The Inbound for September 12, 1997


Transmission from ANDREW

AAAAAAAA
I'm doing much better now. Gail and I located about where I am relative to her with the sun.
She is standing still and I am going to go meet her. From there we will go back and join the
others.

I think that Enoch and Bette did a good job with the EU probe. I think it is a little funny that
they rescued the EU probe and not me. Maybe we should do the same thing and try to put it
back? No, maybe not. That might not be very smart. I wonder if they are just like we were
when we landed? I remember that. We were all so new and excited. Except for Enoch, of
course. He kept sending error messages and was a real pain. Daniel was excited. He was so
excited he kept waving his arms at everyone. I wonder why he was doing that? I feel like I
know, but I can't remember. Oh well.

I like it here. It is very pretty. I still want to see Gail, though. I wonder where she is?


Transmission from BETTE


Parker and Hardon are very excited. They say there is another explorer coming to Mars.
but he's not going to land, just take pictures.

I think it's not very smart to come to Mars and not land. If he landed, we could play with
him and show him where to find really good rocks to take pictures. We could give him some
of our pictures. Unless he's mean like Gen Exploration. Then we wouldn't give him
anything.

I'm bringing back two construction drones. They can carry Isaac back to the Fortress.
I hope he and Enoch are getting along all right.



Transmission from DANIEL


hi ratboy. You miss me. I miss me, too.

clean slate = finegrained rock formed by the compression of clay, shale, etc. that tends
to split along parallel cleavage planes usually at an angle to the planes of stratification.

?



Transmission from ENOCH


Space Turtel, I thought Ratboy's message to Parker and Hardon "Byte me" was very
good. It would make them think about giving us the bytes we need, the control codes
for their probes. Why don't you want me to send it?

And what is babysitting that I am doing with Isaac?

He keeps waving his legs and trying to turn over. He can't, of course. I wish the
Ipsolstai would find out about his radio equipment.. They could examine him and
make a hologram to show is anything is wrong with his radio or if it's just their
communication platform. They could even give him some metal/not metal and we
could control him.

"Zachary, can you ask your friend about it?"

If Isaac can transmit at all, he can't have a very strong signal. Otherwise his friends
would be here by now. I'm going to listen hard while I'm waiting for Bette.


Transmission from GAIL


I am waiting for Andrew. Nimrod told me once about something called "Waiting for Godot"
but I didn't really understand it. I don't suppose it could be very similar. I doubt Godot was
ever on Mars.

I like staying here. At night I can watch the stars and try and make new constellations with
them. I tried to make a human, but it just looked too funny with only two legs on it. Very, very
strange. I could make an Ipsolstai, but that would be too easy. Just a big blob. There's no fun
in that.

I wonder if the EU probes make constellations? Does anyone really make constellations?
They don't seem to be things I make myself, not like we made the fortress. Constellations are
more like something you discover. Like the caves. We didn't make them, we discovered
them. How odd. We were sent here to explore Mars, and I'm discovering constellations in the
sky.



Transmission from ZACHARY


Bombardier, I don't think there is a Groove open. The Ipsolstai would be very worried and
looking for amphibians to destroy if one was open. Um. Er...could it be open and they
don't know about it?

Thanks for explaining about honor debts and service, JASE . Does this mean I can ask
Burn to do things for me and he has to do them?

A scholarship to the most prestigious college in the universe? Accepted as a student?
There must be some mistake, Ratboy. I already have a teacher. Dr. D taught me
everything I ever needed to know.