Perfect. Here we were, lost in space, approaching a mysterious planet, and gifted with a load of soon-to-be hyperactive space slugs ready to invade our ship. I closed my eyes, fighting my mental tiredness. "Fine. Any more uplifting news?"

No one answered, and when I opened my lids again, I was confronted with an angry stare from Aalyxh. She pointed at the small tyrinan who'd twisted her eyestalks around each other in defeat. The picture raised a wave of regret about my outburst. Ajs was still new aboard and tried hard to adapt to the Topsy's customs and rules. I sighed. "Sorry, Ajs, it's not your fault."

She untwisted her eyes in a motion that made me dizzy, the skin of her upper body flushing indigo. "This wasn't the plan, Cap Kali. The timer of the cryogenic unit was set to wake only me before the arrival in the Sqia system." Her turquoise-and-blue speckled body trembled. Was I so frightening? "The second batch was supposed to unfreeze and hatch after the arrival—after you would have been paid and left the system."

This sounded like an elaborate plan. Probably a bit too elaborate and without taking the severills, a black hole, and the grandmother of all ion storms into account. "Ajs, I gather this wasn't meant to be our business. Still, in our current predicament, I'd love to know why the Tanencha sends her younglings to Sqia'lon seven. And don't worry, I don't intend to put you or your fellow tyrinans onto my menu." Even the thought of it knotted my intestines, but I had to lighten the mood.

The tyrinan's trembling subsided. "It was a request form the government of Sqia'lon seven, Cap Kali."

She spoke more confident, I'd dissolved a few of her obvious fears. Perhaps she was willing to provide me with more information. "Do you know why the inhabitants of the colony asked for a load of frozen—"
I was about to add slugs, but fortunately Hrrovr's announcement spared me the slip.

"Captain, reaching orbit. The atmosphere seems'ss ordinary for an inhabited world, clean and breath'ssable. And I can't locate any active weapons'ss ss'sys'sstems'ss."

His collection of hisses sounded like good news. "Any signs of life? The builders of the satellites?"

"No sentient species, Captain." Hijac smelled like a fermenting pile of fruit, expressing their fascination with our discovery. "There is organic life on the planet though, abundant in some regions. But as far as I read it, it's basic, bacteria, fungi, plants, perhaps simple molluscs, nothing else. On the other hand, it's clear there once was a high-tech society, to judge by the amount of technology they left behind to clutter the orbit."

I didn't like the karjkan's use of the past tense. "Was? Left behind? Where are they now?"

"Beats me, Captain. I'd say they are gone. But we have to land to find out more about the reasons. Perhaps they suffered from an epidemic, civil war, climate catastrophe—the usual pitfalls of civilisations." Hijac's well-modulated, melodious voice stood in contrast to the listed possibilities.

I was tempted to ask Ben to raise the temperature to warm my chilled bones, but withstood. "If they faced extinction, they might have left a message to potential visitors. Aalyxh, did you scan the usual channels?"

"Aye, Kali. If they recorded a goodbye message or a warning, I can't find it. Are we going to land?"

"Not for the moment. Let's circle the planet first. We might get better readings or find... something. I don't want to set the Topsy down in a plague pit." The last remark brought me an indecipherable look from Ajs. She edged closer to my chair, and I wondered if she felt as bad about the situation as I did. "Ajs, would you mind checking if Ben is fine, down in the engine room?"

The tyrinan was on her way with a quick dip of her eyestalks. I could have called Ben over comm, but it's an old wisdom it helps to keep the rookies busy in a critical situation. Aalyxh smiled at me. "Thanks, Kali. She gives her best to fit in, but she's still afraid of you. Seems you've got a reputation on Tyrin."

It took me a moment to swallow that. Though I knew the Tanencha must have had a reason to call for me in person for this transport. I'd have to pester Ajs for the details. But first, we needed to find a solution to several urgent problems. "Jac, could you spare a moment to find out if we can send the tyrinans back to sleep? I refuse to convert our ship into a kindergarten, as nice as Ajs turned out to be."

"On my way, Captain." The karjkan emitted a burned candy scent. His disappointment to leave the exploring to the rest of us surprised me less than the fact he accepted my order without a complaint.

"Thanks. Hrrovr, please record all observations for later analysis. Aalyxh, bring us into a low orbit, let's see if we find sentient life."

When Ben came back to monitor the loading process of our energy storage from the bridge, we were still none the wiser. Ajs perched atop the headrest of the human's chair, her gaze intent on his screen. Hrrovr collected data from the planet's surface while Aalyxh gave us the complete tour of the deserted world. I tried hard to find something that might be used as an identifier, something to tell us where the storm had carried us. But my efforts were in vain.

The karjkan's light touch on my elbow tore me out of my concentration. "Captain, I stabilised the last batch of the tyrinans."

"Thousand thanks to the galaxy-devouring space serpent." I felt the weight of a solid asteroid tumble from my shoulders. But a mouldy whiff of karjkan amusement made me suspect my relief had come too fast. "What's so funny?"

