"I ask that you please be careful with the transport pod," Pilot pleads as the crew prepares to leave. "It is the last one we have at the moment, and it takes time and resources for Moya to grow more."
"Relax Pilot, we'll bring it back in one piece," John assures him. "Hasn't it survived the last four trips?"
"Well, yes, but you have lost two before that," Pilot replies. "You were fortunate that you did not lose your lives as well. And now to let someone inexperienced…"
"Everyone here needs to learn how to pilot one of these things, just in case," John tells him. "Chill, man. It's just a little flight lesson. What could go wrong?"
Barely Even One Arn Later
"That wasn't my fault," Vala says for the third time as they watch the transport pod sink into the ocean.
"It was nobody's fault," Cam says. "That Marauder showed up out of nowhere."
After being shot at during Vala's first piloting session on the pod, they managed to get the failing ship to a planet. Once they'd escaped the sinking pod, they swam to shallow water and watched from a safe distance.
"Do you think Scorpius and Ba'al know where we are?" Chiana asks.
"We rammed them pretty good," John says. "They might be too damaged to come after us."
The transport pod explodes, lighting up the dark sky. Even from the great distance, waves from the explosion reach the group, and Stark stumbles backward into the wall that stands behind them. Oh, wait, that's Teal'c.
There is a wall behind them though, a very big, ugly, dirty wall. If there is a beach on the other side, they do not know. What they do know is that they are stuck standing in waist-deep water with not a grain of dry sand in sight.
Daniel runs a hand through his wet hair, still gazing out toward where the pod used to be. "How are we going to get out of this one?"
"We must see what is on the other side of this wall," D'Argo says. He aims his weapon.
When the transport pod first crashed and began sinking, D'Argo was faced with the choice to rescue either Sikozu or his Qualta blade. He chose his Qualta blade. (Don't worry, Sikozu saved herself)
D'Argo blasts a chunk out of the wall, revealing that it is thicker than they thought. A few more shots and quite a bit of dust later, and the wall stands victorious with barely a mark.
D'Argo hiss-growls and jams his Qualta blade back in its sheath. "I'm not wasting any more power on that."
"We could try to climb over it," Aeryn says half-heartedly, looking way up to where the fog hides the top of the wall, wherever that might be.
"It is too high and too smooth," Teal'c observes.
"I can walk up walls," Sikozu mentions.
"And then leave us here?" Jool says. Sikozu gives her a look.
"We'll save that as a last resort," John says. "But we really should stick together."
"Maybe there's a door or a tunnel somewhere that leads through it," Daniel says.
"Only one way to find out," Cam says, and he leads them through the annoyingly waist-deep water along the wall.
A long, slow half an arn later, they come across a misshapen hole in the dirty grey wall.
"Hello!" Cam calls into it. His voice echoes. "This may be that tunnel we were looking for."
They cautiously enter the possible tunnel.
"Ew, it smells like dren in here," Jool complains.
"That's 'cause you're in here," Chiana says, then laughs and leaps behind John to avoid a slap.
About a metra in, the tunnel makes a sharp left turn. The ground slopes up until it rises out of the water into a room. A dull, empty, dead-end room.
"There goes that plan," Sikozu says dejectedly.
"If there's one, there might be more," John says. "Even one that leads through this wall. But we're all tired from that swim. We should rest for the night."
"At least we found some dry…" Cam steps out of the water and mud squishes under his boot. "…dryer ground."
"I'm hungry," Jool whines.
Seaweed litters the cave. Stark finds out the hard way that it is clingier and slimier than it looks.
"Don't eat that," John warns.
Stark drops the seaweed and discreetly wipes his slimy hand on the back of D'Argo's shirt.
Before the pod sank, they'd managed to save a single bag, which happened to be Chiana's, who happened to pack the thing full of food cubes for some reason. She claims it's because she's always prepared, but it's more likely that even she doesn't know why she did it.
So after a dinner of food cubes (food mush, actually) they all try to find the least muddy spot on the ground and go to sleep.
The Next Morning
Vala wakes up, muddy and still a little damp, to notice something different about their cave. She makes the somewhat bad (but expected) decision to leave the cave and investigate alone.
When she runs back in, she shouts, "Hey, get up!" then proceeds to poke, prod, shake, nudge, and step on (accidentally, mind you) her friends until everyone is grudgingly rising from their mud nests.
"The water is gone!" Vala announces.
"Huh?" Daniel yawns and stares uncomprehendingly at her in a rather adorable way.
Stark is a little more awake (not that that's very helpful) "Where'd it go?"
Vala shrugs dramatically and bounces on her toes as she impatiently waits for the slowpokes. Stark jumps up and the two of them start to leave the cave.
"Uh-uh, nope." John drags Stark back by his coat. "Don't go anywhere by yourselves."
"Yeah, you don't know what's out there," Cam adds, stretching and trying to wipe some of the mud off.
Vala does know what's out there, or rather what isn't out there, but she decides not to mention her earlier expedition, settling instead for using her boots to make sucking noises in the mud.
Finally, everyone is up and venturing out of the hole in the wall.
"Uh, where's the ocean…" John wonders.
Confused stares look out over the vast expanse of nothingness where the ocean used to be.
"It's just…gone? A whole ocean?" Cam asks. "Standing here last night, it was up to my belly button, and now not a single centimeter of water. Where could it have gone?"
Aeryn certainly doesn't have the answer to that, but she does have a very important question of her own. "What's a belly button?"
Cam looks at her curiously. "What, Sebaceans don't have belly buttons?"
