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The tourist guide Chapter 2 by Master of the Travel 3 (critique requested)

The tourist guide Chapter 2

The tourist guide

Chapter 2

made by MTT3

<<<Note: If not mentioned differently, all persons of that story are talking German. I just wrote that story in English to provide it to a wider audience.>>>

---Four Solstan-months earlier.---

The dark void between Mars and Earth. There was nothing spectacular in this immense space, only a small short-period comet was heading its way towards the sun. The comet would have went on on its way if not suddenly an enormous gravitational shockwave together with a burst of high-energy particles had hit the three kilometer big ice-ball. The particles vaporized its surface, creating some short-living Cherenkov-flashes on the comet. This caused a certain amount of thrust which, together with the gravitational shockwave would change the comet's course that much that it would hit the southern regions of Mars in about two years. But this happened totally unnoticed by the crew of the nearly five hundred meter long space ship that just emerged from subspace.

"Status report. Quick!" Crew-Commandant Urloss ordered.

"Reactors one to twenty - Stable.”

"Reactors twenty to forty - Stable."

"Reactors forty to sixty - Stable."

"Navigation - operational."

"Communication - operational."

"Life support - all systems blue."

"Sick bay here. No wounded reported."

"Engine room here. Our Subspace-cutter worked as intended and should be operational again in no time."

A great sigh of relief escaped everyone on the bridge and Urloss' tail relaxed, when he heard the last report. They didn't want to end like the last expedition, where they had to wait for nearly a year to be resupplied to repair the Subspace-Cutter, the device that made FTL flight possible at all.

"Well, looks like we are still in one piece." The commandant pushed the red button at his intercom to inform the entire crew. "This is Crew-Commandant Urloss. I want to inform you that the transition had been a full success and all ship systems are still operational. I want you to proceed with your current work. I want everything and everybody to be in good shape. This will be great moment for our civilization and especially for you. It will be the first time that we will make contact with a species that is technologically nearly as advanced as ours. If the Sacred Ancestors want it to be, there should be no problems when we contact them. Commandant Urloss out."

He lent back in his seat and tried to relax for a moment. It was not that easy since he was secured by several straps that prevented him from flying around in the zero-G environment.

"Officer Thralos, have you already been able to make out the position of the human's planet?"

When he got no answer he looked back, now noticing that his communication officer was hastily switching from one frequency to another, changing the position of the antennas on the outer hull of their ship and doing other things he couldn't see from his position.

"I thought you said we don't have any problems with the communication systems."

The green and brown striped lizard looked back to his Commandant, obviously worried.

"I don't understand this, Commandant. My instruments are telling me that there are no malfunctions in all six communications systems. But I can't track any signals. It's like....as if there is nobody out there."

The earth-brown Commandant was obviously surprised by that statement. He undid the straps that secured him to his seat and slowly turned himself around to face the communication officer. He gently pushed himself off his seat and slowly sailed through the dry air towards the the communication terminal.

He watched the officer for several minutes over his shoulder, one hand at the zero-G seat. He could see that they were really not tracking any audio or audio-visual transmissions.

"Navigation, are we in the right solar system?"

"Yes, we are. The spectral specifications of the star are the same we diagnosed at our home-system."

The Commandant thoughts wandered around for a few seconds then he ordered: "Officer Nimros try to track the planet visually. I'm in the engine room."

He headed to the transportation-cell and grabbed one of the handles that were protruding from a small rail at the wall. As soon as his grip tightened around the handle it began to move forward, pulling him to the middle part of the ship where the Subspace-Cutter was located.

After one minuted he was in the engine room where was looking for his main engineer Shricktas. He found him inside a maintenance shaft, only his two clawed feet and his tail were visible.

Commandant Urloss knocked at the metal panel at the side of the maintenance shaft to get the attention of his officer.

"Officer Shricktas, I need you."

The engineer stopped his work and shoved himself out of the shaft. One hand remained at a handle beside the shaft while the other hand went from the left side of his chest to the right, showing the spots of his two hearts as a salute.

<<"Commandant Urloss, how may I help you?">> he hissed in his mother tongue.

"First of all you should practice your skills in human language. If we will meet them I want everybody on this ship to have at least some basic skills, so everybody should be able to answer their questions they surely will have."

Shricktas growled quietly. He was able to talk the human language but he tried to avoid to use it whenever possible. Although the syntax was similar to their language, because of their different anatomy it was a bit difficult to pronounce several sounds of this language.

"Yes, of course, my Commandant. But...how can I help you? I'm sure you you didn't come to our dirty machine room just to check if we have done our homework."he said smirking Since they had been very good friends since they both started their schooling Shricktas was sure that Commandant Urloss wouldn't mind that he was not exactly following the protocol.

"Well, my friend, it seems we do have a problem with our communication-systems. It seems they failed."

"All six of them?" Shricktas said disbelievingly. All systems on their ship were built with at least a four-time redundancy. So it was extremely unlikely that all of them would fail at the same time.

"Yeah, when we wanted to locate the human planet by tracking their radio-transmissions, we were not able to receive anything at all. Is it possible that maybe the high-energy-particles of our transition may have damaged our communication-systems?"

