How were the stranded ones finally rescued by the Clever Gamble? Commander Talon’s abbreviated report was lush with florid descriptions of successive adversaries who kept trying to capture or destroy our ship – first a Spertin cruiser that drew the Gamble into a trap, using the forsaken vessel Go-buy-a-chia as a lure.

That conflict converted quickly into grudging alliance when both sides were attacked by a Mifrengi devourer fleet! Which was then sucked into battle among squadrons from three mutually hostile galaxies (!) – one flotilla crewed by living beings, one by AI-bots, and one by what might or might not have been made of some kind of inexpressibly ineffable stuff that bore a heavy grudge against all things that had names and descriptions…

Then there was the very weird planet that the Gamble crew found in one corner of that interspatial tide-pool, where different versions of Talon’s landing party encountered each other and had some serious logical and existential and romantic conundrums to work out. Yipe.

No wonder it took years for our unlucky crewmates to navigate through that mess, eventually negotiating an alliance of common cause with all of those forces against yet another one that was really dangerous!

Then, picture their luck turning for the better, finding a risky but rewarding path back to normal space and the original temporality, returning to this planet just in the nick of time to answer the call from our landing party’s Finder apparatus, finally sending down a slurry tube just when we needed it most.

Yep, that is the way things sometimes go. You get used to this sort of thing, in the Advisor Service. I was looking forward to immersing myself in the full report and recordings, back on-ship…

Oh, hell no! I take that back. You never get used to it. Not ever. Don’t you believe anyone who says otherwise.

Still, I did look forward to the full-immersion report, and I used that anticipation for distraction while standing nervously in the transporter chamber, trying to think about faraway things until a familiar, tingling sensation told me that liquescing had begun. Scanners read the positions of all the cells in my body. Then universal solvent poured in through wall vents, rising rapidly… and you can’t help hyperventilating, instinctively preparing to hold your breath, even though you know from experience that it won’t do the slightest good.

Laser tagged and registered for later re-assembly, our clothes began dissolving, even before the fluid reached my chin. Which meant the excited demmies were even deeper. I saw their uniforms shred and float away along with outer layers of skin.

Directly across from me, the thick cloak of the Ya-Tze priest took an instant longer, so my mouth and nose were flooding by the time the clerical garb fell apart, and I found myself looking at a naked – and stunning – demmie female, who smiled back at me, knowingly.

And I knew her too.