"I was talking about the last batch, Captain, which is the third. For the second one, it's too late. Tomorrow, we will welcome several hundred new crew-mates on the Topsy."

"Several hundred? How can there be so many?" A surge of hopelessness flooded my limbs and brains.

It dissolved when Ajs coughed, a high, rasping sound. Her trembling was back, but she raised her tiny voice. "Cap Kali, can we bring the hatchlings to the planet below?"

"Why?" I tried to keep my voice level, but my attempt at a smile must have been a total failure. The tyrinan shrunk back, compacting her body into a blue glob.

Then a single eyestalk popped up and eyed me, ready to disappear at the slightest sign of my disdain. "They are—how do you call this—uncoined? They will adapt to the place they spend their first moments in, while their consciousness forms."

Ben and I exchanged glances. I turned to Aalyxh. "Did you know?"

"That we have a secret army of baby tyrinans aboard? No, I didn't. But Ajs is a prime example they are highly adaptive. I guess hatchlings will outdo her on all fronts."

For the first time, I recognised a pattern and a possible motivation behind the Tanencha's secret plot. "Ajs, do I get this right? Tyrinans develop differently, depending on the environment they hatch in?"

"Yes, if they gain their consciousness on the ship, for example, they will make it their home."

Ben's face drained of all its colour, which wasn't much to begin with, and Hrrovr's spinal scales jingled in horror. I couldn't blame them. A frightening vision of the Topsy filled with thousands of luminescent tyrinans flashed in front of my inner eye. "Jac, how long until the hatchlings reanimate?"

"Twenty clicks, maybe twenty-five." He checked his screen. "We can land on the planet in six or seven."

I tried to rub the tension out of the knotted muscles in my neck. "Right. Will the tyrinans be able to survive on the planet?"

For once, I read the desperation in Ben's glance without doubt. Ajs turned towards me. "If there is enough oxygen and hydrogen, they will adapt. They were never supposed to hatch on a small ship. They need more room."

Yes, they did, and so did we—the Topsy was our only home, and while a single tyrinan didn't upset our routine much, several hundred would. We had to try the planet.

"Any preferred landing site, Hijac?" The karjkan studied Hrrovr's screen. They had been exchanging whispered, hissing remarks for a while.

"There is a huge equatorial city right beyond the day line. It might have served as a capital, it features many technical installations, most of them inactive. We could try this one."

Aalyxh didn't wait for my command and started a slow descent towards the planet. We were currently on the night side, only a few lights illuminating the dark globe. They were probably powered by solar energy and didn't signal living organisms. We all watched the dawn line approaching on the main screen.
There is nothing as magical as a sunrise from space, the first warm rays of light illuminating the atmosphere, the stark shadows of mountain ranges contrasting with sunlit plains. "Beautiful," Ben whispered.

Hrrovr pointed to a darker zone ahead. "This is'ss the main clus'sster of cons'sstructions'ss."

Aalyxh angled our approach. A sprawling area of buildings came into view. Their shapes were geometric, arranged in triangular patterns, the buildings tetrahedrons of varying size and pastel colours. I'd never heard of a species with such preferences before. Were they three-limbed? Three-gendered? I hoped we'd get a chance to find out. "Can you set down in the middle of it, Lyxh? On that big triangular plaza in front of the spire over there?"

The pilot pulled towards the structure I indicated. There was no doubt we dealt with the remains of an advanced society. The buildings seemed intact at first sight, the streets between them neat and clean. While we approached, spots of greenery became visible, parks and green linings of the traffic lanes. The nearer we came, the more obvious it became the place was in disrepair. The parks and some buildings were overgrown, empty holes gaped in the walls instead of windows. Sandy dunes covered the roads.

"It's'ss been a while ss'since ss'someone lived here," Hrrovr stated the obvious.

"Yes. But the plants prosper. Can we sample the atmosphere?"

"On it." Hijac emitted a cloud of odours I couldn't decipher. It contained fascination and curiosity.

Aalyxh gagged. "Cut your excitement, Hijac, or I can't guarantee a safe landing."

The karjkan suppressed their outburst of odour language. The whole crew remembered the bumpy landing on their home planet Karik and dreaded a repeat. During approach, the smelly expression of mixed feelings of nostalgia, fuzzy happiness and some awful new odour had distracted Aalyxh. We later learned to assign the special acidic component to Hijac's justified loathing of the karjkan attitude towards visitors. But that's another story. Suffice to say, it took us several local weeks to get the strut repaired we broke during landing. Since then, none of us fancied taking risks with the pilots delicate olfactory sense.

The bridge was quiet as a spaceship after the breach of the vacuum seals while our pilot guided the Topsy to a gentle landing in the centre of a flat, open, triangular place in the city centre. Our sensors registered a crunching when the landing pads settled down into a layer of sand and dust. Then there was only the sound of the wind caressing the cooling hull.

Aalyxh cleared her throat. "Welcome to Topsy's Curse, an ancient world full of breathtaking wonders, undiscovered secrets, unforeseeable dangers, and unlimited possibilities for those who dare to disembark."

(1963 words)