“I’ve arrived at the same conclusion. I just have no clue as to what it could possibly be.”
“Me, either.” Matt looked at the floor and after a moment thought, “Knowing it still doesn’t reduce my anguish.”
“I know.”
“I gave two of the green shards to Stem, Matt.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. I just felt compelled to do it. I did tell him that the last one will remain in the box beside your chair and may not be taken. He agreed.”
“Thanks, Al. There it will remain.”
“Speaking of weeds, Sprig has just requested a meeting at a planet in the Algean Galaxy.”
“Do you have the coordinates?”
“Yes, but he did say that if you want to delay he would understand. That’s why he didn’t contact you directly.”
“Al, I’ve got to do something to try and stop this downward spiral I find myself in. I think I need to stay busy; tell him we’re coming.”
Aladdin disappeared and reappeared over a barren planet. “Looks like another world the Algeans conquered,” Al thought.
“Remarkably enough, Al, this planet has been barren since a time before my people started having to destroy planets.”
“Hello, Sprig. I understand you want to see me.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Searcher. I would not have called you but I need your assistance on a project we’re working on.”
“What project is that?”
“The ship we’re building for you. Now that the final system has activated, your development is at a point where you should be able to operate the ship.”
“I sense something is troubling you, Sprig.”
“The ship has stopped developing and will not go any further.”
“When did that happen?”
“As soon as your last system activated; we quite logically thought that it should have proceeded forward at an even faster rate but it has stalled and come to a complete stop.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“We would like for you to come and enter the ship and allow us to see if that starts it moving forward again.”
“Where is it?”
“I’ve sent the coordinates to, Al. You can just land your ship next to it.”
“On our way.” Aladdin teleported and landed on a barren plain next to a large facility. As soon as they landed both Matt and Al both thought, “HOLY GROAD!”.”
“What’s wrong,” Stem thought?”
“Where did you get the material to build this ship?”
“It was buried several miles under this planet’s surface. We only found it after we developed the instrument that measures psychic power. One of our vessels passed through this system and the instrument measured a huge psychic wave. We came back and dug it out of the ground. We tried to cut it with a Coronado power cell and the energy from the cell caused it to start morphing into what you see.”
Matt and Al looked at a ship that was made from the same crystal material that they had seen when they had contacted the Reg. It glowed with the same translucence as the towers they had seen on the Reg’s planet. Matt was stunned and he thought, “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to sit in the command chair and see if it activates the ship.”
“On my way.”
Matt teleported to the crystal ships open port and saw Sprig and Stem waiting on him. He walked forward and followed them into the ship. “Matt, this is the control room for this vessel. This chair is the command chair and we want you to sit in it.”
Matt looked around and saw another chair. He also saw a section of the wall behind the chairs that was recessed and strangely shaped. He walked toward the command chair and as he approached a golden light began emanating from it. “Don’t worry, that light only comes on when the person that the chair was designed for approaches.”
“How do you know that?”
“We discovered that when we found who the other chair was designed to fit. However, please sit down and tell me what you feel.” Matt furrowed his brow and sat down in the chair. The chair immediately started shifting colors rapidly from gold to blue to violet to red. “How does it feel?”
Matt sat there and the chair felt like it was made for him. It fit him exactly and when he placed his hand in an indentation on the chair arm it fit exactly. It fits me perfectly, Sprig. What is that indentation in the back wall?”
Sprig looked at Stem and then thought, “That indentation was the last thing to develop. Our engineers had no idea what it was so they called me in to examine it. I wouldn’t have known what it was six months ago but as soon as I saw it I knew what it was designed to hold.”
Matt tilted his head to the side and Sprig said, “It’s made for Al.” Matt and Al were shocked speechless. “Do you remember when you called us to your ship and I told Al about how he reminded me of the Captors and Atlas?” Matt nodded. “I looked at Al’s systems on that visit. That indentation matches his system’s shape perfectly.”
“Sprig, how long was this underground?”
“More than a hundred million years, Matt, and these are custom made for you and Al.”
Matt thought, “Al, what do you think of this?”
“I am almost shocked into a coma, Matt. How is this possible?”
Mat closed his eyes and forced his mind to go blank. He could feel the ship around him and as he let it slip into his mind he had a vision. He opened his eyes and looked at Sprig and Stem. “I know what’s happening and this ship will not operate right now; it may never operate.”
Sprig leaned right to show his surprise, “Why?”
“Because the race that made this will not allow us to use it unless we already know another way to kill the Eight Legs; the reason it quit developing was because I used this ships type of power to kill three of them.”
“What!”
“Those last two systems came from this ship, didn’t they?”
“Yes, they did.”
“I used the last system to fire some kind of psychic charge at the three Eight Legs that had boarded Angel’s ship and killed her. I saw all three of them totally implode.”
Stem thought excitedly, “That’s why they haven’t left the system yet.”
Matt looked confused, “What do you mean?”
“During their invasion of the first planet more than a third of their ships exploded off the planet and began frantically flying around the system. At the conclusion of the harvesting of the planet the remainder of the ships joined those flying around the system.”
“They’re searching for those three I killed.”
“That must be it, Matt. It also appears that they don’t know how it was done which leads me to believe that those three did not communicate the existence of invisible ships.”
Matt sighed and said, “That last system will no longer function on my ship.”
Sprig thought, “Tell us what you know.”
“I visited the race that made this ship. I learned that they are actually older than the Eight Legs and when they were invaded the first time they killed some of them until they learned that they were immune to the bite of those creatures. They just put up with them in every invasion after that first one. This race cannot take a life except in self defense nor can they directly cause loss of life. I asked them why they allowed so many to die without helping and they told me that killing one even if they are killing a million is just as bad as killing a million. They cannot directly assist us in killing the Eight Legs.”
Sprig and Stem were silent. “Then why did they leave this ship?”
Matt shook his head, “They are so far ahead of us psychically that it boggles the imagination. They knew millions of years ago that I was coming to communicate with them. This ship is proof of that. Consider this, if I wanted to help you but in doing so I would go against everything I believed holy, how could I help you?”
The two Algeans looked confused, “I can’t hand you a weapon to shoot somebody, but if I happen to lose the parts to make a gun and you find it millions of years after I misplaced it and then figure out how to build it, then they are not directly responsible for what follows.”