"Hmm, they should have been secured by their hard-shielding as well by their energy-hulls when we entered this system. Still...it may be possible. But I can't tell for sure without a check from the outside. Should I prepare a Vacuum-Mission?"

"No, not necessary. We will first try to locate the planet visually before we will proceed with any other measurements. We may need....."

He was interrupted by a call via the intercom.

"Commandant Urloss. Bridge here."

The brown lizard pushed himself away from the handle he was still holding and glided to the intercom-terminal.

"Commandant Urloss here. What happened, have we been able to receive any transmissions by now?"

"No, unfortunately not. But we were successful with the localization of their planet. We are just adjusting our telescopes. If you will come to the bridge we should be ready by then."

"Good, I'm coming. Urloss out." He looked at his brown and orange striped friend again. "Shricktas, I won't hold you back any longer with your current work. Prepare everything that has to be done to get near the humans planet. We may probably need another transition....And Shrick...."

"Yes, Commandant?"

"Please, try to practice your skills with the human language. It still sounds sometime as if you just had one lesson. I don't want to test you personally."

The engineer grinned at this comment although he knew that if he wouldn't do what the Commandant suggested he would really test him in front of the entire staff of the engine room.

"Sure, my Commandant. I will take some more language lessons with officer Istras."

"Do that my friend. I'll call you if we know more about the communication problem."

He headed back to the transportation-cell and got on his way back to the bridge. When he arrived there he could see they were just doing the last adjustments to get a better view of the planet. It filled nearly the entire main-screen.

His maw opened slightly in astonishment. This world was so different to their own. While their home-world had just five small oceans and most land was dry dessert or at least steppe, this planet seemed to be covered mostly by water. But also the continents were so different, so green as if they were covered entirely by plants.

"Still no transmissions?" Urloss asked.

"No, my Commandant, I'm sorry. But I can tell for sure that there is somebody on this planet. Just a second." The officer enlarged one part of the picture. It showed a very big peninsula that was halfway in the dark. And inside this dark parts he could see white glowing spots everywhere. By the amount and the color it was sure that they were really big cities and not just some by torches lit up small-towns. The entire bridge crew watched the planet turning around for a very long time. Nobody did day a single words or even hissed at this spectacular sight. The humans seemed to have colonized every part of their planet. There were white glowing cities everywhere. Their own home-world had only fourty big population-centers located in the zones of the planet with the mildest climate conditions.

When they watched the planet going on with its rotation and brought a big double continent into their sight, everybody on the bridge stopped breathing immediately. While all the other continents (at least those which were visible from their position) showed a full green or orange color, these two continents were different. There were still great parts of green on both ones, but mostly they were black. Black as of a gigantic fire had burned both continents. There were very few cities, glowing in the night. But their number were small and their size were even smaller. Only at the east coast of both continents was a greater number of cities left. Everything else seemed to be burned.

"What happened here?" officer Istras said in disbelieve when she entered the bridge and saw the picture of the burned continents.

"We have no idea. But it may be the reason why we don't receive any transmissions from this planet. Some kind of disaster that hit them very hard." The commandant got very silent while he thought about how to go on. According to their orders they should have listened to the transmissions from this planet to update their data and then made contact with this civilization. But with no transmissions all their plans were smashed and he had to improvise now.

"Navigation, does this planet have a natural satellite and if, are we able to make another transition near this satellite?"

The navigation officer did some calculations then he answered "There is one very big natural satellite. If we will start within the next ten minutes, we could make an optimal transition right to the inner Zero-Point of the planet and its satellite."

Urloss thoughts wandered about his possibilities. He could go on with Intra-System-Velocity, but that would maybe take weeks if not months to reach this planet. But they would have the opportunity to study the planet from a safe distance and maybe could even find out what happened to this planet.

If they would use their Subspace-Cutter now, they would be in no time at a place between these celestial bodies, where the gravity of them would cancel each other out. From there they could watch the planet continuously, but maybe they would then be in reach of whatever had caused so much damage to this planet. It was a hard decision but he finally made one and pushed the button for the intercom.

"At all crew members....,"he paused for a moment to catch his fast going breath "….prepare for Intra-System-Transition."


---Present Time---

"How much longer will it take to revive him?" Orrlanovs asked.

Shricktas skipped through the manual, stopping from time to time.

"Well it started about two Solstan-hour ago, so it should be finished very soon. This is really a remarkable technology. From what I can understand it can keep any kind of animal alive indefinitely."

"So if it wouldn't have been for us he would have stayed in this chamber for all eternity?" Istras was shocked that the Caretaker had taken such a risk.

"No, of course not. As far as I can see he had programmed the computers that are controlling this 'Cryo-Chamber' in such a way that he would be woken up every ten-thousand Solstan-years. But he would also be woken up if there would be any failure with the energy supply or other parts of the machine. This base here receives its energy from the heat of the inner core of the planet, so if there wouldn't be any problems with the mechanic parts of the machine he could have stayed in that state for.......well surely for several million years."

