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 Addendum                                     Issue# 19  -  30th March 2002
 URL: http://www.adden.tr.cx/
 Author : Steak, a creature in his own right.
========================= Thayky and Froskey ===============================

Addendum presents "Thayky and Froskey" a short science fiction story by 
steak. I hope you enjoy it.

In the deepest darkest corner of the universe floated a small tiny space 
craft. The NXS-Snark, a research vessel speeded by.  The small brown ship 
carried a crew of approximately eleven people on board. Most if not all 
knew what they were doing at most of the time. In the engine room stood a 
type four hyper-drive engine, capable of going about twice the sped of 
light if need be. However the average speed for this ship was about 1.5 
times the speed of light. And that was the speed that is traveled at on 
a usual day, like today. If it was not for the some times angry green ugly 
aliens that showed up from time to time it would also have no scratches 
on it.

The ship had left home base quite a few years ago and so far had made contact 
with exactly 43 worlds, only 15 of them however had been found to support 
life, they had now been exploring a sector that was practically empty, 
mostly only gas planets orbiting the odd sun here and there. They had not 
come across anything interesting in about five months.

On the bridge of the Snark sat the captain, Captain Slope Thayky. He 
regarded the day as a particularly un eventful one. A space cloud and 
solar flare had been the only thing to catch his imagination the entire 
day. He was bored. He often looked out his view screen and tried to play 
join the dots, at this particular instant it seemed to make a kind of 
face laughing at him. He felt bad about this, but before he could think 
about it much more the view screen changed as it did every 13.3 seconds. 
This was due to the hyper drive, going past the speed of light meant that 
before the image of space got to the view screen it had already changed. 
There was no way around this, at the exact speed they were going it all 
resulted in a short brake of about 13.3 seconds between changes , just 
long enough to make out a shape suddenly to have it disappear.

This was another thing that Thayky felt bad about, sometimes he would 
sit in his quarters and try and draw the shape he half saw in the view 
screen. This went some way to lightening his mood, but all too often he 
would just get bored. He thought that tonight he might try and trick the 
rest of the bridge staff into thinking that it was already clock-off 
time and go and lie down and get some much needed shut eye. 'yes'  he 
thought to himself 'the best ways is bed ways'.

he had just stood up and was about to give the change-over order when 
his view screen let up with a different color than before. He looked 
up and what should he see but a new planet, they hadn’t come across 
one in a while this one was dark and dingy, it had some blue mixed 
into it in places but most of it was a dark dull grey-ey black. How 
boring he thought, most of it looks marine anyway, there is probably 
nothing to see down there. He felt the ship come to a halt, 'Bugger', 
he thought again, 'That’s torn it'.

His executive science officer turned round, and explained " A new 
planet sir!" "No point in stating the obvious is there, look I'm 
very tired. I just want to go to bed, we clock off in half an hour, 
can we please 'forget' about this, I need to sleep. I don't want to 
go off exploring now" The captain uttered

The young science officer yelped "Are you serious sir? We haven’t 
come across something like this in a long time, and if I remind you 
we are on a science mission, so technically you are already exploring. 
Besides special order 147 states that we are to explore every planet 
that has any hope of supporting life, in attempt to make contact with 
other species. If we don't explore this planet, sir I should relieve 
you off command and assume command myself, sir. "

The captain gave him a good long hard look. "Yes I know what that 
bloody order says, all I am saying is that why does it have to come 
and rear its ugly head every time I want to go to sleep. Doesn't 
matter, when the results get here, we will make our decision" The 
captain looked at his readout monitor, the results of the bio scan 
were just coming in, these cheered him up "It doesn't matter, look 
the whole place is flooded with radiation, nothing could survive 
down there, no life signs. It’s in the middle of a nuclear winter" 
he stated to feel better, but it was short lived.

"it seems that it was now always like that, the place used to have 
a livable atmosphere, it only got like that by some outside force, 
it’s not natural. I am also making out some building structures down 
there which means it used to have life of some sort. We should check 
it out; we have environmental suits for that sort of climate"

The captain was now trying to find any excuse not to go down there, 
it sounded like a horrible place "look" he said "the place is a 
ghost town" whatever’s down there is now long dead. Have a look 
at how desolate this part of the universe is, when those people 
died they probably thought they were still alone in the universe, 
there will be nothing of any value down there it's just a primitive 
little place"

The scientist had an answer for that as well " I know, which is 
even more of a reason to go exploring, think what they must had 
developed on their own without the help from the rest of the universe, 
it must be very individual, we are the first people to go past this 
place in hundreds of years, just for the historical value, it must 
be worth a look. And don't you think that this entire civilization 
deserves to be remembered in some kind of way"

The captain was not going to win. "all right froksey, you win we'll 
go down”

They placed the Snark in orbit around the planet and loaded themselves 
into a small two man shuttle and headed off into the atmosphere. As 
the little ship got lower and lower it passed though all kinds of 
extreme temperatures, however the inhabitants were kept at a nice warm 
temperature, rather like one of those autumn days where it’s just nice 
to sit in a deck chair and read a book.

Froksey was looking at his view screen, "I think I will park her down 
on that little land mass just there, at the top of the planet"

The captain looked at it, it seemed mostly flat with a some small 
mountains, it wasn't to big like some and it wasn't too small like 
some others. "Yeah that looks good, see if you can't find a nice 
flat place to put her down.

