Twinks in Space: Fantastic Voyage - Part Two - 68. Chapter 68 - The Ulaa-Lah

“The Ulaa-Lah?” Lyoth, Phentrom, and Captain Suoki exclaimed in unison.

The five travelers became silent as the choppy message continued, punctuated by the buzz and hum of the poor connection.

“…stranded and… systems… failed… cavitation engine… messages except… and primitive galaxy which… inhabitants do not… our communica… don’t even know… or if…”

The message ended.

Lyoth turned to Fonith. “Did the Cometskipper record that?”

“Yes,” Fonith confirmed, “and she’s already begun cleaning up the file. It shouldn’t be long.”

“Can we hone in on the location of the signal?” Captain Suoki asked.

“The ship is trying to locate the origin positioning of the call, but the message is being bounced through weird tech the ship’s struggling to recognize.”

Everyone was silent for another moment as Fonith entered commands into her terminal. The digital map shifted and zoomed to the position where the Cometskipper hovered in space. A chime rang from the advanced scanning computer. Its inner mechanism stopped rotating, and the sides of the cube became black again, as the three-dimensional rendering above the lumen display began forming a more detailed map of a new quadrant.

“The system is tracking the signal,” Fonith said, reading the display in front of her, “but it’s… oh gods, it’s coming from far away.” She looked at the others. “We can’t go after it with the Cometskipper’s current charge level. We’re going to need to head back and refuel, but we’ve got a destination processing.”

The digital map extended to a distant location, beyond where even the Xecot drive could scan, and the image focused on a single galaxy. Above the three-dimensional table, a hundred-thousand-million stars slowly rotated in a complex spiral that filled the display. Several points of light blinked.

“The computer is getting closer to the specific source planetary system,” Fonith informed the others. “The message is being bounced all over the place.”

“But does it actually lead to the Ulaa-Lah?” asked Captain Suoki.

“And how long is it going to take us to get to wherever it is?” Stawren added.

“And who knows what we’re going to find,” Lyoth stated, “between where we are now and where the Ulaa-Lah is.”

Fonith took a breath. “The Cometskipper is attempting the calculations, but it looks like it’ll take us over three months to get there.” She looked at Lyoth. “You’re right, there’s no telling what we’ll come across, but there won’t be any recharging stations. We need to go back, charge the Cometskipper’s cavitation engines, and then probably procure some backup charge-holders in case we need a recharge before we are able to return.”

Lyoth sucked his teeth. “Those things are expensive.”

Captain Suoki chimed in, “I can get us some. The Ulaa-Lah was required to carry enough recharges to refill the engines if they were drained to zero, and we ended up getting so many of them, the fellow who sells them became a friend. How far are we from the outer rim?”

“We’re a six-day flight back,” Fonith replied flatly.

“Well it sounds like we have a plan,” Stawren replied. “We recharge the ship with backups, then we go after the Ulaa-Lah.”

Phentrom whispered, “We’re coming, Thrad and everyone.”

A speaker beeped, and the five of them looked in its direction. The Cometskipper had clarified the entire distress message, and the system played it back.

“Alert! Alert! Alert! This is the starship Ulaa-Lah. We have become stranded, and many of the ship’s systems have failed. The cavitation engine is drained and we can’t send out any messages except distress calls. We are in a remote and primitive galaxy which possesses minimal advanced technology, and the inhabitants do not have the capability to recharge our cavitation engines or repair our communication array.” The voice then added, “I don’t even know if this message is getting out there, or if anyone will receive it.”

The message began to repeat.