Memoirs of a Timelord (11 page)

       "Go faster?" I asked over the rumble.  "Didja say go faster?  Is that what I heard?"

       "No, no, no!" She shook her head inside of her helmet.  Roxy had even closed her visor in anticipation of the hull's collapse.         "Faster it is." I smiled before deciding to test an idea I'd had.  My plan had been to modify the ship to feed the shields off of my Onkx like an antenna, extending my field over the entire vessel.  Focusing for a minute, I am able to send the signal through my hand that rests on the console.  Once I could see the link was active, I pulled the entire ship into a lateral insertion.

       With a flash, we skipped from .9L to a parallel orbit with planet X-OB32.  In the blink of an eye we had jumped .8L.  During the insertion I had remodulated my kinetic energy so I arrived at an atmospheric transit speed.  Flashing Roxy another grin, I gleefully nosed the ship over before feeling that giddy sensation as we began plunging towards the cloudy little ball below us.  The planet looked like cotton candy from up there.

       I felt her before I saw her, but Veena had figured out my trick and used her own Onkx to jump in right beside us. With their cockpit just meters away from ours, Veena held up a single finger accompanied by a playful smile.

       "Last one to the surface is a politician!" I winked back before shoving the throttle forward.  In response, Veena opened up her reactors as we transitioned violently from a peaceful descent into a hellish plunge of death.  Already the thick atmosphere was being felt as we jostled about.  Without letting up a bit, I kept an eye on my instruments as the surface grew closer.  Next to me, Roxy was turning green inside of her tightly sealed suit.  She was a tough girl, but clearly not a fan of the vomit comet.  Geeez, we had to be pulling negative 3Gs mosta the way down.

       Breaking into the clouds, we had complete white-out in every window.  Although I had no problem with the hardball IFR conditions, the lack of external visual stimuli, coupled with the rough ride was a perfect recipe for vertigo.  As we mushed on through the thick atmosphere, I could almost feel the nausea growing in my passengers.

       I reversed engines with not a moment to spare, bringing us to a halt just a few inches off of the only landmass on the entire planet.  Although my Shiirrek had inertial dampeners, the felt deceleration was in the neighborhood of 8Gs.  Something told me that after that landing I was going to be glad the Voh were all wearing space suits, considering how many had prolly just crapped their pants.  No, strike that, some of those scientists were oozing from both ends.

       I gave a chuckle as I noticed all of them rolling about in their seats.  I could feel Veena coming, not a second behind me.  At the speed of thought, I had the ship open up a port directly under me so I could drop out neatly onto the surface.

       "TaDaaaa!" I proclaimed as soon as my flip flops hit the ground.  Another three seconds and my morphic sister was standing there beside me with an uncharacteristic scowl.

       "I wanted to name the planet after Doug.  It'd be good for his career." She was a little mad at me.

       "And I wanted to name it after myself because it'd be serious bragging rights at my high school reunion." I smirked as I dropped to one knee.  "I hereby proclaim this celestial body as Planet Jenna."

       I was still clowning when I felt her throw me.  Actually, what she did was to modify my inertial factor so instead of sitting still, I was moving about 40mph in an upward ark.  Veena was sneaky that way.  I was just about to say something snarky when I hit the water.

       Normally when you land in the ocean, your first thought is Aaaarrrhhhh! as your ass plunges into that chilly water.  But here the temp was about 98F.  Instead of a scream, it was more of an Ahhhhhh as you splashed about.  It was warm, salty as hell, but oooh so warm.  

       When I resurfaced, I returned the favor by pitching a few tons of water onto Veena, soaking her before she could think to deflect it with a particulate shield.

       We laughed for a minute.  I wasn't minding the water as much as you'd think.  Not only was it warm, but the saline content was high enough that I had nearly double the buoyancy of normal water and floated effortlessly in the stuff.  It was like weightlessness, but with the traction of a liquid. 

       "So where the hell are they?" I asked her as I bobbed about.

       "I dunno, I think they're all cleaning vomit out of their helmets." She nodded before giving a sniff to the air around her.  It was very close to breathable for the humans, but with a toxic level of methane to it.  Veena and I were adapted to it so neither of us had bothered to wear a silly space suit.

       Still dripping wet after climbing out of the water, I shrugged off the moisture just as Roxy staggered up.  I could see a little splooge inside of her visor, and there was a green tint to her face.

       "What exactly are you?" Her voice echoed in her helmet as she looked us over in dismay.  "You're not human, that's for sure."

       "I'm a human two-point-oh." I grinned as I enjoyed the warm afternoon.  The breeze cooled my skin while I dried.  "Welcome to planet Jenna, first woman to set foot on this new world."

       The ground underneath my feet rumbled a little.  I gave the surface a quick scan with my DuNai eyes and saw nothing but granite and silt for miles.  I couldn't help but notice the odd striations to the stone. They seemed to repeat in large patches.  The rock was oddly impregnated with CO2 as well.  That seemed to be why the stuff floated.  What a curious geological formation?

       "So where are the science weenies?" I looked back at the ship as the first of the explorers were staggering down the back ramp.  One of them was the Captain.  He looked a little woozy still, with obvious streak marks inside of his visor.

       While the scientists wandered about making their measurements and such, I found a great place to set up my lawn chair and enjoy the sunlight refracted by a thin layer of clouds overhead.  It was a perfect day at the beach.  We had managed to encounter this planet at the ideal time of year. The temps at the other end of the orbit were a little less inviting.  In the summer the ambient temperature would soar to over a hundred-forty Fahrenheit, with a humidity level of 99%.  It would be miserable, even in a suit.  We had managed to get here in spring, when the air was warm and the grass was blue.  

