I. ENTRY
Travelling at its maximum speed of 120 light years per second, the A.S. Hydra reached the galaxy of Naoj in less than two months, Earth's local time. Alex Skinner, the captain, the owner, and the sole passenger of A.S. Hydra,turned off the rocket ship's warp-propulsion thrusters as it entered the general vicinity of the star system of Nerrad. He then switched to regular nuclear-powered thrusters, bringing the 165 foot-long craft to a slower, forward motion. The reason for slowing down is for Alex to be able to pilot the ship more easily and avoid ramming it into multitudes of planetoids that this particular star system was known to have.
The A.S. Hydra faced no trouble as she made her way past the third and innermost asteroid belt of the star system. At a distance, the blue star -Nerrad - is a sight to behold.
Alex made an eighty-two degree turn to starboard as he drove the ship towards Nerrad's fifth planet: ReTarc.
ReTarc is one of the two living planets of Nerrad. It has three satellites and is about five times larger than Alex's home planet, Earth. The atmosphere of this average-sized planet (in Universal standards) is mainly made up of Nitrogen, Carbon and other alien elements-with small amounts of hydrogen and oxygen enough to create patches of frozen water on this yellowish brown, rocky planet.
At 130Fahrenheit, it has been generally accepted that ReTarc is not a suitable place for the expansion of Earth's inhabitants. Surprisingly, this planet supports a wide variety of life forms, including an intelligent species. Some intelligent life forms all across the universe have, in fact, already staked their territories on ReTarc, only to back out after experiencing the hostility of the planet's physical conditions; one of which is its climate, forRetarc's climate is one of the harshest climates known to all intelligent-kind. The planet endures the torment of about two dry electrical storms a day for the whole-year round - and a single 'year' on Retarc is equivalent to 132 1/8 Earth years. Aside from the seemingly incessant electrical storms,Retarc's savage winds that rage in speeds between 230 and 300 mph produce fierce sandstorms that come in the form of tornadoes over the planet's sandy plains. These winds also transformedReTarc's landscape into an ever-changing panorama of fissures and canyons. To top it all, ReTarc's extensively long periods of dry winter can create extremely bitter frostbites that can kill organisms whose forms are not accustomed to very low temperatures in a matter of hours, as experienced by the ill-fated crew of the Ygkall'nekan space ship Kaltl-cukx 05g.
Alex Skinner did not come to ReTarcjust to rough the winds. His mission is to collect an ample amount of the energy-sustaining rock that was rumored to be present on this planet;and bring it back to Earth as a proof that such energy source really exists. For Alex, taking rock samples is relatively easy: as easy as taking sweetened grub from a baby Leschorigian, so to speak. But these rocks, as they say, can only be found at the south pole of ReTarc, along The Great ReTarcan Plateau, where Alex could possibly face the greatest obstacle of this expedition-the Great Retarcan.
According to the first explorers of the planet, the Great Retarcan is the very heart ofReTarc: an enormous living creature that is part of the planet itself. From the recorded accounts, whenever the Great ReTarcan detects any form of disturbance around the plateau, the ground breaks open into an immense gaping hole, where the gargantuan 'head' of the Great ReTarcan rises. This creature is so immense that its 'head' alone was said to be about as big as a medium-sized asteroid. As of today, the few survivors of the Great ReTarcan's attacks during the past expeditions were all dead; so what little knowledge the universehas about the colossal organism only came from the very limited records left by the first beings who encountered it.
In theory, the planet of Retarc originated from a single free-floating, space-dwelling, planet-sized organism attracted to orbitaround 200 million years ago - Earth's time -by Nerrad's gravitational pull. That organism of unknown origin is said to be a single, complex, living super-organism that depended solely on Nerrad's energy to survive. After eons of its existence, this basically 'immortal' organism slowly accumulated celestial debris as it rotated along its orbital path until it became fully-covered with minerals that formed a thick layer of metal-rich rock. This, in turn, transformed the organism into a living-core, which served as the very foundation for the formation of an actual planet that, for some reasons, acquired its own gravitational force-force that eventually trapped three celestial bodies,now acting as its satellites-and developed its own atmosphere created from the gaseous by-products of the original organism's living processes.
That organism now exists as the Great ReTarcan. It was firmly believed that the entire planet's other organisms' origins can be traced back to this primordial single super-organism. It was even believed that the intelligent beings of ReTarc (still in the early stages of their development as a race) regard the Great Retarcan as their god.
As of now, Alex Skinner and his steed, the A.S. Hydra, is about to enter the atmosphere of a god.
Unlike on Earth, entry has been pretty easy on ReTarc. A.S. Hydra barely experienced friction burn as it eased its way into the planet's atmosphere. To Alex's surprise, the atmosphere is incredibly 'thick'-extending to about 122 miles skyward from the topographical surface.
Alex half-expected temporary equipment malfunction upon entry, but instead, he heard a female-sounding electronic voice emanating from his onboard supercomputer.
ALERT: 5 bogeys detected. ALERT:5 bogeys detected.
A.S. Hydra's overhead console displayed five beeping red dots on a green-lined grid with a simulated background rendered from the cameras' birds-eye-view of their ship's position. Alex muttered a command, ordering the computer to identify the bogeys. When the results came up, Alex was not surprised.
