World Was

WORLD WAS

Stories from the Galactic Hopping Adventures of Bahb & Errl
Exploration/Survey Team Alpha
Log 21922



"Wow!" Bahb yelled, "I didn't think we were going to pull out of that one!"
"Yep!" Errl said sucking in his breath, "I felt like a greased rat sliding down a tube. Who would have thought there could be a black hole inside an intermittent worm hole."
"Yeah, when it popped up in front of the ship I was thinking about just sliding on through it, but luckily I saw the readings and barely pulled out before we got sucked in. Good thing it was a very small black hole." He said swinging his chair around to face Errl.
"It was small all right!" Errl said, his voice a little croaky from the dryness brought on by extreme panic. "That thing was almost invisible until we were right on top of it! And correct me if I’m wrong but, after we dodged that little devil it looked like the thing was following us!"
"I noticed that too Errl, but a worm hole just shouldn't be able to do that."

Bahb was busy pouring over the computer readouts from the incident. A couple of silent minutes later he sighed and said, "This beats the hell out of me. According to these readings it followed us for half a parsec before the next intermittent phase kicked in and it swung away to a new position! Whoa!"

When Bahb said something like "whoa" or "wow" his voice always made a low gurgling sound like a growl but smoother. In fact everyone on his home planet, Ptan, had the same impediment. It made it difficult to pronounce words with more than one syllable. So difficult, in fact, that over the centuries their names become shorter and shorter until they were all just four letter words, which happened to be the ideal length for them to pronounce easily. There was no law against having a name with more than four syllables. It just wasn't socially acceptable and people with longer names were often ostracized to the extent that they were denied good jobs and education.
A young Ptan could change their name within two cycles of birth but after that they were stuck with what their parents had given them.
Luckily Bahb & Errl both came from good homes and their parents were smart enough to go along with social convention so they were able to land good jobs with the Galactic Survey/Exploration Division(GSED).

Bahb and Errl were making their second survey run through a small backwater star system way out on a spiral arm of the galaxy. On the first pass through the system they noticed a pretty little blue colored world a couple of planets in from an impressive gas giant. It was covered with water; a true rarity. Many planets had water but not usually on the surface and never in this quantity.
After that wormhole encounter they were proceeding more cautiously through the system. They approached the planet slowly and made several orbits looking for signs of life. Suddenly several flashes of bright light appeared on the surface of a large land mass. Then more appeared on the other side of the globe.

"Hey Errl, what do you make of all those projectiles coming up from the planet's surface?"
Bahb looked at the screen where Errl was pointing. There were hundreds of them. And they were coming toward them. Fast!
He jumped for the control panel.
"Hey Errl, am I dreaming or is someone shooting at us?"
"Hell Yeah! And the scans show radioactivity so they're probably carrying nuclear payloads."
"I think you're right." Bahb said swiveling around to grab the flight controls. "But," he snickered "If they think that lobbing bombs at us is going to work they must be ignorant!"
"Well you know, it might just be a welcome party they're sending up to greet us..." Errl said with a wink.
"Oh..., Yeah. That's a fine way to say hello" Bahb sneered as he punched the drive to jump them out to a safe distance. In a flash they were well away from the planet. "There! Now let's see them catch us...." He said as he powered down the jump drive again.
"Wait a minute!" Errl said zooming in on the planet. "Those rockets are starting to arc down toward the planet again."
"Well, that doesn't make much sense." Bahb said, craning his neck to get a glimpse of what Errl saw in the viewer. "They shouldn't have run out of gas this soon."

But as they watched, all of the projectiles began to fall back toward the planet. Strangely, each one completed a perfect arc toward the opposite side of the planet from where it was launched almost as if the trajectory had been programmed that way. But for what purpose?

"Those are nuclear explosions going off where the rockets are coming down!" Errl said in bewildered amazement.
"That's what I'm seeing on my sensors too! It's throwing massive dust clouds into the atmosphere on both sides of the planet."

They watched, transfixed as several hundred explosions decimated a large percentage of the planet's surface. Soon, very dense radioactive dust began to circulate around the globe until almost everything on the surface was obscured by the dark ominous clouds. During several revolutions of the planet below they continued to see intermittent bright flashes from more nuclear explosions underneath the cloud cover. Eventually there wasn't much left to see.

"That cloud cover is going to be there for a long time" Bahb said shaking his head.
"Yep, It will be a long time before we'll see the surface of this planet again." Errl said still trying to focus his viewer on the last visible piece of land mass.
"And I don't care how much they pay me, I'm not about to go down there and take readings in that hellish atmosphere!" Bahb said wiping sweat off his brow... Amazingly, I've never seen Bahb sweat!
"There's going to be radiation down there for a lot longer than either of us will be alive, that's for sure!"
Errl was feeling a little warm himself as he reached for the climate controls.
"Well, lets blow out of here. Make a note in the log to return here in several millenia to see if anything survived." Bahb looked tired but it was really just the shock setting in. They were both in quite a bit of shock. It was very hard to wrap their minds around what they had seen.

"Of course, no one is going to believe us." Bahb said with a shrug. "Not at first anyway. Not until we show them the video. And even then they will probably think we faked it."

Who could have imagined such an insane scenario?
Here was a world full of intelligent beings that had survived and evolved over millenia. They were on the verge of being able to leave their planet and meet the many other intelligent species in the galaxy. Yet, in spite of their intelligence, they somehow came to the conclusion that a nuclear exchange was the only way to settle their differences? Didn't they know that it would cause their extinction? They Must have! It's just crazy!

"This is going to make a prize winning documentary when we get back!" Errl said as he saved the video from the external cameras. "And even if they don't believe us it will be great fiction for a movie!"
"Yeah, and just think of the stories we'll have to tell our grandkids!" Bahb said, taking one last look out the viewport. "Wow!"
"Yeah, Wow!" Errl said with a very long growl in his voice as he watched the planet get smaller and smaller.
Until it was gone...


M. Alan Greene
2006-19-08

Copyright © 2006 by M. Alan Greene. All Rights Reserved.