In 42, the atmosphere had calmed down pretty soon after Tangea had disappeared from sight. Booster had immediately gone into the cargo room to take a secret nap. XR had found a spare space suit for Mira who had shivered from cold; it had namely been not so warm in the starship with only a light dress on.
Buzz had consulted about their destination with Commander Nebula, via the wrist communicator. It was a real drawback that the space-ship, which Zurg and Warp had stolen, seemed to have some kind of interferator shield that prevented the following of the energy tracks.
Commander Nebula had suggested that they should check out the planet Saunamakkara. At first Buzz had protested; it was so far away and so odd. Why would Emperor Zurg have gone there? But then the Commander had pointed out:
"Remember the time when Warp was still our friend -or the time when we thought so. He often amused us by telling about some friends on that distant planet. Don't you remember? According to his words, those friends had very funny customs -like eating some food called 'mämmi' in the spring –but which looked more like –well, poo."
Buzz remembered and gave a laugh, as the pleasant memories filled his mind for a moment. Well, at least Saunamakkara would be a good place to start.
And now, after two and half days, Team Lightyear was finally in the outskirts of their destination planet. It was a place of thousands of clear-watered lakes and thick coniferous forests. Its inhabitants were rather silent and peculiar, at least totally different from the most common races, like Tangeans and so on. As to their behavior, they were somewhat barbaric-like, but the truth was that their technology and knowledge was far more advanced than what was the general level.
42 landed on a soft hummock-land, at some 50 feet distance from a large wooden house. All the rangers stepped out carefully, and felt for the atmosphere. The sun was quite low, but warmed their faces still pleasantly. A sudden blow of wind waved Mira's long hair in the air.
"How peaceful and harmonic", she whispered, closed her eyes and smiled.
"Hmph, we have a mission to accomplish, here! Let us not get sentimental!" XR murmured, as if he would have known what true sentimentality was.
"Let's go and ask if somebody in that house has seen or heard about Warp and Zurg", Buzz suggested.
The Team began to walk along a narrow path, which was covered with needles of fir and some pine twigs. Soon they got into the garden and Buzz headed straight towards the front door. The others followed him slowly and some way behind; they did not like the silence that suddenly was around them. Only one distant nightingale sang its longing tweet.
Buzz ringed the doorbell four times, only to understand that there was nobody to open.
"Where can everybody be?" wondered XR, "It is too late to be out anymore –nearly eight p.m. Uh, at least I would not venture into those shadowy forests at this time; these are very dangerous grounds, you see."
"Oh, don't scare us, XR. Only what could happen here, in this beautiful garden? And look, there is a grill, with a fire! See, the people cannot be far away."
Suddenly, the team heard distant but horrifying voices: yells, evil laughter, and yells again. They came from a little dark wooden windowless shed –which actually reminded more like a cottage, for it was made of logs.
"Chill! Did you hear that?!" Buzz whispered.
"Of course we did!" XR said, rather sharply. "I told you, these are dangerous grounds."
Mira was terrified: "What if... What if Emperor Zurg and Warp are here... And have taken the poor people as their hostages?"
"You may be right! It must be them! Oh, we are so good trackers!" Booster was excited.
"We have no choice but to attack and free those tortured souls!" Buzz tuned his wrist laser. "But let's not haste; the Emperor and Warp don't know that we are here –at least, I hope so."
"Do you suggest a surprise attack?" Booster inquired.
"That was my plan –unless you guys have some better ones. No? Well, then… Mira, you go with XR. Approach the log cabin silently from the forest side. I and Booster will take the lake side."
Mira and XR began to sneak behind the little building. Soon they had to step out of the garden and into the forest, since half of the shed was built on mossy ground, under three tall spruces. XR had difficulties with moving, because his caterpillars jammed all the time; the ground vegetation was definitely not making his way any easier. Mira, instead, tried to survive silently trough the little bush branches and young trees that scratched her suit. She was successful –until she got a sticky spider web towards her face.
"Eeks! Iiiih! Help, XR!" She flung her arms about the air in panic, and tried to wipe the web off.
"Hush, Mira! Calm down, it is nothing but a harmless web. Hush now, a little more silence, please. Now... I saw the spider fall down already." XR tried to make her silent.
After a minute, Mira calmed down, but still could not help wiping the no-more-existent web from her forehead and eyes every now and then. All in all, she and XR finally could continue their way.
"I hope the Emperor did not hear your screams, Mira!" XR whispered, as they now had got very close to the wooden wall.
"I hope so, too. Buzz would be very angry if I would get caught!"
"Yes, I would!" a half-whisper came behind their backs, "I came here because I thought something serious had happened to you!"
"Buzz! Oh, I am so sorry! But you know how I hate..."