"Sure they do," John cuts in. "I think…" He reaches over and lifts up Aeryn's shirt a little. "There it is." He pokes Aeryn in the stomach. "That's your belly button, baby."
Now it's Aeryn's turn to poke it. "That is not a button, John."
"That's just what we call it," John explains.
Vala lifts her shirt up too. Daniel pulls it back down. "Vala, you're human. We all know you have one."
Vala pulls her shirt back up. "I'm allowed to look at my own belly button, Daniel."
Daniel sighs and moves away from her in case she wants to look at his next.
Stark investigates his own stomach. Chiana and Jool compare belly buttons. Teal'c lifts his shirt up just a tiny bit, then puts it back.
D'Argo considers doing the same, but quickly changes his mind back into its usual state of anger. "This is not important," he says loudly. "We should cross this new land where the water used to be and see what is on the other side." D'Argo begins to walk, leaving no opportunity for anyone to question his decision.
"Oookay, I guess that's our new plan," John says as everyone follows.
The ground gradually slopes down further and further as they walk. After three arns of squishing through the mud, it rises up again and the ground changes. Now they walk over small, slippery-smooth round rocks with bits of grass growing among them.
"What if the water comes back?" Jool asks.
Sikozu looks around. "Where would it come back from?"
Nobody has any idea, so they continue on in silence until Chiana asks, "What do we expect to find on the other side?"
"Transport back to Moya," D'Argo replies. "Or at least some form of communications so we can call Pilot, since our comms are frelled, as usual."
"I hope so," John says. "This ain't exactly a paradise planet that I'd wanna be stuck on for the rest of my life."
A few more tiring arns of trudging along brings them to yet another change in the ground. Now it is a red-brown springy, spongy substance.
"Did we make it to the other side yet?" Stark asks.
"We have no way of knowing," Daniel realizes.
"We'll just have to keep going until we find something useful," Cam says.
Three more arns later they sky begins to get dark.
Sikozu looks down at the ground beneath her feet. Water seeps out of the spongy surface. "I think the water's coming back," she says.
Only one micron passes before the water is a samat deep and rising quickly. Pretty soon they are swimming instead of walking.
"What do we do?" Chiana asks.
"Nothing to do except keep moving forward," John replies.
It is pitch black and they are completely wiped out when they finally reach land two arns later. Good, normal dry land with sand and grass and trees. The ocean has been fully restored and it laps peacefully at their feet.
John lies panting on the sand. "We can add 'walked across an ocean' to the list of impossible things we've done."
"I'm not sure that's an ocean," Daniel says thoughtfully.
"What is it then?" Aeryn asks.
"A mystery that we'll probably never solve," Daniel replies.
They are all so tired that they fall asleep right there sprawled on the beach. The next morning they wake to find that the ocean, or whatever it is, has disappeared once again. They decide not to question it and continue on in their search for a way off the planet.
Nearby on That Very Same Planet
The Marauder sits in a clearing in the middle of the forest. Scorpius and Ba'al are out looking for breakfast because, unlike some people, they didn't pack a bag full of food cubes for no reason. Braca is left to do the repairs on their ship.
"This is tech work," Braca grumbles to himself as he welds certain things together that he hopes should be welded. "I am capable of such better things."
After a little while of struggling with wires and machinery and whatnot, Braca is finally done. He sits back on the Marauder's ramp and waits for Scorpius and Ba'al to return.
In the Bushes a Couple Metras Away
"Looks like he fixed it," John whispers. "Or he thinks he did…"
"I will shoot him," D'Argo whispers back. "Then we take the Marauder."
"We gotta be quick before Scorpius and Ba'al come running back after hearing weapons fire," John says.
D'Argo very quietly and carefully raises his Qualta blade and aims at Braca without making a sound or disturbing a single leaf. Okay, he might have stepped on a berry, but who's gonna notice…
Braca's head snaps around toward the bushes, and he has his pulse pistol aimed directly at that spot before D'Argo can even blink. "Sir? Is that you?"
"Dren." D'Argo quickly retreats back to the rest of the group so he isn't seen.
John rushes off to the side and calls in his best Scorpy voice, "Over here, Lieutenant!"
Braca heads in John's direction. John silently hurries back, leaving Braca to wander the woods in search of his commander.
The crew of Moya race to the Marauder and squeeze inside. Aeryn lifts off and they are away from that planet before the bad guys can figure out what the frell is going on.
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Upon hearing the Marauder's engines start up all by themselves, Braca runs back to the clearing in which he'd left it. It's gone. Scorpius and Ba'al return shortly after.
"Braca," Scorpius says patiently. "What happened to the Marauder?"
"I don't know, sir," Braca replies. "It seems to have left without us."
"There's only one explanation for this," Scorpius growls. "Crichton."
Back on Moya
"Where is the transport pod?" Pilot asks, sounding very much like a stern mother.
And his crew is sounding very much like the guilty children. "Vala did it!" John exclaims, remembering when it was his fault last time. (Pilot practically grounded him for a whole weeken)
"Did not!" Vala denies. "You agreed that it wasn't my fault before!"
"It is now!" John dodges a lunge from Vala, and she chases after him down the corridor.
"I had nothing to do with it!" Stark says, trying to free himself of any blame.
"Aeryn did!" Chiana points accusingly (from a safe distance). "She was the one teaching Vala how to fly it!"
"Shut up, you, or I'll shoot your face off!" Aeryn runs after Chiana with her pulse pistol raised, looking like she might do just that.
Pilot sighs and shakes his head and lets them continue to behave like children until they pass out from exhaustion all over the ship.