- Wednesday,
September 08, 1999 at 06:15:17 (MDT)
Duker: (To himself) "They don't know who this is!! Engineering,
how is the gnome gun coming?" An officer: "Sir, we�re ready." Duker: �Did
the gnomes say it was possible for us to enter the portal?� �Yes Sir.�
�Activate the gun as soon as I give the word. Hail the Vulcans. This is
the USS Instigator of the Earth Defense Alliance; your presence here seems
hostile. If you would like to talk, then release your tractor beams and
we will discuss this face to face. I will transport with three crewmembers
to your vessel to talk so we can come to an understanding. Please respond.�
The Vulcan ships, one by one, release their tractor beams and give the
response to begin transport. Duker: �Suckers�activate the gun and head
for the portal at full impulse.� Before the Vulcans could do anything,
the Instigator travels into a blue electric portal that materialized in
front of the ship. After the ship disappears into the portal, the blue
hole in space closes leaving the Vulcans in utter confusion and unable
to do anything.
Duker
- Wednesday,
September 08, 1999 at 08:25:40 (MDT)
The two remaining Romulan Warbirds sweep around gracefully towards
the Vulcans...and hail them.
- Wednesday,
September 08, 1999 at 09:45:33 (MDT)
*BANG!!!* Nat doesn't even look up at the explosion. Probably because
he was the one who set it off. Watching the squiggles carefully on his
portable seismograph, he determines that the bedrock is only 15 feet below
the sand. His gas spectrometer indicating the presence of complex hydrocarbon
vapors being emitted near this area, he was fairly certain that he had
located the most promising site for an exploratory dig. This was complicated,
paradoxically, by the fumes emitted by their small camp generator when
they were resupplied with gasoline by the relatives of the fishermen who
brought them here. With a grin, he hears Sive cursing in Spanish from her
tent. The explosions were 'disturing her specimens' or so she said. heh
heh. Unknown to Nat, the small seismic survey charges were driving the
glass spiders to apoplexy...
Zapper
- Wednesday,
September 08, 1999 at 10:20:22 (MDT)
'What a revolting situation this is..' thought a glass spider as
it wiggled with futility, trying to get free of the sticky transparent
tape the human Sive had trapped him in. Now taped flat onto a glass slide,
he was being placed onto the specimen holder of an old-style optical microscope.
Needless to say, that will blow the charade wide open.. Lacking the advanced
quantum comm of his chrome brethren, he can only broadcast panic in infrared.
Watching from various nooks and crannies, various spiders relay the information
in a network of invisible coded infrared beams to Headquarters Boulder.
Sive must *not* discover that her 'specimen' was in fact a technolife construct.
Running out of options fast, a commando spider perched high up on a tent-pole
quickly takes aim.. then jumps. Swinging from the end of a hair-thin coconut
fiber string in immitation of Tarzan, he lets go at the right moment to
drop into her hair for a desperate distraction attempt. Unfortunately,
she moved. Unable to control his aerial trajectory, the commando, wearing
a brown fiber suit woven from more coconut fiber to resemble a small wolf
spider, crashes into the side of her neck and falls in a wiggling tangle
of legs into her shirt.. In the chaos that erupted, a team of commando
spiders rescued their taped comrade from the microscope, quickly slicing
the tape, dragging him off and, being sticky, stuck him to the undersurface
of the tabletop for the time being. From outside the tent, a steady stream
of high pitched Spanish cursing could be heard. The commando which fell
into her shirt rolled up into a ball, and dropped out the bottom of her
shirt. In blind terror, he dashes to and fro trying to avoid a size-six
sneaker stomping around in feminine fury from squashing him into the sandy
ground.. Back in Headquarters Boulder, a certain chrome spider mentally
rolls his eyes. *nothing* is going according to plan..
Zapper
- Wednesday,
September 08, 1999 at 10:20:50 (MDT)
Ok. Put this red thing on the screen I wanna see it. *The screen
flickers and a different set of stars are displayed.* I said put it on
screen. *Skeleton #3: "We have, sir. It is right there in the middle."*
I don't see it. Are you sure this thing isn't INFRAred? *"Affirmative"*
You DO know what this means, right? It's a Force-induced halucanation.
Although WHY someone would make a halucanation of a small red Warbird is
beyond me. *Skeleton #4: "Sir, two more Romulan ships have just decloaked."*
I guess I didn't get the message across the first time. ATTACK!!!!!!!!!!!
TDK
- Wednesday,
September 08, 1999 at 14:09:27 (MDT)
However, with the shields up, the Bird of Prey's efforts are mostly
ineffective against the great ships. The Romulans gleefully open fire,
and the spider repair crew seems to take a suspiciously long time to get
its act in gear.....
- Wednesday,
September 08, 1999 at 14:47:11 (MDT)
Coming through the portal gave Duker more of a shock than he anticipated.
It wasn't a horrible shock, but more like a shock of amazement. Once through
the portal, Duker saw a planet that was unlike any other he has ever seen.
From space he could see buildings and some sort of inventions towering
above everything else. Duker: �Any chance that the Vulcans could have followed
us.� Littlefoot: �No sir, the portal closed right after we entered, nothing
else came through. The gnomes said only we were allowed to enter, and anything
else would have been destroyed in the portal. Duker: �(with a smile) Good,
take us down, Mr. Littlefoot. I think I�m going to like this place. The
ship stared to descend into the atmosphere of the gnome home world.
Duker
- Wednesday,
September 08, 1999 at 14:48:27 (MDT)