"Hush, everybody, the noise begins again!" Booster snapped.
Indeed, a long chill went down the backs of the team-members. They heard the horrible laughter again, and then some silent mumbling –perhaps Zurg and Warp were negotiating what evil things to do to their hostages. And what was the worst of all, they soon began to hear voices of slapping.
"Oh craters, how eerie! Zurg is slogging them! The poor people!" Booster was as pale as a ghost.
"This is like straight from my nightmares!" shuddered Mira.
And even the whipping was not enough, for the next they heard was a man's yell and a silent hiss. Actually three silent hisses in a row. Team Lightyear was silent. They all thought of the same thing: Emperor Zurg was torturing the people by burning marks on their skin, as if they did to the cattle in some parts of the galaxy.
"We must help them immediately!" Mira gathered courage.
The others nodded. They had to put a final end to the Emperor's cruelties.
All the four prepared to attack. They had gathered in front of the little door and tuned up their weapons. The atmosphere was both tensed and horrified.
"Alright! Close your visors, rangers, this might get very dangerous. When I count to three, we run trough that door and surprise the Emperor. Booster and XR, you concentrate on Warp Darkmatter, if also he is there. Now... One... Two.... Three!"
Team Lightyear crushed trough the door, accompanied by a loud war-shout. But what they faced, was not what they had expected.
They were standing in the middle of a little, thorough wooden room, which was decorated from two wall-sides with long, three-level, wooden benches. On the highest bench were sitting two red-skinned men, puffing from heat and surprise, and four scared ladies, grabbed on each other's arms. The whole group had their swim-suits on, and they sat on towels. The humidity of the air made the rangers' visors all non-transparent, and soon they could not see anything behind them.
"Mitäs tää nyt on? Eihän nyt oo vappu vai onko? Mitkäs ihmeen avaruuskostyymit teillä on päällä, häh?"
"Ei ne taida ymmärtää sua, Janne. Kato nyt, ne taitaa olla ruottalaisia. Ei kellään muilla olis sinistä naamaa. Ne taitaa olla tulossa jäkismatsista."
"Peijakas, mitäs ne nyt meidän saunaan törmäsi? Kuka ossaa enklantia?"
Buzz, Mira, Booster and XR listened to the odd blabber in wonder. They stood rigid, because of their amazement and insecurity. Buzz was the first one to put his visor down and to look again at their peculiar audience. But when he did this, the true heat of the air struck him and made him cover his face with hands.
"Aargh! Mira and others, do not remove your shields!"
"Buzz, are you alright?" Mira screamed in panic. "Is the air poisoned?"
"Blast, no, but darn hot! At least 140 Celsius degrees!"
The whipping began again. Buzz tried to see between his fingers. The ladies seemed to have recovered from their fright and had now begun to slap their backs with bunches of some branches, probably birch.
"How weird. Mira, those people endure this sufferable heat like it was nothing to them. And they hit themselves with branches. That is something you don't see every day. I wonder if they are perfectly sane?"
Soon, a couple of hisses followed. From a heap of stones, gathered in a metal vat in the corner, rose steam. The other man had just thrown water on them. Under the vat, there was a cracking fire, which obviously kept the stones gleaming hot –so that the water could evaporate from them better.
A man with a beer-can in his hand cleared his throat and spoke with odd accent:
"Have you come to sauna with us? If you are from planet Swe'Den, you should understand by now that it is not polite just to bump in, without any warning. We could have got heart-attacks."
XR had also put his shield down, now, for he was very curious to see what happened. The heat did not strike him at all; once again a good reason to be a robot. He looked at Buzz, but the Captain seemed not yet to be ready to speak –so he took the conversation in his own hands.
"We are not Swe'Densians, we come from Tangea." XR began, and got six pairs of evaluating eyes targeted on him. "And we thought... that you were in trouble. You kept so loud a noise that we assumed that Emperor Zurg was here to torture you." He continued, trying to sound even somewhat correct.
A long horse-laugh filled the room.
"Emperor Zurg, indeed! No, we were just telling jokes! And Jaakkima here was singing the song 'Mickey Mouse in distress at sea'. He is good in sea monster's role, you see."
"Oh... We were then mistaken, a little, I see..." Buzz ventured to breathe the hot air. He also had begun to endure it. But he was very embarrassed.
"Team Lightyear, let us go out of here. This is nothing but a sauna-room, and we are disturbing these people's bath."
XR pushed Mira and Booster out; those two still could not see anything behind the steamy visors. Buzz told them to put them down.
The brown-bearded man, who had just spoken with XR, followed them out. He had caught the subject 'Emperor Zurg' and wanted to know more.
"Wait, rangers. Who are you, for dusty meteoroid's sake? Don't go away just yet! My name is Janne Nurminen, I am the owner of this household."
