Even the Heat Will Affect Us Too

Even the Heat Will Affect Us Too

     Co-Commander Plim places his right hand on the left shoulder of his Pilot Gellice. And his left hand on his other Pilot Avvon. As he does that, he continues looking up at a large sun on the big monitor in front of them. “I don’t like it when we have to wait until the last second to take another sun.”

     “It always happens like this when we have so many planets in this Group of Planets to check,” Avvon says.

     “Our Sun Power is almost gone,” Plim says. “If we are lucky, we will have only one chance to take this sun.”

     Plim looks over his right shoulder at Power Controller Mennon on the open second level of Control Central. “Get us that sun.”

     Power Controller Mennon starts tapping on the control panel below him as he continues staring at the sun on the main monitor. Suddenly, a thin red beam jet out toward that sun. After it hits the sun, the sun starts getting smaller. When it is about the size of an average SpaceRock, the beam starts pulling it back toward them.

#

     Along with Mennon, Plim enter Power Control after the entrance slides open. They stop just inside a large chamber as the entrance closes behind them. Looking at an almost gone black SpaceRock sized sun, Plim and Mennon walk up to a control panel. Mennon sits in a white swivel chair with one upside-down cone next to Plim.

     Plim starts tapping the controls on his control panel. He looks up at the top of that chamber as it slowly opens. As soon as it’s open, the almost gone sun starts floating up toward it. The flickering sun rays that continue randomly coming out of it as it floats out of that chamber.

     Mennon takes over the tapping of the buttons on his control panel. He’s already looking up at the opening as he continues his tapping. Suddenly, their new sun comes floating through that opening. Then it starts floating down to stop exactly where the last one used to be.

     Both Plim and Mennon continue looking up at the opening as it gets smaller when it swirls close. “We will have full power in a few minutes,” Mennon says.

#

     Sitting forward in the center-left of four comfortable chairs, Plim watches as their old sun appears at the bottom right of the main monitor there. Only to stop where their new sun used to be. Plim turns toward Mennon. “First, make the sun its normal size. Then create a new sun for this Group of Planets.”

     Mennon has already started pushing buttons on his control panel. Suddenly, he stops and looks up at the main monitor too. A few seconds later the same red beam hits the old sun and makes it grow to the size it used to be. That beam disappears. Only to be replaced with six blue tubes about an inch long. When they hit the almost gone sun they start to explode.

     After they explode, there is a whiteness that fills the main monitor. It starts to disappear slowly a few seconds later. Once it is gone, they are looking at a new sun. “All we need to do is make sure this Group of Planets have not suffered without a sun,” Plim says. “Then we can continue to look for a new planet to call home.”

#

     Plim leans over Planet Population Binc to see what he is looking at. “How does it look so far.”

     “What I have seen looks good,” Binc says. “But I still have almost half of them to check out.”

     “Why is this taking so long?” Plim mumbles as he reads what Binc has on the small monitor in front of them. “You should have finished it a long time ago.”

     Plim stops his mumbling and looks at Binc. “The sooner you finish checking out this Group of Planets, the sooner we can start looking for our new home.”

     “I am almost finished checking out the latest planet,” Binc says. “That only leaves four. Give me about two more hours, and I will be done.”

     “The faster we do this the better. And I’m not just talking about finding a new home planet.” Plim says.

#

     Suddenly, Plim and Co-Commander Jolina pitches forward in their chairs. He’s in the left-center chair. And she’s in the right one. They don’t fall out of it, though. Only the top half of them do. “What happened? Why did we stop like that?” Plim asks

     “We had to do it?” Gellice says. “There was nothing else we could do. The suns just appeared in front of us.”

     Plim and Jolina lean back in their chairs and look up at the main monitor to see a large sun almost covering it. “Where did that sun come from?” Jolina asked.

     “That is not just one sun,” Avvon says. “There are three of them there.”

     “WHAT?” Plim shouted. “How can be? Pull back, I want to see all of them.”

     Slowly, the three suns pull back to show themselves. But it doesn’t stop there. It continues until twenty-five suns are shown all around them. They are surrounded by suns in every direction. “Give us back our sun.” The Voice echoed throughout Control Central.

#

     “I’m not worried about us getting the heat from all those suns who have surrounded us,” Jolina says as she walks quickly down a corridor. “We can take the heat. But the two hundred and seventy-three humans on here can’t take it for too long.”

     Plim almost needs to run to catch up to Jolina. “I’m worried about the humans too. But the only way that we can help them is to figure out how to get rid of these suns.”

