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Eyes were looking over the rest of the chambers equipment. The coms unit. Lilia pointed to them then shook her head. “That’s a Humana Trieste 4 Antenna unit. Very basic and I know nothing about them, other than recognising what it is.” Sajani interrupted. “Remember our museum trip? There was a working model in the museum.“ “I wonder?” Claria tuned looked at Delise. Delise moved to look at the unit. “Lilia is right, this is what the Humana refer to as an ANTIQUE!“ She grinned. “What they would have thought of as state of the art at the time. Silicon based semi organic.” She pulled off a couple of panels to scream and scream.
Falling backwards fainting. Out rushed what we would have called a MOUSE. It looked at them, gave them a rather haughty look, as if to say. “That’ll teach her. Turned, stood up on its hind legs gave a squeak. Two smaller mice appeared with a larger one obviously the female, their mother. The sight of these creatures trotting off to vanish elsewhere in the chamber had them laughing. Delise recovered, NOT, amused at them, all taking the ‘mickey’ out of her fear of mice.
Galacia Imperitannica re RODENTS : Zouska. (Humana : Mice, mouse, mices.) Mice like creatures, found across the planets. Due to their habitat i.e dry, wet, hot, cold. Their form may vary but the DNA genetic strings remain fairly constant as to the species.
NOT as large in number as RAITS otherwise known as RATS but can proliferate on certain planets in numbers where they are allowed to breed without control. MOST planets control or cull the numbers of these creatures as they can do a lot of damage to food stocks, granaries and other storage including the continued use of sacks made from various materials. Grain is still produced on some planets and harvests can be badly attacked by them. Fruit and where, fruit is produced, can also, be a major source of infestation.
“Ooh they make me feel all peculiar.” She squeals, not quite as high in pitch as had been the squeak, from the mouse but it was pretty close. “It was when I opened that panel and saw these beady eyes staring out at me.” More laughter. Sajani had found some servicing equipment. Kind of tech stuff. He was sure it was relevant as he handed Delise some of the items she smiled.
“Well we appear to have some of the diagnostic gear. Small tools to adjust the equipment but. I can’t promise anything.“ Taking off another panel she breathed a sigh of relief. Two clipped in units with plug in modules on them. A hatch that she opened, next to the coms unit, had a store of some spare units. She grabbed at them, took out some of the modules on the board and replaced them with identical modules. ‘NEW’ ones?
Kelawi had taken some of the sealed food packs. She inspected the packs and was reassuring the Kets, they were perfectly safe to eat. Putting a meal together? More than enough food packs to accommodate that request! Hot drinks? Claria and Mawena soon had the units working. All of the Kets present receiving a hot meal and drink of their choosing.
Delise was busy concentrating on the task in hand, aided in part by Bjoi. Inside the coms unit main assembly, were two boards that were definitely NOT connected to anything. Spares. One of the boards in her hand, showed signs of ageing, a haze on the units components that indicated that had been taken out of service, due to a fault?
The board and modules swapped over and the boards replaced in the coms unit as active. It was time to see if it worked. Stepping back, she wiped the surface dust off the control unit and recognising some of the start functions, activated the main power sequencing.. A screen above the main control panel illuminated.
A spiralling lit symbol with something in the middle was spinning and getting faster until it turned into a small rectangular square, another above that and another until it was a straight upright line with a little flashing light at the top.
There was a rumble. A rather disconcerting, disturbing rumble, that echoed across the chamber. “Emergency beacon activated, coms fault detected. Press to stop the emergency distress signal sequence being activated within 10 parsecs, 9, 8, 7. All the way to "Emergency transmission of distress signal has been activated." The voice on the unit was male and a bit drawn out. Sluggish. What we might think of as a vinyl record played at the wrong speed. Delise had been examining the unit further to softly curse.
"Emergency beacon and signal? Not sure but I think its transmitting the signal. So hopefully they will receive it, come and find us. As for us being able to communicate?" She stepped back, grabbed a drink being handed to her, sipped at it.
“I’ll take another look, at the unit again, tomorrow, but I would not hold out much hope of getting that working. We're lucky to have the beacon active. This really is a pile of junk!" Lilia is sipping her drink, congratulating Delise. "Well, you did a great job getting the power on Lilia, without that I could NEVER have gotten this to work! "
"All we can do now, is get some rest. I know I’m tired.” Servenea and Bjoi, had cleaned down the recline units. The power, to the slide back covers, worked. The air purification and automatic systems, for detecting a balance mix of the essentials re their air and bio chems, was working fine.
Sliding back, the covers from the recline units, they were pleased to see the bedding units, had been automatically cleansed, the moment, power had been restored. Settled in the units the Kets were soon asleep. the main heating in the chamber dropped, controlled by the auto units, to shut down heating to a minimum, unless over ridden and Delise had no idea of where the controller unit for that could be found!
Not that it affected them, warm and snug within the units. By the time they woke and were active again, the temperature in the chamber would go back up. Corky and Margise, aided by Serenia, were bringing together the other Kets. The challenge called off. The extreme weather and the loss of one of the teams. They had to find them. It would be Serenia that alerted them, to the tall mast like shape, that had suddenly, appeared above the ridge. “It’s putting out a signal.” “We need a fix on that signals, point of origin.”
To be continued. For now we are going to leave them, as we take a journey into the galaxy beyond. Dropping in on a race, called; the Arahi.
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