       The last point was a little odd, but then I'd seen thirteen other shades of grass on other planets, so why would I be surprised at blue grass?  But as I'm enjoying some down-time in the sun, these blades of grass that were about three feet tall, would snake their way over and touch me.  At first it was just a brush on the arm, or a blade that would touch me in the wind.  But then all of a sudden I feel one fondle me, like it was curious about me.

       I jumped up surprised.  I didn't have anything against grass, but this stuff was a little too grabby for my taste.  I reached down and took hold of a few stalks and started to pull.

       That's when the ground rumbled and a crack appeared right under my hands.  I didn't even have a chance to release the grass before a pair of orbs popped out of the crack to peer at me intently.  That's when I decided to take a second look at the information my eyes had been trying to tell me.  

       You'd think that with a database like the one in my head, I'd be damn near omnipotent.  But the database is only as good as the user, or so the Boss frequently reminded me.  This time he was right as usual.  At my first pass I had only seen the granite surface. Since I was just the taxi driver on this trip, I hadn't bothered to do an in-depth study of the mantle. I was too busy playing watersports with Veena.

       But as soon as I realized what the blue grass was, I let go of it and the optical orbs retracted back into the crack in the earth.  Straightening up, I looked at my sisters with surprise.

       "Xeenor." Veena said it first.  "What'dya know about that."

       "Zee-what?" Roxy had her pistol out.

       "Don't do that, whatever you do." I cautioned her by pushing her weapon back towards her holster.  "Do not shoot the ground.  This isn't the planet surface; we're standing on a Xeenor."

       "More like every Xeenor on the planet." Veena corrected me as she looked over the surface. As far as the eye could see there were the blue stalks of grass waving in the wind.  There was also a fine particulate being released from the stalks that were of a deeper hue.

       "Yep, I think we timed it right." I nodded as I calculated the situation based on published tables in my head. "We have another six standard solars before they'll break up." 

       Veena nodded at my conclusion.  No doubt she had calculated the same numbers with her own Onkx.

       "What?" Roxy was concerned for the safety of her people.

       "This isn't a land mass we're parked on." I started out, "these things we are standing on are living creatures from the depths of the ocean.  They feed on elemental plankton all year until they build up enough of a saturation of carbon dioxide in their rocky shell."

       "Then they float to the surface and join up for the mating ritual with the rest of their kind." Veena stamped the ground with her boot.  "This here is a Xeenor orgy."

       Roxy looked it over for a few seconds.  She could see the differences in the textures between each of the beasts.  Their rocky surfaces encrusted with various unique tones of silt and debris.  It was like looking down at a patchwork quilt where the patches were bigger than a house.  With the Xeenor clustered this tightly, it was easy to mistake their granite backs for solid earth.

       "So they're doing the nasty down there?" Roxy hesitantly tapped the rocky outcropping nearest her.

       "Actually, down there is the pillow talk." I crossed my arms before continuing.  "The real dirty work and pollination is happening right here where we're standing." With a hand I gestured to the powdery substance that coated her pressure suit.

       "You got a little something...right there." Veena pretended to point to the edge of her mouth, waiting for Roxy to notice the splotch of pollen on her face shield.

       "So the grass is their junk?" Roxy was no scientist, but she put it together quickly enough, "

       "Yep." I agreed.  "Tell your people not to pull it out or cut off any samples.  These guys won't appreciate circumcision like humans do." 

       "Circum-what?" Roxy asked.

       "Just tell your people not to piss off the Xeenor or the ground may swallow you up." Veena reduced it to simplest terms.  "We got a few days before they break up and head home.  After that we get wet."

       In the end we only got five days before the mating frenzy calmed down enough that the weight of our ships began to push the Xeenor apart.  We could actually see the annual ritual coming to a close by measuring CO2 as it was slowly leached out of their mantles.  Releasing the gas was a final step to their orgasmic climax.  Once that happened they began to lose their buoyancy and the formation fell apart.  Back in their own territory each Xeenor would spawn a dozen offspring.  With a survival rate of 1 in 5, they kept ahead of extinction at a snail's pace.  

       The trip was a lot of fun.  Once they cleaned out their suits, at both ends, the Voh were a lot more pleasant.  I got to meet a new scientist who had been hiding on Zeta shift this whole time.  Our auras are nowhere near a perfect match, but he had the cutest butt, so I'll prolly just take him for a test drive.  Or two.

       The crew harvested a significant amount of data, and as soon as they get back to the Mata they'll send a highly detailed report in a burst transmission.  That way, no matter what happens in the future, the knowledge gleaned from the mission would be safely transferred back to their world. 

       Veena and I gave them a smoother ride on the way back to the Mata.  I didn't want the cute geologist to smell like a dirty diaper when we got back.  I had plans for him.  Veena was prolly thinking the same thing about the Captain.  Apparently he had really blown chunks in his helmet during the atmospheric entry on Jenna.  Someone had taken pictures and was showing them off whenever the command staff was out of earshot.  He shoulda known better than to eat that extra helping of peas and corn before we left.  It looked like Thanksgiving in his helmet.

       So now you know how Class M planetoid X-OB32 came to be officially named Planet Jenna.  Think of it as my way of spray painting 'Jenna was here' on the side of the galaxy.

                 

       I had a favorite porthole at the bow of the ship where I liked to star gaze, and sometimes bring Aldoo.  It was known as a favorite makeout spot for the crew.  With the stars ahead twinkling, and the soft glow of the walkway lights it was all very romantic indeed.  I went there a lot, even had a jump coordinate for the spot so I could materialize there without all the hassle of flying out there.  I'd met my Geologist here a few times, but that was over.