     “You take care of the suns,” Jolina says. “I will check out the humans to see how they are doing during all this heat. After all, I’m the reason why they are here.”

     “It’s not only because of you that they are suffering so badly during all this heat,” Plim says. “We both agreed to help them when their spaceship almost destroyed then.”

     Jolina sighs. “We also agreed to help them find a new home planet too. And we have been doing it for almost five years.”

#

     Slowly, Jolina walks down a row of floating Sleepers after she barely gets through the sliding entrance into Health before it closes. She walks down the row that has ten floating sleepers on both sides of it. Jolina stops just before she gets to the end of that row. A white glow surrounds her. Then she walks through the clear wall into another part of Health.

     After she enters that part, she stops to slowly look at the humans that are there. She stops looking when she sees Health Professional Yinne checking out a human. As she walks toward Yinne, Jolina looks at the other humans who are there. “Are these seventeen humans the only ones affected by the heat of those suns? Jolina asks after to gets to Yinne.

     “That is all so far,” Yinne says. She continues to check out the human floating in front of her.

     Jolina slowly looks at the humans behind her. Then she turns to face Yinne again. “How bad are they?”

     “There are six that aren’t doing too good.” Yinne answers. “And two that are about to leave us. But no one has left yet.”

     “Is there anything you can do for them?” Jolina asks.

     Yinne sighs. “There is not too much I can do. It is their internal organs that are being affected by the heat we are getting.”

     “We have no internal organs.” Yinne continues. “But they do. And that is what is going to make them leave us if this heat does not end soon.”

     “How long before they start leaving us?” Jolina asks.

     Yinne looks at two of the humans there. “Those two in about a day. The others here a few days later. Overall, they will all be leaving us within a couple of weeks if this heat does not end before then.”

#

     “I want to talk to The Voice who has been communicating with us.” Jolina is standing behind Gellice and Avvon looking at the suns that have trapped them in a giant multi-colored ball. She is patiently waiting for The Voice to respond to her. But after about five minutes her fists that are locked behind her back start changing from a normal red to a bright red.

     Finally, The Voice answers them. And the echoing begins again. “What do you want now? Have you contacted us to give us what we want?”

     “No, I haven’t,” Jolina says. “But I do want to talk to you about what is going on here, though.”

     “I don’t care about the heat attack against us. We can take it. But we have almost three hundred humans here. And they are being hurt by it.”

     Jolina continues a few seconds later when The Voice of the suns doesn’t respond to her. “If you don’t stop this heat attack, they will be leaving us permanently.”

     “We may look like humans with heads, arms, and legs. But as you can see, we are heat too. This heat attack is not hurting us. And it won’t for a very long time. But it’s hurting the humans, though.”

     After about five minutes, The Voice finally speaks. “We don’t care anything about humans. If you want to stop them from leaving you, all you need to do is give us back what you have taken from us.”

#

     Jolina has her elbows on her knees and her hands on her flat chin as she stares at the main monitor. “We can’t give you back your sun until you let us out of this sunball.”

     “You can return what you have taken from us at any time.” The Voice of the suns echoed throughout Control Central. “All you need to do is head for there and we will let you go there.”

     “It doesn’t look like we have any choice,” Jolina says. “If we don’t do what the suns want, then all the humans will leave us soon. Six have already left us. And three more are about to join them.”

     Jolina gets up and stands behind Gellice and Avvon. “We need to get back to where we have gotten our latest sun. How long is that going to take.”

     “About three or four days,” Gellice says. “If we are at full power.”

     “We will get there as fast as we can.” Avvon continues. “But I don’t think we will get there in time to stop all the humans from leaving us.”

#

     The sunball goes past one planet. Jolina leans back in her chair as she watches the sunball on the main monitor with Gellice and Avvon as they go past two more planets. Then it suddenly stops. “We are where we have mistakenly taken your sun.”

     “Did you hear me?” Jolina asks after The Voice of the suns doesn’t respond. “We need you to let us out of this sunball so that we can replace it with our new sun.”

     “We have been listening to you.” The Voice says. “And you don’t need to replace the suns. It has already been taken care of”

     The suns surrounding them on the main monitor suddenly disappear. Jolina taps a button on the arm of her chair. “How does our new sun look?”

     “It looks like a whole new sun,” Mennon says after he appears on the main monitor. “I told you that we only needed a few weeks to get our sun back to full power again.”

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