Orrlanovs looked at the entrance of the room the human was lying in. They were waiting outside because if the cold air that filled the room. Even the dog that followed them into this base was lying at their side, still looking at the door. He thought about the young man, whose body was now filled with a greet variety of chemicals that prevented the water in his cells and around him in the chamber from freezing while being cooled down to nearly one hundred-and-fifty degrees below the freezing point of water.

He must have been really desperate to consider something so drastic. But it was understandable. His entire civilization together with all humans on the planet had been wiped out by an unknown force, unknown to him and unknown to the members of the expedition. They only knew that it took only about one seconds to cover the entire planet and take all humans with it.

And he had been the sole survivor. Orrlanovs had seen the videos of surveillance cameras showing how the humans vanished. The Caretaker had collected and stored these videos and also sent them as really powerful radio-transmissions into outer space, hoping that some day an intelligent species would pick up the messages and may be able to protect their planet from what ever devastated Earth. Together with a lot of other films about their history, society, their knowledge of the universe, everything that seemed to be valuable enough to be spread across the universe. They had been now on Earth for about four Solstan months and the automatic systems in the various orbits around the planet and on the ground were still sending. They knew they would send nonstop for another two months and then stop for about a week just to restart the whole process. They just had been unlucky to drop into this solar system in exactly that time frame without radio-transmissions. And they were even more unlucky that they had not a single historian on their crew. So they had to wait for the Caretaker to wake up to explain everything about his civilization.

Suddenly everybody, including the dog, winced when they heard a series of fast, high sounding bleeps from the room with the cryo-chamber. The dog jumped up and ran into the room, his high speed spinning the cold fog around. The five lizards followed the dog very quickly, worried that something had gone wrong.

"What's the meaning of these sounds, Shricktas? Is there a failure in these systems? Is he in danger?"

The engineer quickly checked several displays at various machines then he said: "No, everything is alright, the machines just started with the final parts of the reviving-process. His body temperature is now at a normal level and his heart is beating at a normal rate too. The machines are just pumping some kind of artificial blood into his body until it has regenerated enough of his own blood. It should be now any moment that he......."

Suddenly the chamber began to descend until it was nearly at the same height as the floor. Two small locks unscrewed themselves and the lit of the chamber slowly began to move downwards, revealing the young man, who was lying in a pool of a blue colored chemical. He was totally covered with the liquid, showing no sighs of any kind of air ventilation. Except for a small gray boxer short he was wearing nothing. Four small tubes were attached to his body, two at the veins at his neck and two at his wrists. They began to withdraw very slowly, first the two at his wrists then the two at the neck. The chemicals sealed the wounds fast, only a few small drops of blood escaped the needles from the tubes, flowing inside the chemical.

The group waited for several more seconds when suddenly the human began to twitch uncontrollably.

"The machines are trying to force him to breath with small electrical shocks. He should wake up any second now." Shricktas said, skipping through the manual very fast, worried he might have forgotten something.

Without warning the man suddenly sat up, spaying the chemical that had kept him alive for so long into every direction. He tried to get out of the Cryo-Chamber very fast, it seemed somehow he was still not fully awake, acting only by instinct. He bent over and fell outside the chamber, spilling more of the chemical. It happened so fast that nobody of the lizards that watched him had a chance to intervene.

Istras was the first to take action. She walked carefully towards the human who was lying on his side in a puddle of the chemical, still shaking and twitching because of the electrical shocks he just received. She knelt beside him, putting a hand on his shoulder to comfort him. Suddenly the human spit out a great amount of the blue chemical, emptying his lungs, coughing hard. Then he took his first breath of air in a long, long time.

Istras tried to feel for his pulse which was a bit difficult because of her claws and the fact that he was still twitching.

"It seems he is okay, but I don't know if...."

Suddenly he grabbed her arm, getting her attention immediately. She had assumed that he would need more time to recover to interact with them. But now he was watching directly at her, his blue eyes only focused on her. He moved his lips in an attempt to talk but failed. He tried again but she couldn't understand what he was saying, his lips still not fully under his control.

"I'm sorry I don't understand. What did you say?"

He waited a few seconds, gathering his strength and thoughts and tried a third time."

*Cough, cough* "How.........long?"

"How long…...what?"

The seconds passed, the air filled with the heavy breathing of the human.

"How.......long.....have I been.....in Cryostasis?"

But before anybody of the five lizards could answer him, his grip on her arm loosened and he passed out. The dog started whining and howling, desperately trying to reach his master, but was prevented by the two guards who were holding him back at his collar.

The five lizards did not say a single word, they only watched the man in front of him, excited that they have finally found the last human on Earth, but also fearful that he might die right now.

"Shricktas, Orrlanovs help me. We have to get him to the sick bay of this base, quick!" Istras ordered the two lizards who were just standing by, doing nothing but watch the unconscious human.

Istras had seen a room that was marked with a red cross, the human sign for a hospital. It was the only place now where they could treat the man.

He is the last member of the human species. He had to live. And he will live.

The tourist guide Chapter 2 (critique requested)

Master of the Travel 3

Phew, here is the next chapter of my second Series - The tourist guide.

Well, well, what happened to drastic on planet Earth? Stay tuned if you want to find out more.

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