Sirens blared as the late delivery being pulled into the docking area of the delivery section of Vega 12. This was because of two things, one was the fact that being six years late, the being owed the company serious time, and on Vega 12, time meant money. Then next reason was two unauthorized identities had appeared on the surveillance scan. This meant that the delivery being owed Intergalactic Pizza exactly $216.75 Intergalactic Credits (The Mulanian Dollar was rapidly falling because of the lack of import/export, in turn because of Mike) Which curiously was everything Mike had given his for the ride plus the cost of the pizza that was 6 years late. Odd.
As for what came of Mike’s plan to find the secret entranceway to Vega 12, all he got from it was a rather bad case of space lag. About the equivalent of flying from Greenwich, Earth, all the way across the date line to New Zealand staying a day THEN flying to Vancouver, Canada. Proceeding that you would have to get totally drunk and fly back to Australia, the other way and end up in Sydney with killer jet lag and a hangover and still have to fly home on the next flight which just happens to be the red eye, not that you could tell by then. How Mike accomplished that was by insisting he stay awake when they went through the hypodrive time/space lapse. This is when a delivery ship propels itself with the usual speed of delivery vehicles through 8 dimensions then slips back where it came from. Only on the other side. This is the equivalent of passing through some 200 time zones which would make it worse than the example except for the fact that after about 25, it gets as bad as it’s going to. Normally, the passengers and delivery beings take Onphenplex to knock them out for the time it takes to pass through 8 dimensions, about 67.43 seconds but if you’re awake it feels like a million years.
Mike and Aara were roughly escorted to the president of delivery for questioning. When questioned Mike managed only to complain for a minute then black out. Aara was slightly more help. She described the predicament that caused Mike and her to be stranded on Mulania and about Mike’s offer to the delivery being and all the rest of it. By the end, the president checked her and Mike into a luxury hotel just to shut her up.
Mike groaned and rolled onto his back and opened his eyes a tiny crack to make out where he was, the pain was immense as he turned his head a little to the side. The first thing he saw was Aara leaning over him and talking about something. As it began to filter through his clogged mind, he realized that they had passed security and were welcome to stay on Vega 12 for as long as they wanted, And did he want to attend the tour of the pizzerias this afternoon. No, he thought, willing it to come through his temporarily unresponsive mouth. Instead he moaned a little and painfully moved to a sitting position. Everything hurt, he felt like he a barely survived being run over by a steam roller or maybe been dropped out of an airplane at an altitude of 2000 feet and landed on a concrete sidewalk. He decided to stop feeling sorry for himself, tried to get up and promptly started feeling sorry for himself again.
“You knew you couldn’t track the way here, you brought this on yourself, you know.” This was from Aara who was a little worried about Mike, she’d never actually seen him prone. It didn’t seem right somehow, she just wanted him to get it over with and start being annoying and obnoxious again.
“Rarphius BlasNer Xersonicam” complained Mike slipping back into his own language, it was really too painful to think about English right now.
Aara’s translator told her that Mike said “(Alien swear word) I had to put up with you!”
“ True but it wasn’t my fault then.” That seemed to end the conversation, for the time being anyhow and Mike went back to sleep.
