Chapter 5

"Sergeant, we found people up here. You should come take a look!"

"Roger. We're on our way."

The five people in the control center eagerly hurried up to the next floor to see what had excited the trooper. There was row after row after row of chambers, each with an individual inside. The people looked like caricatures of asparagus stalks: they were up to eight feet tall, about two feet in diameter, had arms and stubby legs, and were gray-green in color. Jim took one look and said, in awe, "Those are people stowed in stasis chambers. How can we release them?"

Jill said, "Look over each door, there appears to be some sort of code. Give me a chance to get a close look." She examined the writing over the door and noted matching glyphs on some of the small buttons on a panel beside the door. "I wonder if that is the code to start the revival sequence? Let's see." She tapped out the code on the proper buttons, and they all heard a musical chime. They saw the chamber door open and heard a voice from inside.

"Thank the gods, we did survive! I would not have bet on it. What? ... Who are you strange creatures?"

Capt. Janson answered, "We are humans who have come to help you. My name is Bridget Janson. What is your name?"

"I am Junzie Alcolor. How is it that you can speak my language?"

"Junzie, please call me Bridget. We are not speaking your language. We have a device that communicates directly with your brain's speech center and translates that directly into signals that your brain can understand. To us, it sounds like you are speaking our language. Please tell us what happened to you and your people."

"Well, Bridget, I don't know all of the details. I was a lowly lieutenant and third in command of the control center just below us. We were attacked by strange beings looking like nothing we had ever seen before. They arrived in spaceships shaped like pyramids.

They came flying out of doors on the sides of the pyramids and attacked the few people who were on the surface. They stabbed them with something and took the victims inside the pyramid. Lucky for us, we had just survived a solar flare that had burned our planet's surface to a cinder. Most of our people were still in storage in the stasis chambers, so there were not many for the foul creatures to attack.

"Most of the spaceships were still in orbit around us, so we fired off what few missiles we had at them and ran for safety back to the stasis chambers we had just left only hours before. I gather that they have left our planet, since you don't look anything like them, and you do not appear to have recently fought a battle.

"Did you open the chamber or did it open by accident. I can see that my chamber did not open automatically, since it is the only one that is open. We had to guess as to what was a safe period in stasis, so the few chambers on automatic were set to open in 213.07416 years (that damned literal minded translator struck again). Most of the chambers must be opened by the computers located in the central control room. Also, how did you find us?"

"This person, here, opened your chamber by translating the code written above your chamber door. We found you by backtracking some missiles you must have fired, but that missed, the pyramids. What can we do for you, now that we have found you?"

"I doubt that much can be done for us. We spent all of our effort before the solar flare on building these stasis chambers. We built enough for our entire planetary population, just over two billion people. Enough food was stored for us to survive for a year, but, from what I have seen of the outside, that will not be enough to carry us until we can become reestablished."

"We can offer two possibilities for your consideration. We can help you open only a small number of the stasis chambers to let enough people out to get your planet's ecology going again before you release everybody. Or, we can provide you with a device that we have which you can use to duplicate food and the other things you need to get yourselves going again.

"The device, which we call a replicator, can even duplicate itself, so you can make as many more replicators as you need once you have the first one to start out."

Junzie said, "Your replicator sounds wonderful. That would solve most of our problems, but I worry about how we could pay you for it."

Bridget answered, "Don't worry about that. I know we can work out something. In fact, I'll get started on it right away. Please excuse me while I contact my people.

"Freya, we have a situation here which requires the immediate attention of a diplomatic team. We have found virtually the entire population of the planet in stasis, but they are going to need a lot of help. They managed to avoid destruction by the Wasps, but a solar flare was nearly as disastrous. I doubt that they need a military presence, so you might consider ordering us back to the ship."

Not much later, Capt. Janson's unit was ordered back to Freya, and a diplomatic team was dispatched to discuss the situation. Jim and Jill asked to remain a while, since they were interested in learning to read the books that they had found. With the presence of locals who could read the books, it shouldn't take long for Jill to get what she needed to have the translation routine working in the AI.

Inklus threw his spear at that thing that had attacked his wife. He must have scored a very lucky hit, because the creature fell over dead almost immediately. The first thing Inklus did was recover his spear, just in case another of the monsters showed up, then he ran to his wife to see if there was anything that he could do for her.

Urka was still breathing, and her eyes were open, but she could not move. She had a large puncture wound in her belly where the monster had stabbed her with its stinger, but she had no other wound that he could see. Inklus pulled Urka into the shade of a large tree as gently as he could; he was scared to death that she might die, but he did not know what to do for her.

Inklus stood guard over his wife for over three hours before he saw her arms and legs begin to jerk as her nerves began to respond to her brain. Of course, Inklus didn't know why she was twitching, but he took it for a good sign. Finally, Urka was able to talk, "Oh, Inkus, you saved my life! My darling husband, how can I repay you?"

"Don't worry about repaying me for doing my duty. Besides, I love you too much to let one of those monsters take you." Urka struggled to a standing position and embraced her husband with her upper arms while she guided his erect penis into her vulva with her lower set of hands. There was nothing special about this, it was the way they normally embraced, but both would have freely admitted that they always enjoyed the experience.

The Oolsans looked like the classic Greek centaurs, except that they had two sets of arms, and their sex organs were in front.

The two lovers embraced until they both came, and they felt much better for the experience. They were not worried about Urka becoming pregnant, since that could not happen unless she performed a certain ritual before impregnation. Nevertheless, they both enjoyed embracing so much that they did it several times a day.

Inklus and Urka cautiously walked toward their village, fearful of what they would find. They had run as soon at the monsters had attacked. They had never seen creatures like this before, so they panicked. It was well that they did, since they were the only survivors of their village, but they were glad to note that there were seven dead monsters littering the village common, all pierced by a spear.

Inklus said, "Dear, we are not safe here. I can't leave you here while I hunt, and you cannot keep up with me when I have to chase game, so I think that we had better move to another location."