Chapter One: Animal House

Well, it happened like this...

We were all sitting around the briefing room conversing and generally wondering what the fates and the high command were going to send us this time for a captain, seeing as how our last one had reportedly vanished, screaming, into the night, when the door opened to admit a tall individual. A very tall individual. A fourteen foot tall dark brown Bjoran individual. BIG bear. With a vaguely sour look on his face. Lirarl, the biochemist (short, feline, stripy), leaned over and whispered to me. "D'you suppose that's him?"

I whispered back. "If he is, I sure hope you brought enough dye..."

Sure enough, he introduced himself as Gregor Gohkra, our new commander and proceeded to explain the details of our next mission, namely taking a look at the planets, if any, of a couple of stars and checking them for anything of interest. I must say that there is one thing for which I occasionally envy those overserious vulpine hotheads the Altani, and that is their telepathy, as it would have been interesting to see how much, if any, of the annoyance our new captain was trying to hide was due to something about the mission itself, and how much was due to being picked to command a ship crewed entirely by H'Reli. I wonder what he did to deserve US.

The ship went into Jump with no problems past the usual accompaniment of urping crewmembers. Including the captain - entertaining, that, considering the legendary cast-iron stomachs possessed by the Bjora. But then, nobody ever quite gets used to Jump nausea. Once the ship was safely underway, there were a few days before anything of interest happened, thus giving Lirarl and me plenty of time to coat part of the back inside section of the captain's spacesuit with a colorless substance guaranteed to dye that portion of his fur brilliant yellow. All for naught, alas, for when we did encounter something and he ordered everyone into suits, he wore the one from his cabin locker instead. We hadn't gotten to that one, since the lock on his cabin had thus far proven impossible for me to pick.

Anyway, the emergency in question involved the presence of four other ships, one large, and the rest small. Upon contacting them, we found that they were Hegemonic, a liner and three scatterships, respectively, crewed largely by Altani. The positions of two of the scatterships as they approached our general area would have made things perfect for a slalom run, but the captain, the spoilsport, wouldn't let me try it. How am I supposed to maintain my reputation as a hot pilot if I never get to try anything interesting? Oh, well, I suppose the Altani might have decided to be obnoxious about it - they do get upset at the strangest things.

I suppose I'd better introduce the rest of us. The commander, you already know about, and the biochemist. I'm Yealurowluro, the pilot (and part-time communications officer), and the others on this trip were as follows:

Srilurow - power systems engineer

Lawaro - geologist

Aryialo - electrical engineer

Rowlaow - astrogator

Sawalaro - weapons expert

Wailuro - survival expert

Ailurowlurr - geologist and medical expert

The ship itself was designated with some long string of numbers and letters that I'm not going to bore you with, but we always called it "The Boomerang" because, as Lirarl put it "No matter how many times you throw it away, it always comes back and hits you in the back of the head... ", which, judging by the assignments we've drawn is probably the opinion of the High Command. Some people have no sense of humor.

Several days later, about thirteen silvery ovoids, each somewhat smaller than our ship, turned up and arranged themselves about the Jump drive pylons. I slowed down a bit for a closer look at which point one of them moved forward and nudged the hull (I nudged the whateveritwas back, eliciting an annoyed look from the captain), then dropped back when we sped up. So I tried to contact it and it replied with something that overloaded the communications gear and blew out part of the board (eliciting another annoyed look from the captain). We finally guessed that they were a small variety of space whale (space dolphins?) who merely wanted to ride our shock wave for a while. Eventually, they left, too fast for me to try longer range communications. To the relief of Aryialo, who had just finished fixing the gear.

And Lirarl and I had a conference.

He - "Figured out the lock on the captain's cabin yet?"

Me - "Nope. Looks like we can't get at his spacesuits, sigh."

He - "What'll we do, then?"

Me - "Lesee... What does he have, or where does he go that he can't lock up or guard?"

In unison - "The Head!"

Few crews can have watched their captain's every move quite as much as we did for the next few hours. But at last, he was observed entering the aforementioned facility, we waited 10 seconds, and I hit the gravity switch. Immediately, the 5 second warning sounded, followed by the loss of all gravity. And I waited another 10 seconds, then switched it on again, figuring that while the gravity on/off warning usually gives people time to brace themselves, in this case... Well, while none of us ever found out precisely what happened in there, he did take rather a long time to come out again.

And on to the first system, with the captain, who of course had no idea exactly who had pulled the deck out from under him, somewhat annoyed with all of us. Naturally giving all those who weren't in on the gag plenty of incentive to come up with their own.