Froksey studied his output, ”it seems most of the landmass is flat, 
there looks like what used to be some primitive agriculture there. 
The cities are mostly around the edge, I can put her down close to 
one if you want, how bout the highest city, it's probably the most 
important"

Thayky told him that it would be fine and to wake him up as soon as 
the ship landed, after which he slipped off into blissful unconsciousness. 
He awoke to find the ship on the ground but froksey was know where 
to be seen, the door was open so he went out side, it was mostly tree 
life. The place did not look that dead, it looked nice in fact the sun 
was shining in a blue sky and it was warm there was no evidence of 
radioactivity, he checked his giger meter, not a click, something was 
not right. There was a noise, a bit like a roar then something that 
sounded like screaming. He looked off into where the noise was coming 
from, a grouping of bushes "Froksey?" he shouted "is that you?" 
Suddenly this hideous monster with huge fangs and slobbering vile ness 
everywhere came out of the bushes and lunged at him shouting "Thayky, 
Thayky, Wake up Thayky"

he woke up with a jolt, it was froksey, they had landed. 

He put on his environmental suit, a uncomfortable thing, with very 
little air it immediately made him feel very hot. They loaded themselves 
into the airlock and let themselves out side into the alien world.

It was like none other they had ever seen before; they were smack bang 
in one of the alien cities. It was wonderful, huge rectangular buildings 
that reached up into the sky stretching all the way off into the 
distance. The whole place was totally ruined of course buildings where 
half destroyed and everything was totally radioactive. 

Thayky looked up into the sky, huge black clouds covered the space where 
the sun would be casting everything in a black shadow,  

“It seems to be the middle of the day, looks like the clouds are filled 
with some sort of oil, it’s blocking out the sun, The radioactivity is 
on par with some kind of radioactive weapon that has gone off” said 
froksey

“That’s a hell of I thing, you want to start exploring now?” he said 
in a sarcastic tone

They moved into the nearest building, it took a little while to get in 
through the rubble, but they managed it. Inside was a vast lobby of some 
sort with bits of the building all over the floor, there were bits of wire 
and poles of some sort of metal that neither Froksey or Thayky had seen 
before. In the corner was what could pass as a staircase, so they ascended

On the first floor was what looked like a long kind of corridor with recesses 
in the wall every now and again, they walked down the corridor being careful 
not to stand in anything that registered as unsafe, they went over to one of 
the recesses, that part of the wall was in bad shape it was rotting and was 
soft to the touch. Froksey pushed and it came away in his hand, the whole 
part of the wall just fell in.

Inside the recess was another sort of room with many rooms leading off from 
it. Inside the room was some moldy pieces of material of some sort and lots 
of equipment. They both went in, there was equipment everywhere. Froksey 
went over to a sort of cupboard thing in the corner and with great 
difficulty opened it. Inside was nothing he was rather disappointed. He was 
about to kick himself when he heard Thayky shouting

“Froksey get over here look at this” 

He ran over to see what Thayky was so intrigued with. He was looking at a 
sort of boxey thing with a screen and a sort of keyboard sitting on a desk.

“It’s a computer froksey, I’ve tried to load it up but it doesn’t work I 
don’t know why”

Froksey looked around “none of this stuff works the power circuits went out 
long ago, I can probably power it with my portable generator though, I’m 
not promising anything but it may work”

“Do it Froksey!” shouted the captain

“yesir” replied froksey

he got out his portable generator. It was a small little rectangular device 
about the size of a matchbox with some green and red lights on it, it was 
used mostly to power the environmental suits however it had more than enough 
power to drive a primitive computer as well. He plugged it into the computer 
and tried to load it up, there was a hiss, a crackle and a spurt, then some 
sparks and fire before the whole thing died down.

“The power circuits are fried, they won’t work” stated froksey, “I can try 
to access the memory banks directly without powering the entire thing” He said.

He got out his personal computer and affixed it to the side of the primitive 
machine.

“The data’s there all right, I’m downloading it now” after a few seconds 
the little machine lit up “it’s done I’m checking the banks now” after a 
while he said that what was left was mostly incoherent rubbish but there 
was some audio and image files left.

“lets get those audio files” said Thayky

Froksey played on of the audio files. The most beautiful sounds came 
flowing through the little speakers attached to Froksey’s computer. It 
was music, alien music, it was amazing. It worked on Froksey and Thayky 
on so many levels, as soon as they heard it they were instantly at piece 
with each other and it made them feel so good. There was something that 
sounded like a vocal and then some other kind of instruments. The music 
was wonderful.

“I wonder what these creatures looked like” said Thayky

“I can try and load up the image files” It took him a second but when he 
did he was amazed at what he saw. It was one of the aliens, it was such 
a strange beast, he had never seen anything like it before. He handed 
the computer to Thayky.

Thayky turned the little machine over where it lay in his tentacle. 
The machine lit up with light and the alien stared him right in the face, 
it was pinkish brown mostly in color although it seemed to have some kind 
of clothing over it ‘self. It had four kind of tentacle things protruding 
from it but were thicker than Thayky’s with feelers on the end. It had the 
most interesting kind of head, circular in shape, with a large mouth that 
occupied most of the bottom of it. It only had two eyes looking deep 
into Thayky’s and some kind of fur on the top of the head 

The creature looked nothing like them and Thayky was quite disgusted


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 Addendum                                     Issue# 19  -  30th March 2002
 (C) Steak March 2002
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