Chapter Three: Round Two

The first planet of the next system was a scorched bit of rock entirely too close to the primary for my tastes. We took the usual mess of pictures and departed for planet number three taking three urp jumps.

Having tired of physical practical jokes for the moment, I next acquired a bottle of beer from Srilurow when he wasn't looking (he was spending most of his free time bugging the captain's quarters while the latter was on the bridge), wrapped it up nicely, put a tag on it addressed to the captain, and left it on his acceleration couch. Where in due course he found it and unwrapped it with such caution that I was almost sorry I HADN'T used contact paper. Eying the enclosed bottle as though he expected it to explode momentarily, he thanked us all, patted Aryialo on the head and removed the beer carefully to his cabin. I hoped he would have great fun trying to figure out what was wrong with it since, unless Srilurow was booby-trapping his private stock, nothing was. Mind games, anyone?

The planet looked like something one might actually care to live on. Certainly someone had, for a temperature anomaly we noted from orbit proved to be a ruined city which was especially good at soaking up the sun's heat and reradiating it at night. We landed five miles away, as usual. I glanced at the captain, hopefully.

"Forget it."

Sigh.

The exploration team consisted of two grav sleds; one containing Wailuro and Ailurowlurr, the other Sawalaro and a lot of equipment. All three were in scout armor (the lightest form of powered armor), while Srilurow, who wasn't even going along, was ordered to stand by in marauder armor (two more steps along the scale between suit and ship) at the ship in case of trouble. Once again, they carried cameras so we could see what was going on. There was little to see but buildings and indecipherable street signs (all duly recorded), until Wailuro spotted a car parked on one of the streets. He investigated, pulling at the door which promptly and enthusiastically came off in his hand.

I glanced over at Rowlaow. "Think the captain's been giving lessons?"

I was universally ignored as Wailuro reported a life form inside which closely resembled as twelve legged tarantula, and attempted to catch it in a specimen container. Skitter, skitter, skitter, WHAP, skitter, skitter, skitter, WHAP... it took him three tries to catch the thing, by which time most of us were betting on the spider.


A couple of hours later, they reached the center of the city, to find a building in somewhat better shape than those they'd seen earlier. It was about twenty or thirty feet tall, with huge double doors which showed no interest in opening until someone poured penetrating oil on the frozen hinges. Inside, the building appeared more like three hundred feet tall, leading us eventually to the conclusion that power sufficient to operate holographic projectors was still on.

Next morning, the exploration team went back out to the building, suited as before (with poor Srilurow still standing by in marauder armor, back at the ship) and investigated, finding inside a central dais with a head-setted chair on it, in which latter Ailurowlurr had to be prevented from sitting. General poking around located a shaft beneath the dais leading down into a lot a gadgetry associated with a power plant, as well as a lot of little thingies closely resembling robotic versions of that spider (not that there's much difference, at that). So they closed it up and continued looking around.

Something of a lull having come up, I decided that this was a good time to slip the goop Lirarl had given me (stuff starts as a powder, but absorbs enough from the air to get really slimy in a few hours) into the captain's bed. Unfortunately, the captain proved to be ON it when I opened the door with my copy of the key. Oops...

"Hi there", I observed brightly. "You seem to have left your key in the hall and I thought I'd bring it back to you."

He silently fished out his key and showed it to me.

"Well, I found this one in the corridor..."

This met with a notable lack of belief, and the captain promptly confiscated the key and started in on a rather comprehensive lecture on the subject of my perfidious doings. I stood there admiring his oratory for a while, then handed him a dagger and exposed my throat. He broke off in mid-harangue with the most beautiful double-take I'd seen in a long time, paused a second, then took the dagger, grinned, said something about that not being necessary and held up one hand. His claws, unlike the dagger, not being rubber, I thoughtfully went elsewhere.