximum effect. So let's start 2 hours before the arrival of the shuttle, giving us a lot of wiggle room. It will take time to load our material in the shuttle anyway."

It was approved; he left, but Solena did have questions.

"I am sorry, but what are we talking about?"

Linda's expression softened. "Their shuttle uses much lower air pressure than Earth. Your body has dissolved nitrogen from a lifetime of breathing our atmosphere. If we lowered the pressure too quickly, microscopic bubbles could form in your blood and tissues."

"And this drug stops that?"

"It reduces the danger. It does not make it safe by itself. You will also breathe pure oxygen for two hours. Pure oxygen lowers the nitrogen in your lungs and blood, allowing your body to clear it safely. Then the shuttle airlock will lower pressure gradually. The drug is a microbubble inhibitor. It does not remove the nitrogen; the pure oxygen does that. The drug only reduces the chance that microscopic bubbles become dangerous while the pressure changes."

"And the drug is experimental?"

"Yes," Linda said. "But it's been used in the special forces for a few years. It's not so much experimental as top secret. It might not be needed, but it shortens the time to transition, and it gives us a margin if their measurements are wrong."

"Right, sorry, we are rushing you. The shuttle has a very different atmosphere from the one on Earth. The spaceship currently around Jupiter can be adjusted to provide living spaces with our usual air, but the shuttle was launched before we could trade that information. And going back to our pressure won't be a problem. It's going down, which can hurt."

"How different is the shuttle air?"

Linda looks at the scientist.

"Ours is mainly nitrogen; theirs is argon. It shouldn't change much. The problem is the oxygen content. We have around 21 percent oxygen; they have 55 percent."

"That sounds like a lot."

"Sure, at our air pressure, it would be problematic, but they keep the air pressure at about 0.40 ATM if we understood their measurements correctly."

"That's thin", said Solena

"Yes, but the oxygen pressure, which is what our lungs register, should be the same. You should be able to breathe normally. Your voice will sound different. And the air will be drier. At lower pressure, moisture evaporates more easily, so you may notice it in your throat, eyes, and skin."

Kevin spoke up. "They called our air thin because it doesn't have a lot of oxygen in it. We called theirs thin because of the low total pressure. We understood what they meant, but I don't think they realize our pressure is that much higher than theirs. It must be something cultural."

The scientist spoke up. "For us, it's the oxygen pressure that matters, perhaps not for them?"

Solena listened to Kevin and the scientist talk while plenty of technical details about air flew over her head.

"How long is the trip?"

"28 hours," said Linda.

"Won't I need to sleep?"

"I suggest you take turns; it's not like we fully trust them and the environment, but you should be all right," said Linda.

Solena nodded.

"What about food?" she said.

"You will have rations, but don't use the reserve of heatable MREs. In 55% oxygen and low pressure, the emergency team doesn't want magnesium, hydrogen, and that much oxygen in the same sentence. They do have pure water on the shuttle, and we gave you electrolyte packs to dissolve in them. They have a toilet, and from our understanding, it's compatible. We put some, well, adapters for female and male anatomy in case. NASA had them from the space program anyway"

"Good. So food, water, toilets, and air. It's almost everything I need," said Solena, smiling.

The scientist left, and the team finished the briefing on the Denebians, notably on their civil war, which split them into two Council races despite a common origin. The Denebian Kingdom was the original and the stronger group, but the Crystalline Republic was still considered major and was a democracy.

"Where do the names come from if it's not in English?"

Kevin replied. "We tried to translate them into a sort of equivalent. Both have a supreme leader, but with the Denebian, it's an absolute monarch, so we used the term kingdom. The elected leader of the Republic is also an absolute monarch, but they are elected every decade or so and can't be reelected"

"Wait, both operate as absolute monarchs?"

Linda spoke up. "Our understanding from the culture norms, which we will get to with your whole team, is that their biology operates at a lot of power. Thinking complex thoughts costs them a lot, but they can pre-program small actions and turn off the rest of their brain."

Solena laughed. "That's a neat trick"

"Sure, but when they need to think deeply, they can barely move, and if they move, they can't think"

That's a definite problem, but they do need very little energy to function and can live for a very long time, never dying of old age.

The Crystalline expert soon left, and a new guy was briefing Solena on the Trask Collective, which was probably the one race that scared Solena the most.

They believe in utmost conformity and reproduce by a form of binary fission. When they want a child, they isolate themselves in a cocoon, and two identical copies emerge with all the memories of the original, but with new cells and a renewed lifespan.

