A small floral minivan turned on its rocket thrusters near the edge of Solar System 32X. Although “edges” weren’t really a thing in space, as the environment didn’t lend for the geographical demarcation necessary to call anything anything, especially not an edge “an edge”, the minivan was very much standing to the closest thing space had to that. Captain Starberd Gruzzle of the Cryptithonic Exploration Division of Nargaloni stood proudly in front of what to most spacefaring folk would be seen as a hoax, a lie, a falsehood. In front of him, behind the ice and gas giants, was the planet he was looking for. They said that no intelligent life, nay, no life at all existed in the Lactating Lane. Well, he was here to prove them wrong. To prove them all wrong. This dingy vectosec with a crappy external camera, no insurance, and various interplanetary diseases is going to be the vehicle that will rake him millions of coscurs. Of course, inflation will probably make that worthless with the time it’ll take to get back to Solar System 1000SG, but at least it’ll be a steady ego boost. It might even lead him to actually feel confident enough to take on the family business. 1000SG was lacking in cheesemakers, that’s why most of their planets lacked moons.
The digital control unit of the vessel was beyond repair, so Gruzzle had to navigate here manually, which took him approximately three years, only two of those were spent procrastinating on learning manual vectosec steering, the other year to actually travel here. With the skill he so proudly mastered all by himself, with no help whatsoever, he swooshed by the uninteresting planets, making sure not to get pulled into their gravitational field, as neither his vectosec nor his body were built to last under that kind of pressure. As he clicked around the control panel like a lunatic, he slowly approached it, the big blue marvel. It sucked. Doubts started forming in his mind: what if they were right? There was no terraforming, the surface was completely uneven and the patches of land were jagged. He heard of people keeping it “au naturel”*, but even that had its limits.
*Of course, this was because French people are very much aliens that just happen to be exactly like regular humans. Most of the French were sent off to other planets as punishment for their horrid language and spelling system, it just so happened that one of those planets had very similar linguistic roots and was perfect for them to keep up the craft, and worsen it by the minute.
Upon lowering himself into the upper atmosphere, he saw those puffy white things which he thought were just an optical illusion, or some kind of forcefield, but from analysis, i.e., two seconds of observation, he concluded that these things were completely unimportant.
The vectosec lowered, and lowered, and lowered. Not at a consistent pace as the downward thrusters were prone to clogging and Gruzzle had to use his proboscis to scoop it out. This was a good thing however, as the cloggage killed the present diseases with other, more potent and powerful diseases. There were also nutrients in the cloggage, so he didn’t have to rummage around in the reserves he emptied on day one. The only things keeping him alive were said nutrients and a will to prove an entire solar system wrong.
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Once at the edge of the liquid the planet majorly consisted of, he lowered even farther down. A big greyish oblong fellow approached his vehicle at breakneck speeds, attracted by the scent of Gruzzle’s proboscis. It rammed into the vectosec, which didn’t damage it further as it already was beyond repair. Gruzzle lowered a speaking device, which he promptly buzzed into. The oblong fellow waggled what he assumed to be his head, prompting Gruzzle to slap his tentacle against his forehead. On the click of a button, his words could clearly be comprehended by the grey shape.
“What the hell is wrong with you?!” he asked with restraint.
“What does it look like I’m trying to do?” the fellow replied.
“It looks like you’re trying to get it on with my vectosec!”
“Your what now?” it asked, doing the equivalent of its species to raising an eyebrow.
“The thing I’m in!” said Gruzzle, frustration clear in his voice.
“Oh, that’s not just… you?”
“What?”
“Well, I just assumed…” it stuttered, “…since the voice came from the whole thing, I just thought, that’s what you looked like. But obviously you’re two separate… things.”
“Obviously we’re two separate things!”
“So are you some kind of leech?”
“Just because I live in my parents’ house does not make me a parasite! You’re a bad judge of character!”
“No, no. You take residence in another creature, so you must be some kind of fungus thing.”
“What’s a fungus?”
The oblong fellow stopped.
“Are you new here?” it asked.
“Yes, are you the dominant species here?”
“Here here, or like, globally.”
“Obviously globally.” Gruzzle groaned.
“Oh, no, you have to go on land to meet those guys.”
“What? But this planet’s like over seventy percent water? Shouldn’t the dominant species be here?”
“I don’t know what to tell you, I’m just a shark.”
“I don’t care what you are, I’m here for the dominant species. They say there’s intelligent life here.”
The shark looked around.
“Between you and me… I’m not sure that there is.”
“Of course there is! There’s you!”
“I’m not that intelligent.”
“You can talk!” he thoroughly frowned.
“Yeah, well any creature can talk, can’t they? There’s just a language barrier usually. Which, by the way, if I can be honest with you, you are nailing it right now. I don’t know where you picked up our tongue.”
Gruzzle was a bit embarassed at the notion of being complimented for a thing he didn’t do, but that quickly vanished, as this would be the kind of praise he would have to get used to once he’s back on Nargaloni. He could already feel the utter flooding of popularity. After opening his eye for one second he noticed that it was actual flooding.
