Chapter Four: Curiosity and the Cat

The captain turned up on the bridge shortly after I did and insisted on being given all of the duplicate keys. I think he got most of them, at that, but it was at this point that we were distracted by what was going on out at the exploration site. Since the captain had carefully ordered that no one was to disturb, or especially to sit in the chair on the dais, Sawalaro, her curiosity finally getting the upper hand had sat ON it.

And quickly sprang back off of it again, with a glazed expression. Seems that the thing increased the psionic capabilities of anyone using it for as long as they did so, and did so exponentially for every second of operation. With all the new data being piled on her each second, she'd been lucky to keep her sanity. At least the effect did not seem to last once she got off again. Predictably, the captain ordered everyone out of the building.

Elsewhere, the explorers found a skeleton. Sort of. Well, a couple of bones. Fortunately, they also found what appeared to be a library with five paintings of the locals, who resembled six foot teddy bears (mini-Bjora?), and LOTS of books. 760 of the latter were removed very carefully so as not to let them fall apart, and brought back to the ship.

And, after debriefing, Sawalaro went straight to the brig. The captain ordered the rest of us not to smuggle anything in to her, which is probably why Ailurowlurr, having already sneaked her several keys to the brig (don't ask me where she got them (snicker)) promptly retired to the food facilities out of sight of the captain and concocted an entire plateful of fancy hors d'oerves, then brought them down to the brig. She was about to hand them to Sawalaro, when the captain, who'd been watching the whole thing from the brig surveillance equipment remotes hit a switch, causing the door to the next cell to swing open. Ailurowlurr took the hint, gave half of the hors d'oerves to Sawalaro, and proceeded into the next cell with the rest of them. I hope she didn't mind Sawalaro's flute practice.

We finished mapping the planet and departed, to spot something about eighteen feet long and missilish, with a stylized bird figure painted on it, falling into the system on a hyperbolic curve. Tracing its path backwards, we figured it might have come from the first system we looked at. At any rate, while we didn't know for sure what it was, it did give off rather more radiation than the background, so we settled for nudging it into a stable orbit with the tractors and left it. Let someone else try to figure it out if Fleet was really that curious.

Shortly thereafter, it became apparent that Srilurow wasn't the only one who'd bugged the captain's quarters, for the captain returned to his cabin to find a large sample of Bjoran pornographic art on one wall of the corridor, speakers inside his room broadcasting bawdy Bjoran music, plus a small, but active device squirting Bjoran pheromones into the air. The captain may or may not have been amused, but he DID promptly give his cabin a thorough going over, removing ALL of the bugs, speakers, cameras etc., etc. Sigh. He also found Srilurow's device for spreading a nice little cloud of harmless, but stenchful smoke (rather like burning insulation) which cloud was promptly gobbled up by the air filters.

We didn't see much of interest on the way back with the exception of six small ships we didn't recognize - we left them alone, they left us alone; plus an Altani armored scout with whom we exchanged howdies. It can be fun to see the expression on an Altani's face when s/he realizes there's a H'Reli on the other end of the conversation.

A few hours from our destination, the captain decided to hold suit drill, presumably with malice aforethought, for the suits smelled even worse than usual. Of course, none of us said anything, with the exception of Srilurow, who promptly asked "Captain, have you been putting air freshener in the suits? Mine smells much better than that marauder armor did."

When drill was over, it soon became obvious that the smell was going to linger in our fur for quite a while, even for Aryialo who'd noticed the stench and switched quickly into the suit in his cabin locker. So we all took to hanging around the captain until he got sufficiently annoyed to order us to go wash up. Which we did, and noticed that, thanks to the suits, everyone but Aryialo, Lirarl (in sick bay), and the two in the brig now had tails brightly colored in various shades of photographic dye (mine was cyan). Which gave me an idea, so I got hold of various dyes and, rather than try and dye my tail to match the rest of me, patterned the rest of my fur. This caught on beautifully, and the good ship Boomerang soon had the most TechnicolorTM crew in space.

The rest of the trip was rather hectic, what with various members of the crew trying to pull something equally interesting on the captain, who wasn't venturing out of his cabin without his suit, but soon we were sufficiently busy with approach that nobody had time for anything sneaky. I did have hopes for the frictionless goop I spread on the captain's acceleration couch, but when he came out for final approach he wasn't wearing his suit for a change and managed to notice it before he sat down. Oh well. It did cause him to go back to his cabin for the landing, so after we touched down, Aryialo and I sloshed the rest of the frictionless lubricant down the hall outside of his door. I hear it took him an hour to get out...

And that, my friend, is how this fad got started. Now, would you prefer your ears pink or international orange?

THE END