Chapter 3
The Discovery
The crabs insisted on teaching me everything about themselves during the six months (SIX MONTHS!) that it took me to search their planet. They would walk along beside me as I searched and talk my ear off about anything under the sun. They even taught me about their methods of reproduction (which, lucky me, they even insisted on showing me). The little crabs, it turned out, were actualy the adults. The young looked more like crayfish. Once they reached their adult forms, they grew only a little bit more. They never got any bigger than the ones that greeted me at the bottom of the elevator on that very first day. And, regardless of their long lives (Up to a hundred thousand standard years!), they never got any more mentaly mature than the level of a five year old human. They had originaly come in space ships from somewhere in an entirely different galaxy.
But all of this doesn't matter to the story much, at the moment.
As I said, it was six months that I searched the planet for either Samus or some indication of where she had gone.
I had been about to give up when, finaly, I found what I was looking for.
Unfortunately, it wasn't Samus that I found, as I would have hoped. Instead, it was a computer data storage unit.
I took the unit and went straight home, too excited to even bother reading it's contents.
When I arrived home hours early, my wife immediately knew that my searching of Torka was over.
"So," Jerry said excitedly, "what did you find? No, wait! I'll call dad and you can tell everything when we're both listening."
Once my father-in-law was listening, I said what I had and hooked the unit up to my computer. It had a single file labled "Mission Report." I opened the file up and began to read.
~*-*~
July 20, 4500 PSS
The unthinkable has happened: The ursanoid Trokans have allied themselves with the vile Space Pirates. A mass exodus of all Trokans has left the planet void of sentient life.
The Trokans took to space in ships and brought all of their technology with them. This includes the society-controling megacomputer they call Father.
I have tapped into their navigating computers and found that they are headed for the planet called Kennich. I am going to follow them. Even if I have to go through alpha-space to get there.
The Discovery
The crabs insisted on teaching me everything about themselves during the six months (SIX MONTHS!) that it took me to search their planet. They would walk along beside me as I searched and talk my ear off about anything under the sun. They even taught me about their methods of reproduction (which, lucky me, they even insisted on showing me). The little crabs, it turned out, were actualy the adults. The young looked more like crayfish. Once they reached their adult forms, they grew only a little bit more. They never got any bigger than the ones that greeted me at the bottom of the elevator on that very first day. And, regardless of their long lives (Up to a hundred thousand standard years!), they never got any more mentaly mature than the level of a five year old human. They had originaly come in space ships from somewhere in an entirely different galaxy.
But all of this doesn't matter to the story much, at the moment.
As I said, it was six months that I searched the planet for either Samus or some indication of where she had gone.
I had been about to give up when, finaly, I found what I was looking for.
Unfortunately, it wasn't Samus that I found, as I would have hoped. Instead, it was a computer data storage unit.
I took the unit and went straight home, too excited to even bother reading it's contents.
When I arrived home hours early, my wife immediately knew that my searching of Torka was over.
"So," Jerry said excitedly, "what did you find? No, wait! I'll call dad and you can tell everything when we're both listening."
Once my father-in-law was listening, I said what I had and hooked the unit up to my computer. It had a single file labled "Mission Report." I opened the file up and began to read.
~*-*~
July 20, 4500 PSS
The unthinkable has happened: The ursanoid Trokans have allied themselves with the vile Space Pirates. A mass exodus of all Trokans has left the planet void of sentient life.
The Trokans took to space in ships and brought all of their technology with them. This includes the society-controling megacomputer they call Father.
I have tapped into their navigating computers and found that they are headed for the planet called Kennich. I am going to follow them. Even if I have to go through alpha-space to get there.