"Buzz Lightyear of Star Command."
Mira eyed Mr. Nurminen from head to toes and saw that he was friendly-looking –and therefore encouraged herself to chat.
"Mr. Nurminen, we are Team Lightyear. We are the ones who conquered Planet Z and put Emperor Zurg and his apprentices behind jail-bars."
He looked at her in wonder and then smiled.
"Aha, so you must be princess Mira Nova? I have read a lot about Team Lightyear's heroic doings from Galaxy Net Magazine."
"Well, we are quite famous…" Mira tittered.
The man grinned and then changed his expression to somewhat more serious.
"May I ask one thing?"
"Sure… What is it?" Buzz began to dig a pencil out of somewhere. He expected Mr. Nurminen to ask for a signature. But he was wrong:
"You just said that you have imprisoned the Emperor. Now… If he is in prison… why are you here to find him?"
Buzz let the pencil be, again embarrassed, when XR laughed:
"Mira did not tell the whole truth. We actually did imprison Zurg –but he escaped. With Warp Darkmatter."
Mr. Nurminen's face turned into a merry smirk.
"Ah, Warp! Now there is a good fellow!"
"'A good fellow'? What do you mean?" Mira looked at him surprised.
"He is a darn good fisher! Like the other summer, we…"
"So you know him?"
"Yes, to be sure! Like I was saying, it is a real pity he hasn't shown up for a long time. He got a twenty-pound salmon last summer."
"So… You are sure that he has not shown his face on this planet… say, in the last couple of days?"
"Sorry to say, but he seems to have abandoned us. I would be the first one to whom he would call if he was coming here. And I have not heard of him since… last winter."
Team Lightyear was disappointed. But in XR's mind, there was always space for doubt.
"Why would we believe you? If he is your friend, you would probably lie to us about him. How can we trust you? I bet he is hiding right now somewhere in your house."
Janne Nurminen looked at him coldly:
"Even though he is my fishing-friend, I do not accept every thing he does. I am on Galactic Alliance's side."
"Yeah, as if we would believe that!"
"To prove my words true, I tell you I have a sixteen-year-old son who will some day become a ranger like you. He now studies his last year in the Space Ranger Academy. Pate Nurminen is his name."
"Oh yes, I have heard of him." Mira sighed. "He won the jiu-jitsu-master –competition a couple of months ago."
"And if this is not proof enough… " Mr. Nurminen glanced at XR, "…you are by all means free to search. Go on, turn my house upside down. But I fear you will be just losing your time."
"Dang it! This planet was our first and only lead, and it was wrong. Any suggestions where to continue? Blast!" Buzz murmured.
Mira played with her red curls and turned her blue eyes elsewhere. XR whistled and began to wipe some imaginary dust out of his joints. Booster truly tried to come up with some idea but got not a single. However, the suggestion came from Janne Nurminen:
"Listen, fellows… Warp kills me if he finds out that I have been blabbering, but anyway… I will help you out."
"Do you know where he is, then?" Mira asked, disbelief reflecting from her voice.
"Is a small meteoroid-planet Pulu in Kenkäshow System familiar to you?"
"No, but it can soon be. What about it?" Buzz' interest had woken up.
"I and Warp have a hunting-box there, in the valley between two of the highest mountains, the Twin and the Peak. You know, in addition to his fishing-skills, Darkmatter is also good in elk-hunting. Like last autumn, when he got this moose, which…"
"Thank you, Mr. Nurminen." Mira interrupted, for she was not at all interested in hearing about their last-autumn game. "It is very much possible that Warp has led Zurg there. We shall head there next."
Also Buzz thanked Mr. Nurminen. His help had been really valuable in their impasse.
"I appreciate that you put your friendship with Mr. Darkmatter in danger this way. But you can be sure that he will never hear that this lead came from your lips."
"Yes, I would like this little conversation to remain secret, indeed."
Booster yawned long and made XR look at his digital timer. Only then the team-members became aware of that it was already late, almost night. The still-burning sun had distracted them. It namely happened that in the middle of the summer, Saunamakkara did not have a real night at all. The sun was up 24 hours.
"Let's get going, fellows!" Buzz began to lead his friends towards their star-ship. "And thank you again, Mr. Nurminen."
In the final hurry, Mira got some sausage and lemonade from Mr. Nurminen's wife for a light supper with her. It soon proved itself to a great thought, because all the Team-members found themselves dead hungry as soon as they got back into their starship.
So did 42 leave Saunamakkara's neighborhood. After the meal, Buzz had put the autopilot on. The whole team had cuddled into blankets in order to get some sleep. 42 was happily on its way to the other edge of the galaxy.
…to be continued…..