In their laws, they are both the child of the original parents, but in reality, they all have the memories of all of their ancestors.

The briefing confirms they aren't really clones, as individuals change as they get older. And they seem to mutate a lot during their lives, so while the two children will be identical to the parent and to each other, they will spawn 4 children in the next generation, which might be very different between the two pairs.

It really unsettled Solena, as this is very different from what she expected.

The report does mention a high rate of a disease that resembles cancer, which is nearly always fatal for them, keeping the population relatively stable unless a population boom is desired.

Still, all of them share the perfect memory of a single original being, creating a very cohesive race.

The rest of the briefing about them was rather boring, making her yawn.

This made her stop the presentation when an idea crossed her mind.

"What about sleeping? Do they have beds on the shuttle?"

Kevin spoke up. "The Siluvors apparently sleep for 24 hours every 6 days. The numbers might be a little wrong, but the numbers seem right. They can be up for 5 consecutive days. Their shuttles don't have gravity, so we packed harnesses to secure yourself somewhere while in transit. The interstellar ship has a rotating habitat. We packed you inflatable mattresses and compressed pillows if they don't have anything for you."

"It looks like you've thought about everything."

"Well, after we brief you about the Vorex and the Loom, I'll show you the computer box. I hope that impresses you too; we worked really hard on it on a tight schedule," Linda said.

Solena was intrigued, but she was now being briefed about the Vorex, a militaristic race that calls itself an empire. They are far away from Earth, but they have one of the biggest territories, and from the feeling of the analysis team, they were the reason for the creation of the Galactic Council.

In short, all the races that were fed up with the Vorex conquests banded together to form a council to unite against the common enemy. That's something that Solena could understand.

But then, the Vorex petitioned to join, on the condition that the galactic council never have its own military. That for every operation, member states would supply their own troops.

Solena wondered if this wasn't a sort of Pax Romana. That the most powerful empire is bullying the smaller races into not pushing back.

And yet, the Loom seemed stronger. She was keen to learn more about the Loom, who, from the description, appear to look like giant spider-crabs with 8 digits in their hands, 6 normal ones and two opposable thumbs.

Sadly, the description was short. They barely talk, rarely vote, and only made two proposals of their own.

To improve privacy in the ambassador suites and to allow ambassador guards to have weapons within their own quarters.

The first passed unanimously; the second was amended to only allow weapons to come in from private airlocks.

She was led to the computer box.

It was a primitive terminal with a simple LED segment screen with only 4 rows of text with 40 columns and a typical keyboard.

In short, there was a text menu to take notes, read documents, and access or store all the data she needed.

It felt primitive, but workable.

"You charge it like anything else, with the special power bar that is in your pack, but the battery should last a few weeks," explained Frank, the technician in charge of that project.

"I hope it's not that powerful."

But then, Frank showed her the secret...

If she creates a new note named "Gaia" and enters a passphrase she was taught, a latch unlocks and the box opens.

Inside are 4 laptops and 8 tablets.

"They charge from their dock, but under them is a box with the chargers. Do not open this until you are in your ambassador suite. The Loom's privacy rules prohibit Council surveillance there."

"Ok, but the notes on the terminal outside the box?"

"Stored in a network drive only our devices have secure access to"

"Great work. Do we have any briefing on their computer technology?"

The team all looked at each other. "Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"The amenities for ambassador wings mention private docks, instant communication nodes, and what we can translate as internal phones for the whole complex, but nothing about computer power. It's why we made the box. We don't know how advanced the other species want to appear. And perhaps it's not in there because everyone had computers, and it's too obvious to mention it. We don't know."

"But they sent us images and documents, so surely they have computers?"

Frank had the answer for that.

"It doesn't prove anything. The technology is closer to that of a fax machine than to a network protocol. They even explained verbally how to decode it. It's 2048 pixels wide, sent one pixel at a time. No byte or word encoding. No error correction. On or off. It's fast, so whatever original device it was meant to is better than our fax protocol, but it's very primitive. Even the letters on the pages were made graphically."

"Huh. So they might just have typewriters and scan them in primitive fax machines?" Asked Solena.

"Or it's just how they communicate. We don't know, so we don't take chances."

Solena agreed it was better to be prudent.

Someone came to the door with an announcement. "The French and British delegates are landing, and the Canadian member is on her way to the conference room."

Linda clasps her hands. "It's time to meet your team, Ambassador Vasquez."